“Cover up that bosom, which I can’t bear to look at” Tartuffe, Molière (1669).

 

Prostitution is now massively present in the forests close to the suburbs around Paris. This started in 2003, with the first law that prohibit soliciting in the streets.

The law was amended in 2016 to penalise the client.

 

To indicate their presence, male, female, transvestites and transgender prostitutes hang plastic bags in trees – their TOTEMS.

 

   • Most of them come from Eastern countries, South America or Africa but also from the Parisian sidewalks

   • They work in miserable conditions, reminiscent of the Dark Ages.

   • They are here whatever the weather conditions: wind, rain, snow, cold

   • They are here every day including Sunday, even when families are out and about with their young children, running the risk to come across them as they are having sex with a customer

   • Unknowingly, they are showing real creativity in their use of plastic, sometime creating abstract art works.

 

The TOTEM series could be an ode to plastic bags, as an ode generally expresses sadness, talking about lost love or despair as one is confronted with the world’s hopelessness.

The TOTEM series is above all an homage to these people reduced to prostitution to make ends meet, for themselves or their children.

 

Some comments by girls :

 

Grace :

"When I leave home in the morning, I tell my children I am off to do some house cleaning jobs."

 

Elisabette :

"I can’t leave anything in the evening; it will be ripped during the night. Once I found gutted rats in my hut. Shit everywhere. That must turn them on."

 

Jeanette :

“Clients are very violent. Now, I only take on the elderly.”

 

Sarah :

“There’s no one today. Don’t know where they’ve gone, the punters. Mind you, with all this rain…”

 

Brigitte.

“You can take a picture. Whatever, as long as my mug (=face) doesn’t show.”