Sex Workers Project/HuntsPoint
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PhotographerTiana Markova-Gold, United States
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Website
Sex Workers Project/Hunts Point
These photographs are part of an on-going documentary project about the lives of sex workers in New York City.
In March 2007 I began photographing Nina, a street-based sex worker in the Hunts Point area of the South Bronx. Over the next few months I spent many days and nights with Nina, photographing her in her home and in the streets where she works. During this time I met numerous other women working in the streets of Hunts Point, including Pat and Babygirl, whose stories have also become part of this project.
As I have continued to work consistently with the same women over time it has become increasingly clear to me how vulnerable they are to abuse and how few resources are available to them. Almost all of the women I have met working in the streets of the South Bronx have been in and out of jail numerous times. Many face problems of drug dependency, serious health issues, and are homeless or living in very unstable housing situations. Most have expressed the feeling that what they do is honest work, which they do because they feel they have few other viable options. It is also clear to me that these women are making a choice to live and work in the streets. As hard as their day to day life can be, they maintain a tremendous amount of autonomy: they work for themselves, they make their own hours, they do what they want to do when they want to do it.
In documenting these women?s lives I hope to counter the de-humanizing imagery of sex workers that is so prevalent in mainstream media by challenging the viewer to really look at who these women are and what their lives are like. My goal is not to provide answers but rather to pose questions and provoke dialogue. As a former sex worker and a female photographer I am able to relate to my subjects and create images from a perspective that transcends the voyeuristic and detached view from which sex workers are so often seen. I strive to portray them honestly and with integrity; to reveal them as individuals whose lives are more complex than the simple stereotypes we are all too familiar with.
These photographs were made with 35mm color film and printed 16x20 as Cibachrome prints.
Tiana Markova-Gold is a Brooklyn-based documentary photographer. She graduated from the full-time Photojournalism Program at the International Center of Photography in 2007 where she was awarded a New York Times Scholarship and an ICP Directors Fund Scholarship. She has traveled extensively through the Caribbean, Central America, South and Southeast Asia and the Middle East. In 2004 she spent three months in Haiti documenting Haitian life and culture during the tumultuous time leading up to and following Jean-Bertrand Aristide?s departure. Her work portraying the Haitian people continued in the summer of 2004 in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan where she shot stills in conjunction with a documentary film project tracing the roots of the Middle Eastern community in Haiti. During the summer of 2005 she spent four weeks in West Africa working on a story about literacy and culture in the Tuareg community of northern Niger.
Since the spring of 2007, Tiana has been working on a long-term project about the lives of sex workers in New York City. Her photographs of sex workers have been recognized in several photography awards contests including New York Photo Awards 2008, PDN Photo Annual 2008, American Photography 24 and Prix de la Photographie 2008.
Tiana continues to travel and work on social documentary projects exploring ways of using photography as a tool for engaging with people, creating forums for dialogue, increasing awareness, and helping facilitate change. She is very interested in collaborating with organizations working to provide services and resources as a way of focusing not just on the problems, but on potential and sustainable solutions.
