PhotoSaintGermain-Cammie Tolui, Mary’s, Gerry’s & Hot Flashes

Cammie Toloui, Mary’s, Gerry’s & Hot Flashes

Curated by Salomé Burnstein

Three years after Private Pleasures, devoted to the Lusty Lady Series (1991-93) — a collection of portraits of patrons photographed from inside a peep-show booth, created by Cammie Toloui while working as an exotic dancer in San Francisco — the photographer returns to Shmorévaz with Mary’s, Gerry’s & Hot Flashes. Invited for a residency by the legendary Mary’s Club in Portland in 2025, Toloui re-enters the strip-club space more than thirty years later, mindful of changes in dynamics around seduction, transaction, and consent. Preserving the anonymity of those pictured, she uses a thermal camera this time "to reveal the internal heat of our interactions, [...] and the invisible transfer of desire with which money is charged. It is a potent symbol of patriarchy, and its twin brother, capitalism," writes Toloui.

Repeating the core gesture of the Lusty Lady series, Toloui once again turns the lens around, pointing the thermal camera at herself to capture manifestations of hot flashes associated with menopause. Metaphorically, these hot flashes echo what has run through her practice from the start. The exhibition thus sets these new pictures in conversation with Gerry, a 1990s series in which the photographer observes a session between a man and a model met through a personal ad. Gathering these diverse images, Mary’s, Gerry’s & Hot Flashes presents Toloui's work as a long-term investigation, a negotiation with the potential for desire, power, and role reversal with which our gazes are loaded.

This exhibition takes place within the framework of the PhotoSaintGermain festival. Organized in the heart of Paris, in the iconic Saint‐Germain‐des‐Prés neighborhood, PhotoSaintGermain is an annual festival dedicated to promoting photographic creation.

PhotoSaintGermain offers a free and freely accessible exhibition tour across a selection of museums, cultural centers, galleries, and bookstores on the Left Bank. This tour highlights a sharp and eclectic program designed by associated galleries, as well as several original exhibitions and novel projects imagined and produced by the festival.