Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Subrosa and the Cult of Aphrodite

Subrosa and the Cult of Aphrodite

Langer, Jason
Cain, Caleb
Langer, Jason

Hardcover

General PhotographyPhotographers

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 396900246X
ISBN13: 9783969002469
Publisher: Kehrer Verlag
Published: Nov 24 2026
Pages: 144
Weight: 1.75
Height: 0.70 Width: 8.30 Depth: 11.20
Language: English
In Subrosa and the Cult of Aphrodite, photographer Jason Langer turns his lens toward Portland Oregon's (The Rose City), exuberant and eccentric world of night performance, spending five years documenting and interviewing over one hundred performers whose acts blur the lines between disguise and revelation. Langer would venture into the night to make portraits of brave dancers who use their bodies for erotic and political declarations in front of hundreds of hungry eyes, capturing color photographs in the backs of strip clubs and dancers' homes.

Following in the tradition of EJ Bellocq, who made photographs in the brothels of New Orleans' Storyville district in the 1910s, and Susan Meiselas, who documented carnival strippers in the 1970s, Langer worked within the context of Portland's reputation as having the most strip clubs per capita in the United States and Oregon's landmark 1987 Supreme Court case, State v. Henry, which essentially declared nudity an act of free speech.

In Subrosa, Langer is drawn to those who express identity and defiance through movement, costume, and ritual, where drag queens, burlesque dancers, clowns, aerialists, and vaudevillians transform personal histories of pain, liberation, and resilience into art. The work is part collaboration, part confession. Langer's coffee-toned portraits and bourbon-infused, interviews are deeply intimate, empathetic and remain wholly his own. In photographing these creatures of the night, he confronts questions of vulnerability, gender, beauty, and power, revealing a subculture that thrives in secrecy yet longs to be seen. In his latest book, Langer reflects on the tension between individual self-expression and the pursuit of predictability and consistency in fatherhood. Subrosa is both a document and a mirror--an ode to those who, while still managing to pay the rent, dare to live, love, and perform provocatively under the rose.

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