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Tag / Prostitutes

Working Girls of Place Blanche: Documenting the Parisian Sex Trade

Our story takes place in 1950s and 60s Paris at Place Blanche, in the shadows of Montmartre, in the heart of the red light district of Pigalle. France was ruled by a devout Catholic, General Charles de Gaulle, who had reinstated a 300-year-old law that punished landlords who allowed prostitutes to work on their premises by…

Meet the Fallen Queen of the Moulin Rouge

The world knew her as la Goulue — literally, “the Glutton” — because her appetite for mischief was bar-none in Belle Epoque Paris. It was a nickname she earned in high-kicks and unmatched can-can skills, but it was won at a high price. Today, her rise to the top as “the Queen of Montmartre” has become…

An Insider Peep into Tokyo’s Secretive Red Light District: Then & Now

Watanabe Katsumi was the king of treading lightly. As a drifting photographer, his lens was a stealthy observer of Tokyo’s red light district, snapping hundreds of photos of its drag queens, gangsters, prostitutes, and other fringe society members in the 1960s and 70s. Few dared enter the underbelly of the city like him and the…

But Did You Hear about France’s Most Infamous Madam?

With the Jeffrey Epstein scandal creeping its way into every late night dinner table conversation and the sordid secrets of his mysterious Madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, slowly unfolding in the press, it wasn’t long before we would be talking about “Madame Claude”. France’s own high society brothel queen, aka. Fernande Grudet, reigned for decades as one…

The Forgotten Souls of London’s Women of the Night

Guest article by A Passport Affair Down an unremarkable side street in Southwark, London, is a fenced lot filled with broken concrete slabs, patches of overgrown grass and the odd piece of abandoned construction equipment. Its dark history and iron gates separate this sad little patch from the outside world. Lengths of ribbon, handwritten messages…
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