Maya Goded. Sexoservidoras 1995-2000

The twenty photographs in this exhibition are part of a major project that starts in 1995 and whose purpose is the portrayal of the relationship that prostitutes in the neighbourhood of La Merced in Mexico City have with their body, from the point of view their sexuality.

Each photograph must be understood as an individual portrait in which each anatomy -just as each brand or tattoo- contains a story. A joint reading is also possible, since all bodies respond to the double standard that governs an agreed social and cultural principle, the acceptance and permissibility of prostitution. In this way a place in the social scale is given to the prostitute, albeit a negligible one. At the same time their exclusion is shown through other channels, such as the fact of being pushed into marginalised neighbourhoods or that they have limited resources and social assistance.

Goded does not propose the glorification of these women, but rather wants to establish an iconography of a model that is the complete opposite of the good and perfect Christian mother. Sexoservidoras refers to those prostitutes living in the margins, victims of the guiding principle of morality in Mexico.

The result is a catalogue of women who show a wide gap between flesh and desire, to draw closer to the binomial shaped by meat and merchandise. The exhibition is completed with the projection of a video that collects the testimony of the protagonists.

The photographer defines these pictures as a "social work", and avoids the documentary label, in this way she emphasises the theme and to a lesser extent, the strategy of photography and the elimination of distance from the object, which is in turn the subject.

As a result, Goded does not create images that aestheticise female degradation, but generates a message of condemnation from the acceptance, on the part of this group of women, of prostitution as the only possible means of living.