For just a moment, lives of beauty
Ruby, Peaches, Diana, Sarah. They're Vegas prostitutes, but in Jonnie Andersen's lens, and heart, they're 'wonderful, amazing.'
LAS VEGAS — Jonnie Andersen best understands things by gazing through her camera lens. She photographed her co-workers at a casino. She photographed her boss while he was firing her for photographing her co-workers.
Then Jonnie, small-town-bred and Ivy League-educated, started bartending at a saloon at the intersection of downtown's gentrification and grit. She got to know the prostitutes who hung out there -- and felt she had to photograph them too.
They sat on barstools at the Bunkhouse next to writers and artists, trading tales over drinks. Some women were middle-aged, nearly toothless, with scarred necks and wrists and haunting stares; others were waifs fresh from the bus stop. Some were strong. Some were hustlers. They were all unlike anyone she'd ever known.
In taking their pictures for nearly two years, Jonnie found a sense of purpose in a city steeped in vice. To friends and family, the project seemed risky, even bizarre. Methamphetamine and crack had eaten away many of the women's teeth and lucidity, and listening to their hard-knock stories wore Jonnie down.
But Jonnie, 32, came to believe that the photo sessions gave the women a welcome, if brief, escape. She offered them $20 for their time but some refused the money. They wanted only copies of their head shots, in which their tousled hair and reddened lips gave them an air of glamour. Their bruises were nearly masked with makeup.
A full moon hovers over downtown as Jonnie walks into the Western Casino. She's wearing a brown zip-up sweater and silver earrings; a highlighted bob frames her heart-shaped face. She is jittery despite tossing back a few shots of Jagermeister: So many things could go wrong.
She and two friends scan the crowd for a curvy woman with a cocoa complexion, red lips and a dyed-blond weave. Earlier in the night, someone told them she was a prostitute and that she was headed to this casino. The woman is in the lobby. She says her name is Charlene and she's from Omaha; she laughs when asked her age. Her eyes are glassy and her gestures wild.
"We want to take your picture," says Jonnie's roommate, Marissa DiNicola, 29.
"Take my picture, take my picture!" Charlene shrieks. She walks with the group to the nearby Travelers Motel, a string of salmon-colored buildings on Fremont Street where Jonnie has reserved Room 25.
