Tomasz Gudzowaty’s series “Pole Dancers” represents a group of women in both professional and intimate settings who practice the performing art of pole dancing at Bobbi’s Pole Dance Studio, a Sydney-based chain of schools which teaches the acrobatic dance as exercise.
Although, historically speaking, pole dancing was associated with night clubs, it “is no longer the preserve of gentlemen’s clubs,” and has been reframed as an empowering form of fitness and self-expression for many women. Gudzowaty recognizes that “the connections between pole dance and it’s sensual roots are still obvious and can create tensions and negativity,” specifically in families, when “a person’s decisions to enter the career of a professional pole dancer is often subject to the preconceptions about the nature of [the] profession.” Not only does he recognize this, but he fully attempts to address the uncomfortable truths through the black and white filters and strategical blurring of the images. He successfully portrays the women not in the overly-sexualized way that society has latched on to, but as artists, humans, mothers, friends, explaining that “in Syndey alone, the ‘pole dancing community’ (most of them have a sense of allegiance to a community) reaches 3000.” —Linnie Cole
