By Rebecca Robinson
Contributing Writer
Beer bottles reflecting the sunlight off a bar window. A pair of fixed-gear bikes, chained together to a rack, frayed tape on the handlebars. An old diesel Mercedes, parked in a pile of shriveled fallen leaves. A curvaceous woman in a sheer dress, clutching a pole onstage as she throws her head back.
It may seem easy to pinpoint which one of these images doesn’t belong in a thematic photo exhibit. But the pole dancer and the frayed-tape fixies belong together: They are part of a photography project depicting the everyday reality of the women who created the images. The identity of the women behind the cameras is as noteworthy as the photos they take: all 11 photographers are sex workers, and their photos are part of the Visions and Voices Photovoice Project.
Each woman was given a basic 35 mm manual camera and 36 exposures of black-and-white film. Their only instructions: to document their everyday lives and aspirations.
Crystal Tenty, an outreach worker with the Portland Women’s Crisis Line and coordinator of the Sex Worker Outreach Coalition (SWOC), initiated the community-based participatory project with fellow SWOC advocate Moshoula Capous Desyllas both as a way of assessing female sex workers’ needs and aspirations and a reaction to her discouragement with last fall’s community “Town Halls” about increased prostitution on 82nd Avenue.
“Everyone was involved in the conversation except sex workers,” Tenty says. “Sex workers themselves were mostly excluded, and some of them didn’t feel safe coming to community forums. (This project) is a way for us to say, number one, that the issues are more complicated than people think they are, and number two, here’s what the workers themselves are saying. It’s a way to promote critical dialogue in the community.”
The project is not solely about sparking policy debates, however.
“It’s also giving (the women) a space to talk about their lives, their aspirations,” Tenty says.
“In July it’ll be three years,” says the woman who goes by the stage name Lady Purfection about her time in the sex industry.
“When I first got into the industry, it’s because I got in trouble with the law. I was dating someone who was all bad for me, and he committed a robbery and blamed everything on me. I went to jail for a crime I did not commit. When I got out, even though I had everything to prove my innocence, there was no way I could get a straight job with a felony on my record.
“So, right after the Fourth of July (2006), I started dancing,” Lady Purfection says.
She tried to look for other work, but then one night in December she “was approached by a guy in a club who wanted to take me home. At first I was kinda freaked out, but at the end of the night I’d made $1,100, and I thought, I’m staying in this industry.”
Lady Purfection has been engaged since last June, and she and her fiancée are working toward moving into a new place. “Which means I’ll also be escorting soon,” Lady says, laughing. “I do have my good days dancing where I can make a good $600, but because of the economy people are becoming cheaper and cheaper.”
Lady met Tenty at a Volunteers of America (VOA) workshop. At the time, Lady was at VOA as part of a treatment program and support group for sex workers. Lady said she was mostly drawn to the project’s potential for artistic expression.
“I maintain my sanity through my art,” says Lady. “Whether it’s through poetry or writing a song with my cousin, as long as I’m doing something where I’m expressing myself, I’m happy.”
For Lady, the project provided an opportunity to discover new meaning in her everyday life.
“There’s a shot I took of my dog, sitting in a back seat of a car, right next to my dance bag,” says Lady. “For me, it represents that my dog doesn’t judge me; my dog doesn’t disown me the second I step out of the house to go to work.”
Jasmine, a 31-year-old former sex worker, aspiring photographer and Visions and Voices artist, ran away from home at 16 and has spent most of her life on the streets ever since.
“I’ve done it on and off,” says Jasmine of her experience working in the sex industry, occasionally in different states, always for the money. “There was a period of time, from 25 to 27 years old, where I worked through an escort agency. I’ve turned tricks, and been around the whole stripper culture. I have a lot of history with it.”
She says participating in Visions and Voices gave her the opportunity to explore her everyday surroundings in a more focused and creative way.
“I took lots of architectural photos and pictures of the sky,” says Jasmine, adding, “I just took pictures of what I thought was beautiful.”
It also helped her realize who she did and didn’t want to be.
“For the ‘needs and wants’ part [of the project], I took a picture of me waking up in my camp with a [heroin] needle in my mouth,” Jasmine says. “The needle between my teeth, it was almost like a frustration thing. It was reflecting, ‘I have to do this before I can even get up in the morning.’”
Since then, Jasmine has been working to kick her addiction, get off the streets, and go back to school – for photography.
"Ever since I was a little girl I wanted to be a photographer for National Geographic,” Jasmine says, excitement entering her voice. “I want to get into nature photography.” Achieving her aspirations, however, will require a level of stability Jasmine has never had. But she is seeking systemic support that can help her work toward building the life she wants.
“I’m wrestling with a heroin addiction, but I’m gettin’ clean through CEP,” says Jasmine. CEP, or the Community Engagement Program, is run through Central City Concern and helps chronically homeless individuals exit street life and find housing.
“I’m waiting on a housing voucher, and for now I’m living in a hotel for $25 a night,” Jasmine says. “But I’m almost 32, and I’m tired of it, I want to do something with myself. I don’t want to end up dead under a bridge like one of my friends.”
“It felt kind of crazy and fun,” says a woman, nameless by request, about her three years as a stripper, with “some prodomme [dominatrix] work” thrown in every now and then. A student in her last year of college, the woman says that she initially got into the sex industry because “it was the highest-paying option at the time, and worked well with my schedule as a student.” She was also drawn to the potential for creative expression she couldn’t find in her “straight” job.
“I was drawn to it for a number of reasons, especially the dancing,” she says. It’s a job that, unlike Jasmine, she might not have chosen elsewhere.
“If I were in a different city I might be doing different types of work,” she says. “Because of the very particular culture in Portland around strip clubs, and the fact that there’s no strict zoning, it feels a lot safer and easier in a lot of ways.”
The woman, who is a member of Sex Worker Outreach Coalition, says Tenty encouraged her to get involved with Voices and Visions. She saw it as an opportunity to build on SWOC goals.
“I think that we [at SWOC] had all been trying to figure out a way to bring a lot of diverse people, interests, and voices together in an info-sharing context,” she says. While there were challenges at every turn – the main one being the difficulty of trying to find times and places where all the women could meet as a group for photo trainings – the woman felt it was well worth the effort.
“The few sessions that we did as a group, we came together beautifully and professionally,” she says.
The Visions and Voices photographs were first shown at Chaos Café and Parlor on Southeast Powell Street. At the Dec. 19 opening, many of the artists were present to talk about their work with those in attendance.
“This guy walked up to me and talked to me about my photos,” Lady says. “I told him about them, because if I’m doing this project, I clearly have nothing to hide.
“For all of those people to come to the art show, talking, dancing, buying postcards [of our photos], that was cool for me,” Lady adds. The proceeds raised from the photographs go toward supporting the womens’ continued artistic ventures – not their continued sex work.
“I talked to a psychologist who expressed a lot of interest about my photos and wanted to know about my life, so I was honest with her,” says Jasmine. “There was no judgment.”
“I was expecting there to be people who wouldn’t be appreciative of the artwork,” says Lady, “but there weren’t.”
The accepting atmosphere at the Visions and Voices opening was a welcome exception to the overwhelming disapproval and misunderstanding the women say they face every day.
“The worst stereotype we [sex workers] face is that we all have pimps, and we’re all drug-addicted, and we all have a million kids,” says Lady. “I’m 23 years old, and I don’t have any kids. I don’t have a pimp; I have a fiancée. We get a lot of stigma from people…”
“People think that these women ‘take the easy way out,’ won’t get a ‘real’ job,” Jasmine says. “But you don’t know how much self-control it takes for a woman to get into a car with a strange man and put her mouth on his body and let him touch her and not want to kill him.
“It’s not always that skin-crawling,” Jasmine adds. “A lot of guys are real gentlemen who just want female companionship. …But it’s not always like that.”
The student stripper, in contrast, sees her work as enjoyable and empowering – “I love the dancing,” she says – and sounds disappointed that she will have to quit working at clubs in order to focus her energy on finishing school. She and Jasmine represent opposite ends of the sex industry spectrum: while both got into the work for the money, one has used her earnings to pay for higher education, and the other has used hers for a high. One sees sex work as safe, easy money; the other sees it as the end of the line. As Jasmine puts it, “You have no choice; you have to make that money.”
Lady’s stance is quite different.
“I chose this work,” Lady says, almost defiantly. “I decided to be a stripper, I decided to work with an escort agency. I need the money, but … dancing is my life, my world.”
These women are a study in contrasts, and a testament to the impossibility of generalizing sex industry workers and their needs and aspirations. Which is why, according to all involved, Visions and Voices is so necessary: it provides an opportunity for sex workers to express their humanity – with which anyone can identify – while at the same time raising awareness and sparking conversation about the sex industry, common misperceptions about those in it, and potential policy changes to improve it.
“I just hope that people walked away with an even more open mind than they had before,” Lady says of the opening.
Desyllas, the project co-coordinator, says, “I truly hope this project will bring about awareness within the community and make a difference in the lives of those working in the sex industry.”
Jasmine, for her part, thinks one glance at the photographs is worth more than any community conversation.
As she puts it, “You have to look at someone as human once you’ve seen a piece of art they created.”
Visions and Voices is currently on display at the PCC Sylvania Library, 12000 SW 49th Ave., Portland. For more information, visit http://www.myspace.com/sexworkartasactivism.