Staircase behind the house. Design and realisation: Cecilia Herrero. The fringes of the port are also where sex workers do their job. They are visualised in the fifth mural of the Women's Open Air Gallery. But actually, this fact has meanwhile nearly become history: following the immense transformation of the "harbour mile", giant office blocks and Elbe lofts have now taken over what used to be a commercial and fishing industry quarter. In , kerb crawling and prostitution around the fish market still provided some kind of a livelihood for roughly 30 women, but today only isolated sex workers are still to be found here.
The artist Cecilia Herrero from Argentina has presented her picture in the form of an X, the international abbreviation for sex. On the left in the foreground we see a very young woman who represents Asian sex workers. In some places, they account for the largest group of prostitutes. She's got a cuddly dog handbag over her right shoulder. Together with her pink ankle socks, this indicates how young the sex worker is. A historical port figure can be seen in the background: a blond woman with one leg bent at the knee in the typical posture of all prostitutes.
She's leaning against a dolphin structure on the quayside, waiting for clients. Pauli district. No port without whores , that's another way of interpreting the picture, and indeed, bartering for sex always has been a major branch of the economy in port cities, alongside handling all kinds of cargo. In Hamburg at the moment it is estimated that 3, women approx. This is also revealed by the word strips: comercio — commerce, dinero - money both Spanish , condoms, alley cat, terapia — therapy Spanish , family, age, hombre — man Spanish.
Sylvia knows all about it. She looks back on 30 years experience as a street prostitute in Hamburg, most of the time around the fish market. She has always been her own boss. Working as a prostitute enabled her to provide for her son and drug-addict husband.
She says:. The area has changed, it's now full of posh shops and there's lots of events going on. People walk through and say, hey look, there's a hooker. So no-one likes standing there any more, you get a bit fed up of telling people "Yeah, I'm a whore, I get paid for it". The women have gone. There have even been times when I've stood here on my own all night long.
