SERGI LLANAS PÁEZ
Creative Documentary & Photojournalism
Magnum Photos & Spéos
2022-2023
In gratitude to Susana, for her friendship and hospitality. To Xiomara, for her love and trust. To Sofía, for giving meaning to this project. And to Claudia, for her honest stories.
Thank you for the rebellion, solidarity and affection.
Tacones de hierro is the portrait of the resistance that sex professionals exert against institutional, xenophobic and transphobic violence in large European cities like Barcelona and Paris. There are many transgender women, especially sex workers, who suffer violence and exclusion in Latin American countries, where life expectancy is much lower than average due to the risk of living intolerantly. Susana, Xiomara, Claudia and Sofía moved to Barcelona and Paris in search of better opportunities. Thus, Tacones de hierro is a visual journey through the realities of the Susana, Xiomara, Sofía and Claudia, which far from paternalistic dynamics, has no other reason than to show something that is there, that exists.
This is the image of how these transgender women residing in France and Spain empower themselves and their profession.
Seizing their speech is a mechanism used by institutions and social priviledge to make them vulnerable to a system that wants them excluded. Prohibitionism and abolitionism, far from protecting their rights, relegate their activity to secrecy.
Spain’s Organic Law 4/2015, of March 30, for the protection of citizen security makes extremely difficult for sex workers to develop their profession. It responds to the most voracious urban hygienism that denies the autonomy and safety of sex workers.
On February 28, 2023, Spain also approved Law 4/2023 of February 28, for the real and effective equality of trans people and for the guarantee of the rights of LGTBI, although said law has not managed to incorporate non-binary realities or immigrant trans people.
In France, since 2016, sex work is listed as illegal in the Penal Code.
Sergi Llanas Paez (Barcelona, 1998) is a journalist specialized in audiovisual media at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (2021).
The aim of his work is transcending the borders of consciousness through images. Starting as a photojournalist, he decided to move to Paris in order to pursue long term projects that tell hidden stories all around the world in a partnership between Spéos International Photography School and Magnum Photos. He identifies himself as a nomad photographer. His main projects involve the topics of migration, gender and ethnical conflicts.
sergillanaspaez.com @sergillanas sllanaspaez@gmail.com
+34 636 311 184