Project X is organizing a photovoice project which involves getting sex workers to use cameras to capture aspects of their daily lives. Photovoice is a recognized method to enable marginalized communities to participate in the documentation of their own reality. As such, the aim of our project is to provide a platform for women in the sex industry to tell their own story, empowering them to take control of their own narrative away from the society’s prejudices. A series of workshops will be conducted and the women will have an opportunity to learn photography skills and seek peer support.

There will be a total of 10 participants who will attend four photovoice workshops over the course of 2 months. There will be one principal facilitator, Robyne Hayes, who is a Social Justice Photographer based in Singapore. She has kindly agreed to conduct the workshops for free.
The workshops are scheduled to take place from September to October 2018. The photographs will then be exhibited in various galleries, with its debut at Project X’s 10th anniversary gala dinner slated for the 16th of December 2018.

A research project will run concurrently to the photovoice workshops. Recognizing that the media is very powerful in shaping people’s opinions and their resulting behavior, a research team will analyse media coverage of sex workers in 2017. In particular, they will be examining the language used when writing about sex workers, and the photographs that accompany those articles. We will then be comparing the photographs from the photovoice project to the mainstream media’s representation of sex workers, and engage with local media outlets with our findings.