According to the Erotik Gewerbe Deutschland (also known as UEGD, the German Employers' Association of Erotic Companies ) estimates, today in Germany there are about 3,000 / 3,500 red-light facilities. In 2001 the Bundestag approved the legislation that made of Germany the biggest market of “protected by law†prostitution within the European Union. The aim was to protect sex workers by giving them access to health insurance programs, unemployment and retirement benefits against the containment of sex exploitation, human trafficking and the other criminal activities related to the practice of the profession in a context of illegality. Nowadays, after more than ten years, sex job reappeared as a discussion topic of the national , as well as european, dialectic in wich sex workers feel the needs of defending their rights against more repressive intentions, in a country that has become one of the favorite destination for the so-called sex migrants: providers of services from all over the world attracted by the chance to practice a recognized and protected profession within a large and complex universe including porno actors, web cam girls, tantra masseuse and dominatrix. The necessity in realizing this issue has been originated by a deep research in the most important photo journalistic agencie’s archives: the common representation of the sex workers usually depicts them as trapped in an ambiguous iconography and forcedly pushed into a collective imagination that has to do more with stereotypes than with real people playing a role between others in the German society. The project is aiming to build a non-stigmatized documentation of the contemporary many different professional figures belonging to “Sex Workers†definition, with portraits that shows their ordinary daily life in the place where they live as well as in the place where they work.
