Portrait of a sex worker
Paul van Gelder
Amsterdam
schilderij
As a teenager I worked in the red light district of Amsterdam, delivering groceries to the local brothels.
Over the years, later in life I became friends with a few sex workers after meeting them in social situations. This is a portrait of one of them after she agreed to pose for me last year, when it became clear that she might lose her legal job due to the city-led initiatives to reduce the number of windows from where she plies her trade.