Our Lives, Our Space

Book excerpt: A group of female sex workers picked up cameras to capture their lives, their space, and their ways of seeing in a red-light district in central Seoul before the bulldozers came in to erase them from the city and from history. The Magdalena House Collective was founded in 1985 to provide support to sex workers in the district of Yongsan. In 2009, when urban redevelopment plans marked the area for demolition, 9 members of Magdalena House began taking photographs of their everyday lives. This became the Pandora Project. Over the next 5 years, they took over 20,000 photographs. Between 2009 and 2011, 40 of these photographs were included in the “Our Lives, Our Space” Exhibition that travelled to different campuses in the U.S. and HK. This book is a collection of photographs from the Pandora Project, along with narratives from members of Magdalena House Collective, including researchers at the Courageous Women Research Center that coordinated the Project.