by SARAH MUSGRAVE

The women in Mia Donovan's photographs are clearly used to putting it out there - all of it. The erotic dancers, internet chat girls and porn stars she snapped for her latest series are all gainfully employed in Montreal's adult entertainment industry.

And it's precisely their work personas that Donovan is after in Stripped. Part documentary, part portraiture, the prints attempt to capture the physical and psychological affectations these women don for their jobs - something the 28-year-old artist is familiar with, having worked in clubs for several years.

"These are people I know, they're cool and down-to-earth girls, who didn't think twice about it. They were easy models, they're used to being in the spotlight," Donovan says. "It was a really positive project, an affirmation of girls in the industry."

The exhibition steers clear of typical behind-the-scenes imagery: no pseudo-candid, faux-intime stills snapped in the club dressing room or strippers at home, hanging with their kids and leading we're-people-too lives.

"People are used to work about the sex industry being more political, or having an agenda. But I'm not even thinking about any stigma, or controversy, about what they do for work. I just see them as women who put a lot into being sexy," she muses. "A lot of art projects will be trying to demystify it, give an explanation for why they do what they do, but I don't want to go there at all."

Stripped is part of an ongoing project started back in the late '90s, when Donovan began interviewing strippers who'd been busted for contact dancing. Since then, the Concordia Fine Arts graduate's work has largely focused on women.

The lifesize photos in her second solo show, opening this month at Observatoire 4, peel away some layers while making us aware of others. Details surface in the untouched snaps - stretch marks, scabby knees, boob jobs - and so do the posturings, poses and projections behind the sexual self. The effect is both strangely personal and impersonal, staged and natural at the same time. "I'm not manipulating or Photoshopping the images, but I am using studio lights, and when you're shooting with a light kit and a large-format camera, it's impossible not to be aware of the shoot," Donovan explains.

Some of the images, such as local Web cam cuties frolicking against a colourful backdrop, look elaborately directed. Ironically, Donovan says, this was one of the least posed shots. Then there's Sabrina Fisicaro (aka Lexei Bacci) in the back of a limo, the enormously-endowed porn star who recently published her bare-all story, La Femme aux cent prénoms. Misty, a six-foot stripper who one night sent a club waitress to the hospital when she accidentally knocked her in the head with her stacked boots while swinging around the pole, has one of the most penetrating presences, all the more so in a school girl uniform.

Donovan says she's interested in the body but also body language that comes across through the camera - something she'll no doubt be observing in viewers when Stripped opens next week.

Stripped opens with a vernissage on Saturday, Jan. 29, 2 p.m., at Observatoire 4, on display through March 19,
with an artist's talk on March 5