When silence speaks
When silence speaks
Alvaro Ybarra Zavala
December 1, 2015
“Following another long night, one of many on the streets, looking for clients and selling their bodies to be able to survive. Another night in which each of them knows that the love of their life will be used for a dollar, by a pig anxious for sex looking to hide his sexual tendencies, socially persecuted in the obscurity of prostitution.
One morning, following another of those many long nights, they sat together, held in each other’s arms. Deinna and Gendrís, two transsexual adolescents, who have seen a conservative society set them aside since their infancy, and who have had to look out for themselves their whole lives.
That morning, I was lucky to be with them – their embrace was pure, simple and sincere. It seemed like they wanted to heal the wounds of a whole lifetime marked by intolerance towards their sexual orientation. I wanted to capture that sincere moment of love, complicity, purity.
With this whole project, I wanted to move away from the stereotypes of transsexual prostitution, I wanted to touch the essence of the people that see themselves condemned to the streets. For three weeks, I had the chance to live together with a group of twenty transsexual women who practise prostitution in Havana, Cuba. It was a project that allowed me to get to know an exceptional group of human beings, cruelly castigated but proud of the decisions they have made in their lives.
I managed to build up a relationship of trust with them, which would not have been possible without such a non-invasive camera as the Leica M, which in their eyes did not appear as any kind of threat, allowing me to capture moments like the one in the photograph of Deinna and Gendrís.”
You can see the complete story in M Magazine No.3 which you can order now.
One morning, following another of those many long nights, they sat together, held in each other’s arms. Deinna and Gendrís, two transsexual adolescents, who have seen a conservative society set them aside since their infancy, and who have had to look out for themselves their whole lives.
That morning, I was lucky to be with them – their embrace was pure, simple and sincere. It seemed like they wanted to heal the wounds of a whole lifetime marked by intolerance towards their sexual orientation. I wanted to capture that sincere moment of love, complicity, purity.
With this whole project, I wanted to move away from the stereotypes of transsexual prostitution, I wanted to touch the essence of the people that see themselves condemned to the streets. For three weeks, I had the chance to live together with a group of twenty transsexual women who practise prostitution in Havana, Cuba. It was a project that allowed me to get to know an exceptional group of human beings, cruelly castigated but proud of the decisions they have made in their lives.
I managed to build up a relationship of trust with them, which would not have been possible without such a non-invasive camera as the Leica M, which in their eyes did not appear as any kind of threat, allowing me to capture moments like the one in the photograph of Deinna and Gendrís.”
You can see the complete story in M Magazine No.3 which you can order now.
Alvaro Ybarra Zavala+-
Born in Spain in 1979, Ybarra learned photography from his grandfather when he was still a child. The only official training he got was at a Joop Swart Masterclass in 2009, for which he was selected by The World Press Photo Foundation. 2011 Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography for his reportage of Colombia’s civil war. Represented by Getty Images. More