Elizabeth Waterman: Candyland

Elizabeth Waterman

Hardcover | 20.96 x 1.6 x 26.99 cm | 128 pp

Unicorn Press | 2024 | 9781916846425

Elizabeth Waterman is an American photographer exploring female sexuality, sex work and obsessions through portraits of performance artists. Waterman’s style has been described as both transcendent and transformative.

“Goddesses of sex and light, fully owning their own bodies and sexuality with innate empowerment.” This is how photographer Elizabeth Waterman describes the female adult entertainers featured in Candyland, a series of colourful and vibrant portraits designed to capture the unique personalities of the subjects.

The actresses were very much a part of the creative process, adding their own ideas to create playful images celebrating their individual beauty and charisma. Waterman’s previous book, Moneygame, an acclaimed photographic depiction of the world of strip clubs across the USA, inspired her to invite some of America’s leading porn stars to take part in a project which reflects them through a female lens, shot against vibrant, sunlit Southern Californian settings. “I liked showing them in deliciousness, excess, and fun and glory,” said Waterman. “The porn stars that I photographed were happy to be doing what they were doing, they loved having sex and they were good at it.”