Closer to Heaven

Documentary photography is a passport to different worlds. I have been documenting the lives of working women in the western suburbs of Adelaide. The women are street walkers to support their heroin addictions. There is no set up involved, I have simply documented what they do, as they do it. I am fascinated with the worlds of people who live an unconventional or taboo lifestyle. I aim to provide an insight into a world one would normally not get the chance to see. It is my desire to experience and understand things I don't know which inspires my work.

Everyone knows where the working girls are found in Adelaide's Western Suburbs. On Hanson and Grand Junction road, or the near by truck stops. They emerge at twilight and walk the main roads until the early hours of the morning. You can easily spot them. Not so much by their appearance. They don't wear the short skirts, thigh high boots and the red lips that we have learnt from movies and media to associate with prostitutes. You spot them because of their stare. The stare that they give cars as they drive past them. Intense, desperate and hungry.
 
From a distance they may look like one of us but as you get closer you start to notice the difference. Their skin is sallow and pitted with the marks of obsessive picking and scratching, their hands are swollen, red, bruised, and scarred. Perhaps self-defence wounds, or perhaps from the needles hitting the nerves between their fingers. Their eyes are dull and they are thin. These are not some idealised construct of the seductive temptress. These are desperate women.    
 
My fascination with these women stems from years of driving past them on route to work in the early hours of the morning. I would see them standing and staring and willing cars to stop. Occasionally one would pull over and they would slip into the passenger seat quickly and naturally. I had so many questions. When I eventually left the job that lead me to drive through that area I started detouring purposely to watch these women. They were fascinating. They were living a life so unlike my own. So taboo. So dangerous.
 
This enormous curiosity was what lead me to start documenting their daily lives. There is not set up involved. I have simply documented what they do as they do it. Documentary Photography is a passport to different worlds. I aim to provide an insight into a world one would normally not get the chance to see. Being a privileged person, I want to understand a life of those less privileged. Being a conservative person, I want to witness sleaze and seediness. It is that desire to experience and understand things I don't know which inspires my work.