The photographs that I present in this series “Work Station” don’t show people, but it is of people that they speak. We have here ephemeral constructions and spaces that shelter and hide underground labour activity.

These images focus upon a form of prostitution, the one that is perhaps the hardest, most dangerous and least dignified for both the workers and their clients. Any discussion of roadside prostitution necessarily implies a reflection on the public/private duality. It is public, because it is announced/displayed at the side of the road. It is private because it is practised far from the gaze of prying eyes, in the seclusion of the forest inside improvised shacks.

The series “Work Station” (“Posto de trabalho”) was photographed in Portugal between 2010 and 2013.

Valter Vinagre