Photographer Jukka Male is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this documentary photography. From the project ‘CHINO – Barcelona’. To see Jukka’s body of work, click on any photograph.

CHINO – 50 meters of a street piece.

When I first came to Barcelona I did not encounter Catalonia or any of the nationalist
passions I had anticipated. After roaming around for a while, I found an open space in the
center of the city, created by the demolition of a whole quarter of buildings.

Stone pillars joined the sides of this packed dirt square to the rest of the city. It was like a
small town plaza in the middle of a metropolis. It provided a good space for hanging out
and for all kinds of encounters.

All the frequenters of the square were more interested in themselves, in their own
livelihoods, than in the independence or coexistence of diverse cultures. The population of
this part of town had been brought here by drugs, prostitution, and the most severe of
crimes: poverty. I had entered Chino, the basement of society.

On the short stretch of Calle Sant Ramón that was one of the square´s boundaries there
were four bars: Las Marinas, Porto Pi, La Barra, and El Disco. They shared the street with
a barber and a condom shop. Around the corner there was a restaurant, and in the vicinity
there were a few small hotels or rooms for rent for brief encounters involving the spending
or earning of what little money there was in circulation. The bars had a motley clientele. It
did not take me long to join it.

Later on, the sandy scab became the site of two new ugly apartment buildings, so
minimalist that one could think of them as their own freight crates.

The buildings have cut down the space, it is less inviting, but it still is an anteroom to lust.
Most of the street action consists of the sale of human bodies. Different styles dominate
their own sectors. This is a female sector, aimed at males.

In this part of Chino, dozens of women are selling their bodies in the street. This is not love
for sale, not even brief joy; the joys are left to your own imagination. What´s for sale here
is coition, ”fucky-fucky”.

Business is most brisk while the evening´s warmth lingers, slowing down as night falls.
Then the prostitutes leave to mingle with the tourist stream in the hope of greater rewards.
Almost anything looks prettier at night.

It took me a while to understand, among other things, this mode of prostitution and its
great extent. According to one estimate, Barcelona has more than 50 000 active
prostitutes. My personal knowledge of the phenomenon is minimal, since my radius was
limited to the thirty yards between Las Marinas and La Barra. To this day, I hardly know the
rest of the city.

Every environment creates its own ethics. The people of Sant Ramón do not know much
about each other. It is not necessary to know names, or addresses, or even genders.
When proximity gets too close, it changes into danger. The only necessity is to exist,
and you can´t exist without being somewhere.

Translated from Finnish by Anselm Hollo

Artist Statement:

As a photographer one often thinks that what you see is the most important but sometimes that what you don’t see is as important or even more important.

All images and text © Jukka Male