Sex work has the peculiarity of being both taboo and an open secret. Something that everyone knows about, something that some even boast about, but that cannot be talked about. A reality that accompanies us, they say, as a civilization, but that as a society we don’t quite know where to place.

In 2006, I met Paula P.

I approached her on the street, where she was working at the time, with the intention of filling in the gaps in the confusing information provided by the newspapers, which presented prostitution as a crime in the news pages and as a business in the classifieds.

That conversation marked the beginning of a friendship and also of a long project on sex work in which Paula wove a complex thread between her reality and her character, while I took notes and was amazed at how little I knew about women and men.