[none]

[Robert Appleby and Sue Darlow <laintal@tin.it>]

>>>>>
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 20:42:30 EDT
From: ARTHURWG@aol.com
Subject: Re: [Leica] Photo Impact
Message-ID: <38.7d4b840.268aa3f6@aol.com>
References: 

Rob:  I met a young photography student at ICP last year who did a wonderful 
photo essay on prostitution by profiling one such woman she managed to 
befriend.  The color sequence examined every aspect of her (the prostitute's) 
life, her paying customers and her friends. She was kinda a high-class call 
girl, not a street walker so I guess it was easier in that sense. But the 
essay was really sensational. BTW,  on my last trip two trips to Italy I was 
surprised to see so few street walkers, as compared to the situation in the 
late 1960s. Arthur
<<<<<<

Well, I don't know where you were, but here its crawling with eastern
European and nigerian girls. The nigerians - who this story was about -
cost $15 a shot and work in particular areas (industrial estates, along
main out-of-town roads) in their - literally - hundreds. It's a booming
business, although Modena is no longer so hot as it was. Since most of them
are underage (13 to 17 years old) and are effectively slaves, controlled by
the new boys in town, the Albanians, who are extremely violent, there was
no way I could befriend them. Especially as I had only a couple of weeks to
research and shoot the story. It was a stressful and depressing thing to
have to do.
The commissioning magazine had asked me to do exactly what you describe,
meet a couple of girls, photograph them on and off the job, etc. But no-one
was playing. Nice girls, just no pictures. They are afraid of being - as
happened to one young girl who had got pregnant - disembowelled or
otherwise beaten to death. The Albanians don't mess around.
Obviously independent prostitutes are a different proposition altogether.
And in that case, the whole story is right there, in the girl herself and
her clients. In this case the story was about slavery and the traffic in
human beings, and the pictures just didn't - and couldn't, in my opinion -
tell it. You'd have to spend years and risk your life to do it.
One reason I respect anyone who takes the risks N and McC do to get the
pictures.
Rob.
Robert Appleby and Sue Darlow
Via Bellentani 36
41100 Modena
Italy
Tel/fax [39] 059 303436