Bugis Street is now a street in the shopping district of Singapore, since the 1950’s it was renowned for its transvestite streetwalkers who attracted to the city state sailors and men from around the world.
Alain Soldeville discovered Singapore’s Bugis Street for the first time in 1980, when he was a 23-years-old photographer from Paris. Since then and to the end of the 1990s, Soldeville worked as a photojournalist before moving into a documentary photography less editorial and more personal.
The photos from “Bugis Street” are no proof of the evil of the body’s exploitation and the sad unease of men who sell women like atributes and for other men who pay for a few moment of different entertainment. “Bugis Street” is more a proof, a documentary, of the intimate and self-confident side of a fake exotic sex paradise. Alain Soldeville build a relationship with his subjects, befriended them. The Bugis Street ladies photos seems to come out from an 80’s street fashion catalogue. Like models or movie stars, the Soldeville’s ladies act and wink showing without shyness “their hopeless fantasies of being adored and admired”. Now – also for their vintage attitudes – they can be admired in a different way.
Once Upon a Time on Bugis Street
Photos by Alain Soldeville
16 Nov. – 27 Dec. 2013
Kathmandu Photo Gallery
87 Pan Road,
Bangkok
Thailand
http://kathmandu-bkk.com
http://soldeville.com
Eliseo Barbàra
http://mostartists.com
