Photography: Christopher Sturman looks at NYC strip clubs with the lights on

Of all the places to examine in the harsh light of day, a strip club is probably right up there with public toilets and a therapist’s office for the bounty of horrors it holds. By night it’s a sensuous boudoir teeming with ample-bosomed ladies, and sophisticated gents with pockets full of dollar bills just begging to be shoved into knickers. By day it transforms into a filthy cesspit stinking of the stale sweat and regret and furnished with a collection of tired, sambuca-stained velveteen sofas (at least you hope that that’s a puddle of booze you’re squelching in).

Sad, right? Christopher Sturman has done a fine job of documenting these grimy graveyards of despair and debauchery in his series NYC Strip, which looks objectively at strip clubs with the lights on. The photographs are fascinatingly grubby, and taken with not a drop of squeamishness. Too much for a Monday morning? Sorry.