Choose or Lose

• Choose or Lose

Catalan Txema Salvans (Txema Salvans) eighth year of photographing prostitutes, who stand on the edges of the secondary Spanish roads.

Stanley recorded Volukau-Vanambva. Text reprinted from The Great Leap Sideways.

I traveled around the country with a variety of photo projects and often met girls who are sitting along the road. This prostitute. But they do not work in the cities, not in the red-light districts, as has happened at all times, and at the edge of the earth - on the country road on which people go round the large toll roads.

Having decided to make this a series, at first I was going to tell them what I want, maybe even offer money. I am sure that if the offer of 50 euros and promise that the photograph will not be able to see the person, any consent. But it would make a statement. I try to act as a biologist who does not interfere in the environment of the object of his observation. And then I decided to be masked. Animals for this usually merge with the environment in which live. But there are also those that mimic a poisonous animal. For example, no one hunts poisonous coral snakes. They are identified by the yellow and black rings. And there are non-poisonous snakes, living with them in the same habitat, they mimic the color of the coral snake. I thought that a lot of working on the road in the area of prostitution. I bought a helmet, vest and yellow geodesic tripod. I attached a bracket to a tripod, to mount a large-format camera. I approached the girls and talk to this equipment, "Listen, I'll stay here a bit close to the machine." First I caught a moment when the girl pulls machine. But then I realized that it is much more interesting to shoot very expectation, in which they spend 99% of their time. When they are not busy with anything. I tried to take pictures of women do not, and their surrounding context - a person can be seen in the six or seven pictures of hundreds. I was not interested in portraits and landscape.

Landscape - because I see no tragedy in the phenomenon, and in the circumstances in which they operate. In some cases, prostitution allows people to make money by implementing a strategic life plan. For example, a woman might say, "I'm a prostitute under 35 years old, earn money, and then open a business - a bar, a restaurant, buy land or second floor of the house ..." These girls are taking to 20 euros for a blow - that you understand it actually not so bad. But I assure you, there is no strategic plan they have. They do not have anything. There with them anything can happen - they are killed, beaten, some customers leave without paying. Just because a man is always physically stronger.

They come from Romania, Russia, Latin America or Africa, and do not think that they are all old or scary - there are also quite a girl, who previously had never traveled out of their villages. But they can not rent an apartment in the city, because they have no documents. Almost all of them are in the hands of the mafia, or pimps. And in this space, they are totally unprotected.