SPÉOS 64W PHOTOREPORTAGE 2024/25
Ingrid.
This is Ingrid’s World… At 70, she lives alone in a quiet apartment in Brussels, where the curtains stay closed, and the light barely filters through. She has spent much of her life under the spotlight while working as a sex worker so now, she chooses to exist in the softness of darkness. She was once a wife, a mother, a sex worker for thirty years. But those are just fragments of who she is. Through this project, I want to bring forward the nuances of her world, not the past she was defined by, but the person she has become.
This project is personal to me. Growing up in Kamathipura, I saw how women around me were often misunderstood, judged, or erased from the narrative. But I knew there was more to them; there were moments of love, laughter, warmth, and resilience that no one seemed to see. When I picked up the camera at 21, I understood that through photography, I know I have the power to break down the societal walls of prejudice, judgment, and discrimination. I want to use my camera to bring the same joy, fun, empowerment, and visibility that I have experienced through photography to every woman in my community. I want every silenced voice, every buried emotion, every broken heart, to be given a voice through a photograph. Therefore, this project is more than just documenting a life...it’s about rewriting the narrative.
“I spent years working in places lit by neon and spotlights. I don’t like light so much anymore. That’s why I keep my apartment dim”
“Photographs remind me how fast life goes by. The years leave their marks, not always beautiful, but they remain.
