The Infamous Spaghetti Sisters are acrobatic drag queens who split apples with their bare hands

“I met them when they split an apple at my house with their bare hands,” photographer Maite De Orbe laughs, calling in from their studio in Tottenham.

They’re referring to the first time they met Shigella Problem, an acrobat, drag queen and one half of The Infamous Spaghetti Sisters in 2022. At the time, Maite was living in a ​“big, queer house” in East London that saw its fair share of drag queens and performers walk through its doors – Shigella being one of them.

​“When I moved in, the house was full of stuff [these] drag queens had left behind, like trophies from drag performance competitions,” Maite says. Fitting, then, that Shigella and Maite, a performer themself, and would immediately bond.

Spanish-born photographer Maite was into skating growing up, before pursuing ballet and contemporary dance. When they moved to London in 2017, they became part of the city’s pole-dancing, go-go and stripping scenes. ​“I started rediscovering my identity [and found] that what I was really drawn to was what I also wanted to photograph.” Since then, Maite has made photography their full-time gig.

“I don’t necessarily work with people that I don’t know or that I can’t go back and ask questions to,” they say of a work that is based on trust and friendship. ​“I work with a lot of drag queens, sex workers and DJs – the people who are out there creating experiences for everyone else.”

Much of their work is centred around the concept of showtime – the lights! camera! action! of performance. Maite says that as a photographer who moonlights as a performer themself, they’re afforded a unique perspective when it comes to shooting fellow dancers. ​“You understand much more about how they’d want to be represented [as well as] what feels vulnerable and what doesn’t.”

Back when Maite and Shigella first met, the photographer had just come across some Japanese porn from the sixties. ​“I was looking through different photography books at Climax Books and I found this beautiful image of a naked woman with her legs open, but she was also flying up in the air, someone was holding her. I just loved that idea of combining different practices [the acrobatic and the erotic].”

Maite showed Shigella the image and she loved it so much that she immediately found another person to come on board: Miss Lucinda B. Hind, a fellow acrobat and drag queen based in London. Soon, the pair were at Maite’s studio, playing opera and hanging off ceilings in the lift.

​“As soon as they arrived they were climbing everything they could climb. Then word got around that there were two drag queens in the building so everyone was trying to find us!” Maite says. Though the two typically perform separately, things went so well on set that they began to christen themselves as ​“The Infamous Spaghetti Sisters” – the name for the project was born.

Now, Maite’s self-published a book of the images they took that day. Bound in a red fabric cover and held together with black ribbon, The Infamous Spaghetti Sisters stands at 42cm tall, blurring the lines between book and object. ​“I wanted to make it extremely big so it’s something that you can’t hide in your living room,” Maite explains. ​“There had to be an element that [felt] really exaggerated and really camp.”

When we speak, the day after the US election, Maite knows there’s still plenty of space for joy. ​“One of the things that I really adore about the queer community is that resilience and [willingness to] keep on doing stuff. To keep putting ourselves on a stage and making fun of ourselves. There’s a lot of suffering out there, [but] my work tries to focus on the joyful aspect of expressing that resilience. That is actually what makes you go into a performance and feel changed after you leave.”

The Infamous Spaghetti Sisters book launch will take place 19 November at Reference Point, London.