Gold Winner

Trans and Prostitutes - A Day that ends badly

Photographer

Eduardo Moreno

Category

Editorial Photography - Photojournalism

Company

Social Photographer

Submission Group

Professional

Year

2022

Country / Region

Kenya

Injustice takes different forms and names, but it gets crueler with the transgender. Multiple stories of sexual abuse, discrimination and violence are at the origin of their lives. As they attempt to affirm an identity, offenses, bad glances and different forms of harassment multiply. Progressively, transgender will see their rights denied, their jobs lost, and their lives taken just for being who they are.



Preparing at the bar.

Every day is a difficult journey for them. Family rejection, lack of education and opportunities, poverty and marginalization push them to become sex workers, living very vulnerable situations. Trans put on makeup and dress to reaffirm their identity, not to hide it. Clients tolerate them, but with some form of harassment and humiliation. They occupy the bar with female sex workers to protect each other and advance common interest. However, rarely they share the same table, a drink or even less a client, struggling in their own corner for business and acceptance.



During the day In the street.

As they walk in the street, offering their services, Trans are mobile billboards of something difficult to understand and even less to accept. They selected distant or marginal areas when operating in small cities looking for some form of discreet attention. Still, risk of violence and humiliation follows them, and a latent lynch-mob sentiment permeates the spaces where they pass.



In prison at the end of the day.

Suddenly the police came. Non written laws and norms criminalize them. Trans and prostitutes are an inexplicable threat to society and the values of conservative groups. They are looked up without a clear cause any their rights are violated again. Justice is applied in its peculiar way by policy agents that act by their own. The shadows of the prison bars are drawn on their faces and the walls, as if they were inexorable marked. Handcuffed wrists that are the modern version of chains tied up to iron bars.



Credits

0
Amateur
2022
DETERMINED - Photography Winner

Photographer / Company

ARUN MOHANRAJ

Category

Editorial Photography - Photojournalism

Country / Region

United Kingdom

Professional
2022
ONE OF A KIND - Photography Winner

Photographer / Company

Donald Graham

Category

Black & White Photography - Portrait

Country / Region

United States

Professional
2022
Desert Postcards - Photography Winner

Photographer / Company

Rebeka Legović

Category

Commercial Photography - Fashion

Country / Region

Croatia (Hrvatska)

Professional
2022
Mother tree of life - Photography Winner

Photographer / Company

Andrea Izzotti

Category

Nature Photography - Plants and Fungi

Country / Region

Italy