Sex workers turn a naked lens on their lives

Menghadang Mentari pun tak Peduli: Cerita tentang perasaan- perasaan oleh Pekerja Seks Komersial (They Do Not Even Care to Face the Sun: A Story About Feelings of Commercial Sex Workers) A photo sketch by Bandungwangi Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, 1997 176 pp

JAKARTA (JP): In the stillness of night, a row of women waits at a drinking den in North Jakarta.

Outside, several men glance around them before entering. They sit down with the women, but there is none of the awkwardness of usual first meetings.

They converse with the intimacy of old friends.

As soon as dangdut music plays, several men move to the dance floor, joined moments later by women. Even the thick haze of cigarette smoke does not spoil their fun.

There is no holds barred, no reason for shyness. Each woman knows her "duty" -- to meet the visitors, keep them company and provide them with the "best" service, whatever that may entail.

This is one of the stories, told in pictures, from this book. Fourteen sex workers took the photos with simple pocket cameras. The book was edited by Yayasan Kusuma Buana in cooperation with the Bandungwangi, a group of sex workers active in the campaign against the spread of HIV, the virus which leads to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

Of course, any discussion on the transmission of HIV should not be limited to general assumptions on the "fate" of sex workers.

It is rather a question of what they think and feel. Are their dreams any different from the rest of us?

In its explicit and clear way, this photojournal answers these inquiries, showing the daily lives of sex workers to keep customers happy, and their desires to have a steady life partner and to share love and have children.

"Oh, God, help this humble servant of yours," writes one of the women. "Find a partner for me so that I can repent. Because I become more and more frightened by AIDS... "

And while the disease remains high on priorities of activists, it may be the case that the public and sex workers are fed up with parroted imposition of information on the dangers and prevention of AIDS/HIV, the same old messages from year to year.

A different strategy and new method are apparently necessary to spread information about dangers of the virus to sex workers and the public.

This book, representing realities without pretensions to anything more, is on target for both groups.

Concerns for photographic technique should be overlooked, or else the desire to read through the book would stop on the first few pages.

The editor for graphs and photos, Kindy Marina, admitted the workers were only skilled to use unsophisticated cameras.

"The important thing is the intention. The important thing is that we want to try," said Darmi, a sex worker and a Bandungwangi member.

The absence of explanatory captions for the photographs is also part of the naked, nonjudgmental view of the workers' lives.

"We do not want you to be influenced by subtitles. We free you from instinctive emotions and responses in order to derive the meaning of each photograph," Marina added.

The book is not merely about how HIV can infect sex workers. It goes further, providing a graphic illustration of how these women pay the price for their lives through social condemnation.

They must bear this ostracism with patience and grudging resignation.

This work, lacking judgments and moralistic attitudes, invites us to take a non-voyeuristic peep into the world of the workers, their customers and their daily lives in a community that is pluralistic in many ways.

Yayasan Kusuma Buana, through Bandungwangi, set out to acquaint us with these realities through photographs. This documentation presented no easy task, even for those of us who are photojournalists.

Lives of sex workers are often considered too distant from the experiences of most of us. Conversely, understandable prejudice of sex workers against prying from the moralistic outside has been another hindrance.

The fact that there is a designated agency handling issues involving sex workers often makes us feel there is no need to become involved in their affairs.

This work is not a standard, carefully ordered photographic essay. Groupings appear arbitrary, but in themselves they provide a powerful overview of the complex social interactions in these communities.

A group of women seated waiting for customers is followed by a photograph of a man peering into the lens. A man guzzles beer in the ensuing photo, which in turn is followed by a view of a child waiting outside.

This nonsequential order is the pattern throughout the book.

Verses accompanying the photographs mostly express pessimism on stark realities of life. A few give thanks for small blessings.

"But I was grateful that in my poverty I could make my family happy," a woman writes. "I was also touched when my mother woke me in the morning to go to the mosque and join the ied prayer."

The book's images whittle away the comfortable distance allowed by dismissing sex workers as a "social" problem, and AIDS as a disease of "them", not "us". It puts a human face on the lives of these women, some of whom are still in their teens.

-- Maria Sandra

The writer is a Jakarta-based freelance journalist.