Bordelle

How many things do you know of a brothel? How many times did you see how they look inside? Actually, if one stops to think about it probably will find out that there is a kind of mystery veil - a reasonable one maybe - but that makes those places ephemeral. Photographer Yoshiko Kusano with her book Bordelle aims to lift this veil. 

The Swiss photographer went to photograph brothels in Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Japan, focusing on the interiors of the rooms where prostitutes do their job. She started In 2006, when she was commissioned to do a photo portrait of a «Madam». 
Browsing the book gives a sense of confusion: at the beginning it is not evident the nature of those rooms. They look so "normal", well-finished, with posters and canvas on the walls. Kusano chooses to show us some particulars, without any intervention on the space, using the available light that, sometimes, thanks to the red or yellow tones, gives the photos an aesthetic which is proper of fashion shoots. She leads us in a world which is hidden, showing how those girls live their everyday life. Common girls who, for a reason or another, spend their days between those walls. 

These images say more about origin and aesthetics, about eroticism and service than any words could manage. Actually, although some pictures show sex toys, tacky furnitures and all the sort of things you can expect to find in a prostitute's room, in many cases you can find object and particulars such as a simple plant or wedding photos of mothers and grandmothers that underline a deep sense of normality, that help to understand that those rooms are not only places in which sex, violence and desire play a big role, but they represent also the space in which those girls live. Those particulars, in a way, give us a sense of style, that customization which can tell a lot about personalities.

Yoshiko Kusano with this book manages to bring us to wonder about a society in which everything is for sale, but she does it without "selling" the identities of those prostitutes she met, giving us prompts and slices of life coming from a world which is, in many cases, forgotten.

Buy the book 
Yoshiko Kusano's website