personal work: Other People's Dirty Laundry

"Changing sheets and doing laundry are the chores of my work and I think it's interesting that I am often dealing with other people's 'dirty laundry' - repressed emotions, fantasies, fears, activities which seem unconscionable...it's sad that sex is so complicated for us humans."

Jenna, Manhattan 2007

In the spring of 2007 I met and began photographing Jenna (known professionally as Jennadea), an upper-middle class woman in her late thirties who had made her living for the past ten years working in the sex industry. When I met her, Jenna was living in a co-op apartment in the West Village in downtown Manhattan. She was working almost every day, seeing clients in the apartment where she lived.

In early 2008 Jenna moved to San Diego where she continued to support herself doing sex work. She is now dividing her time between Austin, Texas and New York City, supplementing her local income by taking periodic work trips to various cities around the country, where she stays in high-end hotel suites and sees local clients, most of whom she solicits by advertising on a website which features escorts and erotic massage practitioners.