Scroll to bottom for text.

 

The process behind this series involved meandering along Cape Town’s busiest drags at night and photographing sex-workers’ handbags with their owners' consent. 

The sex-workers were paid a fee equivalent to what they would have earned had they been plying their trade. The transparency around this transaction is key to the the meaning of Handbags.

 The title of each work consists of the sex-worker’s name and his or her favourite colour, which forms the coloured backdrop against which the handbag is situated.

The work has been shown in the South African National Gallery, and it has been shown abroad in a show curated by Federico Agelucci of the Michael Stevenson. It has never been shown in toto. Handbags consists of 35 works.