‘Whoretographer’ Poppy Pray snaps the golden years of the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club

Focusing on queer sex workers in the East End, Poppy Pray explores the smoke, sweat, glitter and glamour of the legendary Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club

Amid the neon lights, sticky floors and tangled bodies of the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club (BGWMC), Poppy Pray’s camera shutter clicks away, the flash quickly absorbed into the chaos of the night.

Pray, who uses she/they pronouns, is known as the ‘Whoretographer’ because she focuses on documenting queer sex workers in East London.

Formerly a functional working men’s club, the BGWMC has been an alternative nightlife venue since the early 2000s. It’s known for experimental and transgressive programming, platforming marginalised groups who often weren’t given a chance anywhere else.

Pray moved to Bethnal Green from Midwestern America in 2021, finding solace in East London’s queer and ‘seedy’ vibe, ‘the antithesis of everything rural America represents, similarly to how I feel about myself,’ Pray said.

After finding bar work at the BGWMC, Pray was entranced by the vibe and performers at the club, especially taking inspiration from the sex-worker-run cabaret ‘Sexquisite.’ Gradually, she began to chat more with performers backstage and worked up the courage to ask permission to photograph the shows.

Throughout the club’s ‘golden years,’ (2021-2024) Pray photographed the BGWMC extensively, spooling out endless reels of film and capturing the glamour with the grime. They’ve captured legendary and offbeat events like The RR Club, Pussy Liquor, Silly Bitch Disco, UOKHUN, and Sexquisite.

‘It’s kitsch, it’s glamour, it’s everything a young artist could feast upon. In a world with increasing amounts of violence towards women and trans people, I felt safe inside these glittering four walls,’ Pray said.

Pray spent the next several years writing about their work during the day, part of a degree on photographing queer sex workers in East London and the performance of gender under capitalism. By night, they continued taking photos into the wee hours of the morning, completely consumed by the work.

‘Sex workers are the ultimate threat to the patriarchy, taking tired tropes of how women should behave or look and selling them back for profit – it’s a parody of femininity. BGWMC is the same parody of glitz. It’s almost perfect but there’s some dirty corners and the tinsel is falling just a little bit,’ Pray said.

Pray’s catalogue of photography is extensive, and their practice is regularly described as compulsive: ‘If I was a religious person it could only be compared to a call from God.’ They aren’t picky about their camera but prefer 35mm film photography for its ‘alluring and soft’ quality, which they said feels less invasive to subjects.

The BGWMC was shut down as a venue this summer after its current owners (who do not run the programming) decided to sell the building. Forced to take a break from photography, Pray has had a chance to run through her extensive catalogue, creating retrospectives of her work like the one you see today.

Most recently, Tower Hamlets Council declared the BGWMC an asset of community value, meaning that the local community will have a right to bid if it’s up for sale. To stay up to date with the campaign to save the club you can follow them on Instagram @savebgwmc

If you liked this read Inside a night at Sexquisite, a cabaret for and by sex workers