HYDERABAD: “Who calls you a prostitute, Mother?” wrote legendary Bangladeshi poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. Bangladesh is one of the few Muslim countries in which prostitution is legal. Still the plight of these ‘fallen women’ involves dingy rooms, violent customers and stigma. This is the world 40-year-old German photojournalist Sandra Hoyn has documented as ‘The Longing of Others’.
Sandra’s work is being exhibited at Goethe Zentrum Hyderabad as part of Indian Photo Festival till October 9.
The white walls of Goethe Zentrum Hyderabad are bathed in a riot of colours. A closer look reveals the bright colours to be paradoxical and complementary to the somber surroundings of the 200-year-old Kandapara brothel in Tangail, Bangladesh.
The photos feature the women giggling with men, sharing light moments with each other and boyfriend-clients affectionately holding the women.
However, the photos are not just colour and laughter: one catches a woman sharing an intimate moment with a client, while another a heap of used condoms.
How did a foreign photojournalist who does not speak the local language gain access to the lives of the subjects?
“I was interested in exploring the women’s life in a brothel. I went there with the help of an NGO and a translator friend,” Hoyn explains in an email interview with Express.
Was it not dangerous for her to venture into red-light areas? “The women in a way protected me. They never allowed any man to come near me and if they tried they threatened them,” she reveals.
Hoyn recalls a 27-year-old woman named Bonna who was seven years old when she was raped by her stepfather. Bonna ran away from home after this incident. When she was 10, a man picked her off the street and sold her to a brothel.
Bonna has two regular clients and an eight-year-old son from one of them. The child lives outside the brothel in the family home. Sometimes he visits her.
According to Hoyn, Bonna told her, “Life without love is worse than the life of a street dog. I don’t have any dreams for myself. I just dream for my son that he will get a good education.”
It was initially difficult for Hoyn to gain access to the brothel quarters, but most of the women came to understand what she was trying to capture.
“A few men however kept away as they were ‘family men’,” Hoyn recalls.