Diary of a Dancer, Carucci’s second book, portrays her years as a professional Middle Eastern (belly) dancer. Over three years, she photographed her experiences at events throughout New York City and its surrounding areas, capturing the dual lives of a performer—the carefully constructed public persona and the quieter, unguarded moments offstage.

Using a panoramic Russian film camera (HORIZON), this series went in a cinematic direction. Whether backstage applying makeup or engaging with diverse audiences, she navigates themes of identity, self-presentation, and the emotional labor of performance. This series expands her ongoing investigation into the personal as public, and the body as both expressive and vulnerable.

“But this too was not all the attraction of this work for me. What drew me so powerfully to those places would not be sufficiently explained without the rare, strange, skewed, yet penetrating way this work allowed me to peek into other people’s lives. So curiosity and voyeurism have much to do with all this. Perhaps, I should add, there is also the marveling at how natural plain empathy could be, how it can sometimes, if not always, easily extend from curiosity. These occasions were usually happy events, and it is surprisingly simple how, in a 30-minute glimpse – a wedding, a child’s birthday, or a celebration of reunion – emotions are contagious. You actually feel the sheer joys of other people, sometimes even recognize their hidden pains or their bitterness. It is not so much the content of the emotions but the facility of sharing them, however briefly, that endlessly fascinated me.” (From Carucci’s text in Diary of a Dancer)