Top Industry Photographer Ellen Stagg Spotlighted in New Hustler Profile

Story: Ralph Greco, Jr.

All eyes are on Ellen Stagg in the November issue of Hustler, as the illustrious erotic photographer is profiled in a new interview, “Stagg Party”, about her well-heeled career, celebrity collaborations and the release of her latest incredible body of work, Free to Be Naked.

Stagg tells writer John Blaylock that her third hardbound photo gallery “is pretty much all my work from the past four years. It’s mostly stuff that I was shooting for HUSTLER, where I would do two sets and they would take one. But a lot of what you see I shot for my site, StaggStreet.com, as trade with my models.

Asked what Free to Be Naked says about sex and sexuality in 2023, Stagg says “women posing naked, owning their own sexuality and having agency over their own body, might be the most punk rock thing that we can do today, especially in this kind of political climate.

“Recently, in the last ten years or so, there’s been this visible pivot where people are really starting to take sex work seriously and respect sex workers. I think says a lot, particularly at a time when we’re still seeing book burnings in the US. Why can’t we just be naked and in our own skin?”

Stagg also talks about her late father’s unconditional support (“he put me through art school, even took me to California to look at a bunch of schools there… I dedicate everything to him”), turning a negative into a positive (“I think my dyslexia is where I got my work ethic from; I always had to work harder to catch up with everybody”) and her shift from commercial photography to erotica (“I’ve been a pervert since the beginning; it was just a question of finding the right kind of perverts to collaborate with”).

As for the secret to her success? “I try to make my models feel as comfortable as possible to get all that awesomeness out of them… all I can say is that I treat models the way I would want to be treated. I believe in living by the Golden Rule, you know?”

To read Ellen Stagg’s feature interview in full, visit HustlerMagazine.com.

Free to Be Naked from Goliath Publishing includes 255 eye-popping pages of the industry’s most breathtaking models and performers, and fans can order a hardcover copy via ShopEllenStagg.com and StaggStreet.com/shop for personally-signed copies from the artist herself.

Learn more about Ellen Stagg at TheStaggParty.com, StaggStreet.com and Linktr.ee/ellenstagg.

Ellen Stagg is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning photographer with 20+ years of experience in commercial work in advertising, fashion, and portraiture, and her client list includes a high-profile range of popular magazines, look books, stock photography and celebrities. She holds a BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, which she attended after moving from Connecticut in 1996.

Stagg has showcased her art in galleries around the world, published the books Dirty Girls Having Fun , More Dirty Girls Having Fun,  Dirty Collection, with Free to Be Naked set for release November 2023 – and directed the revelatory YouTube series Red Umbrella Talk with collaborator/ co-producer/host Laura Desirée, expanding her artistic reach even further into new mediums.

Ralph Greco, Jr. is the devilishly clever nom de plume of professional writer/musician Ralph Greco who lives in the wilds of suburban New Jersey. He is also a podcast co-host, but as everyone has a podcast these days, this fact is of very little consequence.Ralph can be reached by writing ralphiedawriter@gmail.com