Portfolio "Ladyboy" by Mirko Rotondi

The idea to realize this project was born about two years ago, coming back in Italy after my 2nd trip in South East Asia, while I was working about another project.

When we’re thinking about The “Land of Smiles” like mother of prostitution and sex by money,
the first images that come in our mind are images of foreigners setting out the GoGo Bars, with Young Thai Ladies or Pretty Lady Boys.

LadyBoy is famous in Thailand for his (or maybe I should say “her”) eccentricity: crazy, colorful, sexy...someone funny, someone shy...someone easy...someone else complicated.
LadyBoy is the thai transexual.
Those young people, normaly from 22 to 28 years old, use to move from their native place to go to the capital cities of sex: Bangkok, Pattaya, Phuket, Samui. They chose a lifestyle most of times to the limits of security; some of them live alone in small rooms; someone in dirty cellars in perifery or dangerous town; someone else in apartment with other friends. LadyBoy lives earning money with prostitution, or working in some go-go bars like soubrette dancing, singing or doing musical performance.
When I’ve decided to realize this project, I was looking for something more than classical images about LadyBoy at bar, drinking and talking with foreigners. My images show the hide aspect, outside go-go bar; their lifestyle in their houses, their habits, their different
personalities the one from the other...in their “little world”, most of time contained in 15mt in cellars transformed in little rooms, with Buddha images, and picture about King and Queen of Thailand (loved by everyone)...among coloured walls, old air conditioning and some big cockroachs.
My target was to photograph LadyBoys in the completest way, in Bangkok, Kho Samui, Pattaya and Phuket (the capital cities of sex in thailand). I’ve spent some months there, living like a thai people and it made me build up necessaries friendships for my work; I had to come into LadyBoy’s World. I didn’t want to seem like professional photographer because I wanted to take natural and dynamic pictures...and little by little they trusted of me.
I’ve worked most of time in the night and to the limits; fast transferts, strange phone apointments, short flights, bus, mototaxy, long waits, unforseens, few sleep, and extreme situations, with tropical hot and 80% humidity; rains, mud, and little visibility to go to their place, in Samui and Phuket slum, or to their cellers in old houses placed in dark lanes in Pattaya, not so far from go-go bars.
Thank to Nittaya Jindasing (Nueng) my guide and thai translator (when english wasn’t enough) that helped me in this project and in my - sometimes - absurd requests.