| My primary intent as an artist is to hold up a mirror to my audience. Not the kind of mirror that shows the lumps and bumps in life, therefore causing one to turn away in disgust, but one that allows a person to look deeper, to stop, reflect, and then to adjust their notion of my given subject “the hyper feminine”—to see an alternate view, one of beauty and strength, even if just for a moment. | 
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Charise Isis
Charise Isis, Snake Eyes, from the series Hudson Valley of the Dolls, 2006. Silver gelatin photograph. Courtesy of the artist.
My primary intent as an artist is to hold up a mirror to my audience. Not the kind of mirror that shows the lumps and bumps in life, therefore causing one to turn away in disgust, but one that allows a person to look deeper, to stop, reflect, and then to adjust their notion of my given subject “the hyper feminine”—to see an alternate view, one of beauty and strength, even if just for a moment.
Prior to my life as a photographer, I earned my living as an exotic dancer. Six years ago, I took up photography and naturally began photographing the abundance of beautiful and powerful women in front of me, turning my camera on my colleagues, capturing them as they performed on stage for a live audience. Thus began my project American Stripper. Through my view as an insider I sought to allow my photographs to express what I saw in these women: strength, beauty, and artistry, rather than the stereotypical perspective, in which these women are often viewed as either overtly sexual or desperate and dysfunctional.
Around the same time the American Stripper project came to a close, I met a wonderful drag queen living next door to me that shared my name, Isis. The friendship that ensued granted me intimate entrée into the exotic world of drag queens. With a similar approach to that which I had taken documenting the strippers, I began to photograph The Hudson Valley of the Dolls, creating a visual document of the strength, beauty, and humanity that exists within the frequently misunderstood world of drag queens.
A continued attempt to “hold up the mirror,” my current work, Boudoir Project, stems from my work as a boudoir photographer. Throughout this work I have had the opportunity to photograph intimate portraits of many women of diverse age, body types, and backgrounds. Each woman who entered my studio had struggled to put aside her own set of insecurities with regards to her body image in order to embrace her own unique beauty and sensuality. A glimpse into the intimate worlds of these women lets the viewer put aside their own constrained notions of beauty, allowing them to see reflected back at them the enormous range of beauty that exists within our world. Perhaps then they will choose to see themselves differently—even if just for a moment.
