I am a sex worker …

“I am a dancer … I trained in dance at UCT Ballet School and I work with different dance companies, local and international, as a dance teacher. Photo credit: Ian Kwok, Vivian Nguyen and SWEAT.

“I am a father and boyfriend … I’d like to tell everyone to never give up and to believe in themselves. Photo credit: Ian Kwok, Vivian Nguyen and SWEAT.

The exhibition is a collaboration with Ian Kwok (a medical student) and Vivian Nguyen (a student doing her masters in public health) who have been in Cape Town for the past two months doing an internship with SWEAT.

The exhibition comes at a time when SWEAT has expressed shock over the killing of four sex workers in Cape Town in the past two months.

Kwok and Nguyen took images of sex workers and asked them to add to small cue cards printed with the words “I am a sex worker…” something that they would like people to know about them. The message is: I am not just a sex worker, there is much more to me.

Gordon Isaacs, a co-ordinator at SWEAT, said it was about making the invisible face of sex workers visible. SWEAT has recently been involved in two publications — No One Should Be Oppressed: Writing about Our Lives’ Struggle, a book about the in the lives of sex workers, and an academic textbook, Male Sex Workers Society.

Also attending the exhibition was Bryan Urbsaitis from Aids Rights South Africa (ARSA)

Images from the exhibition and their added stories can be found at Vivian Nguyen’s tumblr site launched on the day of the photo exhibition.