In the early 1990s, Cammie Toloui worked as a stripper in San Francisco to fund her photojournalism degree. Customers who paid to view her naked body and watch her perform sex acts on herself were offered a discount if they consented to being photographed. These images, published here for the first time, are free of any prejudice. Instead, they are imbued with a deep sense of curiosity and understanding, revealing a broad spectrum of sexuality, fetishes, and often private aspects of masculinity. Today, the series retains a deeply powerful urgency because of how she took control of and inverted the male gaze at a time when it was an overarching, dominant force in daily life.

“The truth is, I found being a stripper liberating. Who would have thought it?! It allowed me to shed sexual inhibitions; it gave me a huge pool of strong female friends who were intelligent, radical, open and great fun; it empowered me with a decent income that allowed me to be independent, supported me through my university degree and offered a tremendous creative opportunity that has resulted in a lifetime of positive artistic recognition and eventually this very book.” —Cammie Toloui

5 Dollars for 3 Minutes is published by Void.