Lily-Rose Butterfield fell camera-first into an East London brothel during their second week of university, a serendipitous moment that unveiled the purpose of their practice and foreshadowed their future career as a photographic researcher.

After moving to London in 2021 to pursue their undergraduate, Butterfield has spent the time since slinking around strip clubs, dungeons, rehabilitation homes, family estates, brothels, Victorian hospitals, anywhere they can get away with. Feeling compelled to use the photographic medium to advocate for the recognition of sex worker’s labour rights and the full decriminalisation of sex work, predominantly capturing strippers and escorts, who Butterfield works alongside and collaboratively with out of an urge to be heard and seen in a vortex of censorship and erasure. This compulsion to document was fuelled by the indifference and demonization of sex workers prevalent in academia and broader patriarchal society.

Through their camera lens and writings, Butterfield seeks to elevate their subjects from the margins to the archives, ensuring that our stories are preserved for posterity. Butterfield's work has been archived in Bishopgate Institute UK Leather and Fetish Archive, invited to exhibit with Saatchi Arts The Other Art Fair alongside East London Stripper Collective, shortlisted for a Victoria & Albert Museum upcoming exhibition, and is being currently exhibited at The Museum of Sex Objects.