East Village photographer Q. Sakamaki was in Bangladesh last year, where he documented one of the country’s biggest industries, prostitution. Prostitution is illegal under Bangladesh’s constitution, but anyone can become a sex worker by making an affidavit with a first-class magistrate’s court or notary public that she is above age 18. As a result, many sex workers are children, victims of human trafficking or with no choice because they were born in brothels.
Due to poor safe-sex education, many have H.I.V., especially those working in the streets or poor residential areas. This page, clockwise from above: In Dhaka, Rotina, a 15-year-old sex worker with H.I.V. She doesn’t fully comprehend what H.I.V./AIDS is, and neither do her clients; in Doulabdia, Parvin, 18, born and raised in a brothel; at the pier in Bani Shanta, a prostitution village, sex workers await customers coming by boat. Opposite page, clockwise from top: A child sex worker; a mother and daughter in a brothel; in Bani Shanta, a sex worker hanging out with a favorite customer. (Sakamaki washed some of the color out of these photos, feeling the vivid Bangladeshi color palette was too busy.)
thevillager.com
