This photographic series explores the archetype of the whore, the stripper, the sex worker — a figure that carries both fascination and stigma within our cultural imagination. It continues a performance-based exploration I first began in 2018, revisiting questions about feminine power, sexuality, and the gaze.

Growing up, I often felt that women had little power in the worlds I inhabited. Yet in popular culture I encountered another narrative: women whose power seemed to reside in their sexuality. Characters such as Jessica Rabbit captivated me. In these stories, feminine eroticism held a strange paradox — it gave women power over men, yet that same power was often portrayed as morally suspect, dangerous, wrong or stupid.

For much of my life, I felt both drawn to and conflicted by the experience of being seen, of being desired. A sensual and erotic current existed within me, yet it remained partially repressed under layers of internalized moral judgment and social expectation.

Through recent explorations of free love and ethical non-monogamy, I began to deconstruct many assumptions I held about sexuality and identity. This process invited a deeper inquiry into where eros lives in the body and how desire moves through us. Rather than suppressing this energy or being overtaken by it, I became interested in learning how to consciously breathe with it, channel it, and remain present within it. Tantra is a door to awakening after all.

After more than a decade of contemplative practice, this exploration felt different from earlier experiences of eros. Instead of eros possessing me, I could meet it with awareness — as a powerful current of life energy that can be held, directed, and honored.

Another realization that emerged during this process was how deeply sexuality is tied to safety. Curiosity and playfulness become possible only when physical and emotional safety are present. When such safety exists, eros reveals itself not only as desire, but also as intimacy, communion, and even spiritual force.

This journey also opened a deep compassion for sex workers — individuals whose labor revolves around intimacy and bodily presence, yet who are often burdened with intense moral judgment and social projection. Their work sits at the intersection of desire, vulnerability, and taboo. Despite offering spaces where people may explore closeness without shame, they frequently face stigma, lack of protection, and systemic exploitation.

The figure of the sex worker thus becomes a mirror for society’s unresolved relationship with sexuality itself. What we label as “perverse” often reflects collective fear and repression more than the act itself. The real distortions arise not from eros, but from manipulation, lack of consent, secrecy, and unexamined shadow.

A further layer of this work emerged through the recognition of performance itself. As in the craft of acting, there is a part of me that finds joy in embodying a persona — in consciously stepping into a role that lives through me. In certain ritualised encounters, the archetype becomes something that can be intentionally inhabited: a character, a fantasy, a presence that emerges between self and other.

This realisation also led me to see how much of life is already a form of role play. For many years, I unconsciously performed versions of what society expected from me: the good mother, the good wife, the respectable woman, the spiritual one. These roles were not chosen with full awareness; they were scripts inherited from cultural norms.

In contrast, consciously embodying an archetype can hold a different kind of power. When role play becomes intentional, it opens a space of exploration rather than confinement. It allows the possibility to discover who we are beyond prescribed identities, and to engage with desire, imagination, and relationship as a creative practice.

Through this series, I revisit the archetype of the whore and play with the symbol of moral transgression, and in choosing the location of a church I reclaim Eros as a spiritual energy an act of communion and creation. The whore is a complex figure that reveals the tensions between power and vulnerability, desire and judgment, eros and ethics. It is an invitation to look more deeply at how we relate to sexuality — within ourselves, in our relationships, and in the cultural narratives that shape our lives.