Paola de Grenet

Photographer

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  • Growing up
  • Pink Dreams
  • Yo solo
  • Albino Beauty
  • Life as a Transsexual
  • Portraits Gallery
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  • Commissioned Work
    • Reportage +
    • Dubai
    • Chile
    • Island of Mozambique
    • Mali
    • Bangladesh
    • Barcelona
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  • Contact
  • paola@paoladegrenet.com
  • + 34 687 888 846
  • Posse Photo Agency
  • Project info

  • The first part of the project focuses on life as a transsexual prostitute.
    Along the walls of a cemetery in Camp Nou, a man has been providing the girls with food, cooked by his wife, for about 20 years. Every night he prepares them a fire, table and chairs and sells them everything they could possibly need, from chocolate to condoms. A paragraph of this session deals with working in a brothel. Some girls live there for more or less short periods of time that can vary from a week to a month, They go and often come back after a month to then go again. Others have their own flats and only go to the brothel to do their 8 hours of work. The second part intends to get closer to some of these girls documenting their personal lives.
    I learnt that you respect instead of fearing what you know.

    One of the girls is Maria del Mar. She worked in the army for 9 years. She has now left but she achieved that they’d create new laws, which would protect transsexual’s rights to medical assistance within the army. She now works in the catering industry and still lives with her mother, grandmother and sister in the hope to save enough money for the operation. Carolina instead has already managed to save the necessary amount and two years ago she underwent sex exchange. She worked extremely hard as a waitress and performer and tells me that it would have been impossible without the love of her partner and her understanding family. Debora is 25, she came from Brazil with her boyfriend of 7 years and invests most of her money into surgical operations, she has already had 8. She travels extensively around Spain and dreams of stopping prostituting herself to be able to start her own business. Lays also came from Brazil, a village 40km from Sao Paulo. She came with other 4 friends, they all work in the same brothel,. In the pictures she is portrayed at home posing with her accessories on X-Mas Eve.
  • Barcelona, zona universitaria
  • in a brothel, Barcelona
  • Debora's house
  • Lays at home on X-Mas eve
  • Maria del Mar's home, Cadiz
  • Carolina's home, Barcelona
  • Carolina's at work