This is Bonnie Cleo Andersen. She's the mother of Michella, who is 16 years old; Oliver, who is 15; and Noa, who is six. She is also a self-professed prostitute, working legally in a small house in a village in the east of Denmark. Image courtesy Marie Hald. I had always been interested in the subject of prostitution, since it is a legal profession in Denmark.
I was mostly interested in finding a woman who wasn't the typical stereotype of a prostitute. What I really wanted to find was a woman with a family, living a 'normal' life.
And so I found Bonnie. Hald found Bonnie from a website and soon got in contact with her. She went to visit her at the brothel where Bonnie worked, and the two talked for hours. Over the course of the following year, Hald followed Bonnie and recorded the intimate details of her life, both personal and professional. She discovered, for instance, that while Noa thinks his mom works as a housekeeper, the older children know the truth, and are often bullied as a result during school. Through this period she became close with Bonnie's entire family, learning their hopes, goals and fears.
Her number one aim in life is being a good mother for her children. Hald's photographic portrait captures the many roles Bonnie embodies in a single day -- mother, friend, sex worker, human being.
The images, simultaneously brutal and beautiful, depict a life filled with hardship, pain and love. Although a number of the images capture the explicit details of sex work often kept behind closed doors, many offer mundane and touching moments between family and friends that look, above all else, familiar. I have tried to show Bonnie's life as honest as I could, brutal as it may be. For another honest portrait of life as a sex worker, we suggest this series chronicling the life of Claudette, an intersex sex worker.
