Display helps public understand sex workers

Display helps public understand sex workers

By Ati Nurbaiti

JAKARTA (JP): A pair of worn out shoes is the focus of a black
and white snapshot.

Anna, the photographer, says: "Maybe some day I will end up
like these shoes. As long as I am fresh I am used. When I am ill
I will be thrown out. That hurts."

Her friend, whose works are also on display at Ancol's
Dreamland, giggles at a picture of a man looking at the camera in
a room in a red-light district.

"What if his wife finds out?" she said.

Many untitled photographs are on display until Wednesday at
Dreamland's Art Market Gallery, North Jakarta.

There are about 90 pictures on display which are intriguing
because many relate to HIV/AIDS and also because of the 15
photographers whose works are displayed.

Visitors were taken aback to find the photographers were all
sex workers, who used pocket cameras worth about Rp 30,000. One
of the brands is not "Canon" but "Cannon," purchased at a
wholesaler.

On the display's first day (Saturday), there was an air of
hesitance as everyone avoided the well-known phrase "Kramat
Tunggak." The site is officially a rehabilitation center for
prostitutes in North Jakarta, where the women work and live.

"I did get the impression that many of the pictures were taken
in the north," said Warisman, a visitor to the display organized
by the Kusuma Buana Foundation, a non-governmental organization
focusing on health and HIV/AIDS, among others.

"We are from KT," one of the women told an audience in one of
the event's talks.

"They are members of Bandungwangi, a group of...er..sex
workers," one organizer said.

The display and discussions are called "Reason, sense and
emotion: AIDS in a million black and whites."

The event is the result of three months of photography by sex
workers and their discussions with volunteers including stage
actress Baby Jim Aditya and photographer Arief B. Laksono.

Some visitors said they did not see the connection of the
pictures to the event's theme. What does a cat watching over a
pile of fish have to do with AIDS?

But organizers said the feelings which come up in many of the
photographs did relate to the AIDS virus: hope, fear, loneliness,
love and anger.

Kusuma Buana has recruited many sex workers to educate their
friends and clients about safe sex. But the women said this was
difficult.

Looking at the portraits, and the poems scrawled in child-like
handwriting with spelling mistakes, it seems AIDS adds to the
fear of isolation which is already strong among sex workers.

A picture of empty cribs seems to tell of an unfulfilled wish
to raise one's own, instead of having to place the baby in an
orphanage. Even without the specter of a AIDS, such a wish seems
far from possible for prostitutes.

Visitors also get a glimpse of family life. An old squatting
woman who has a surprised look as the camera catches her yawning,
is a member of one of the sex workers' families.

Another visitor said, "I didn't know what this was about. As I
walked past the pictures I could see it was about the 'dark
life', and gradually the feelings of the women. It's true,
they're not the only ones to blame for what they do."

He pointed to a photograph, one of several which has been
sold, of a couple sitting close together facing the sea.

"A hope to live like this," says the picture's caption.

The photographs can stimulate women and men to accept
responsibility for "careless actions which can lead to AIDS."

For now, the 15 women are proud they have made it to the
display, out of the 20 women who started. Those who dropped out
are scared of publicity, while those who persisted are, quite
reasonably, cautious.

Just taking pictures and going to places with friends was fun,
and Anna speaks for her colleagues in conveying gratitude:

"We enjoyed going out," she said. "I have stayed in KT for
more than two years, but I only got to know Ancol (Dreamland)
after I joined these activities."

"It is usually difficult for us to go out, because we feel
dirty and it's like people are avoiding us."

The black and white photographs compel visitors to look, and
observe.