“Before you judge me, know my story!” The 14 sex workers involved in the KNOW MY STORY project took pictures, created collages, and wrote their stories, asking their audiences to listen to what they had to say about themselves, their lives, their struggles, and their reasons for selling sex. The project forms part of a larger ethnographic study on the experiences, health practices, and well-being of sex workers in Soweto, South Africa. Inspired by projects conducted by the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) in collaboration with sex workers and the Sisonke National Sex Worker Movement, the participatory arts-based approach of the KNOW MY STORY project was an attempt to challenge power dynamics and hierarchies in research and to involve sex workers more directly in the production of knowledge about issues that affect them.
