Prostitution Notes, 1974

Suzanne Lacy combines performance, first-person narrative, and research in Prostitution Notes, a suite of ten works on paper that comprise a quasi-sociological exploration of the lives of sex workers, whom Lacy describes as “powerful icons” for her gender. Over the course of several months, Lacy forged relationships with individuals of different genders in LA and San Francisco engaged in sex work—both prostitutes and clients. She documented their intricate dynamics, tracing the political and economic realities, unique
social codes, and linguistic conventions of “the life” through maps, diagrams, text passages, transcripts of conversations, and collaged elements. In the process, she found echoes of her subjects’ experiences in her own life. Like many feminist artists, Lacy was intent on analyzing the social forces and
power dynamics that structure sexual exchange and labor and on making visible the real, day-to-day life of a mythologized, demonized, “otherized” archetype of femininity.