La Petite Mort Gallery presents:

THE PRICE OF SEX:
Documentary Photographs by MIMI CHAKAROVA

August 31 – September 30, 2012
Vernissage Friday August 31 / 7 – 10pm

In collaboration with Ottawa Photography Month & Nuit Blanche 2012

This project is funded in part through a U.S. Department of State,  
U.S. Embassy-Ottawa Public Affairs Section Grant.


http://priceofsex.org/

Facebook Invite: https://www.facebook.com/events/508510295831416/?ref=ts
Gallery Info: http://www.lapetitemortgallery.com/september-2012/


The Price of Sex is a documentary film and photo exhibit about women  
in Eastern Europe who fell through the cracks of migration. We grew  
up under a restrictive communist regime but secretly hungered for  
opportunities in the West. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989,  
Eastern Europeans finally had a chance to taste raw capitalism. The  
unfortunate reality was that the vulnerable and uneducated lacked the  
necessary skills to survive it. Countless young women fell prey to  
traffickers. These girls, some still teenagers, were a commodity to  
be sold, exploited and discarded. Some call them foolish – poor  
girls duped with promises for work abroad, instead sold to pimps in  
brothels and sex clubs; others call them sex slaves – victims of  
brutal, irreversible circumstances. No one knows how many women have  
been killed in the global sex trade. We can only estimate. Over time  
I found young women who had survived. This exhibit is a testament to  
their courage – their willingness to expose the darkest and most  
haunting inner-workings of sexual slavery.


One of the main reasons for showing the faces of these women is to  
strip away the fear and shame that keeps so many quiet. The women’s  
silence perpetuates the vicious cycle of trafficking. As the years  
passed, I was convinced that if I could bring back what I witnessed,  
I could be an outlet for change. I found ways to expose the  
corruption that greases the wheels of the sex trade. I spent nearly a  
decade connecting the dots between the countries of origin – where  
the girls come from – and the countries of destination in the West  
and the Middle East – where they end up sold into prostitution  
against their will.

My hope is that the film, along with this exhibit, will reveal a  
deeper truth of the women’s reality and what they’ve endured. Sex  
trafficking is not a sheer equation of supply and demand. Add  
desperation, poverty, abuse, no access to justice and high levels of  
corruption and you’ll be a step closer in understanding why sex  
trafficking continues to thrive. By peeling away the layers of the  
price of sex, the viewers become witnesses – no longer unaware or  
complacent. I urge them to rise for what must change. – Mimi Chakarova


ABOUT THE PROJECT

Since the collapse of communism in 1989 millions of former Soviet  
bloc residents have migrated abroad looking for opportunities. These  
waves of migration breathed life into one of the oldest yet darkest  
criminal enterprises—the trafficking of human beings into sexual  
slavery.

Thousands of Eastern European women have been sold into prostitution.  
For the last ten years photojournalist Mimi Chakarova, a Bulgarian  
who immigrated to the United States in 1990, has documented their  
journeys from villages in Moldova and Albania to the streets of  
Turkey and nightclubs in Dubai—where prostitution is an equation of  
supply, demand and desperation.


HOW TRAFFICKING WORKS

After the fall of the Soviet Union, millions of young women in  
Eastern Europe came of age amid economic misery. Their childhood  
fantasies of a better life in the West became a human trafficker’s  
golden opportunity. Agents and brokers arrange travel and job  
placements as waitresses or nannies; young women are escorted to  
their destinations and delivered to their employers. They quickly  
find that there is no café or family, but a pimp who puts them to work.

Most women are trafficked by someone they know: a relative, an  
acquaintance, a boyfriend or a childhood friend. More than 60 % are  
recruited by other women. Upon reaching the foreign land, they find  
themselves in coercive and abusive situations from which escape is  
both difficult and dangerous.


DESTINATION COUNTRIES

Currently the top five destinations for sex trafficking of Eastern  
European women are Russia, Turkey, Greece, the United Arab Emirates,  
and Israel. Most women expect work as factory workers, waitresses,  
domestic servants and au pairs. After arriving in the country of  
destination, their passports, documents, money, and personal  
belongings are taken away. They become sex slaves, sold and resold to  
pimps at brothels, hotels, and apartments. Those who manage to escape  
the traffickers are deported. Back home, they rarely tell their loved  
ones the truth. The stigmatization of prostitution is every family’s  
deepest shame.


FACTORS

Human trafficking succeeds because of the lack of job opportunities  
in Eastern Europe, persistent poverty, domestic violence, and the  
degradation of the family unit since the collapse of communism.  
Lacking education and often living in villages with no running water  
and electricity, rural women are eager to escape their grim reality.  
They are desperate to work abroad to sustain their families back  
home. More than 30% of those trafficked have 1-2 children and 70% of  
them are single mothers. Women leave home because they see no other  
alternative. With an average income of $100 a month, mere survival is  
at the core of why women agree to go abroad.



Merci,

Guy Berube, director
La Petite Mort Gallery
306 Cumberland Street
Ottawa ON  K1N 7H9
613.860.1555
www.lapetitemortgallery.com