It is one of the oldest streets in Paris. The route of Rue Saint-Denis was first laid out in the 1st century by the Romans, and then extended north in the Middle Ages. Its name derives from it being the historic route where the kings of France would pass to enter Paris coming from the Saint-Denis Basilica. The Rue (and adjacent area) was the site of many barricades and protests during the early part of the 19th century. Ever since the Middle Ages and up to the present day, the street has been known as a place of prostitution.

Rue Saint Denis is a street of the prêt à porter ateliers. Day and night street based sex-workers still advertise themselves. The neighborhood is full of life in every sense; locals continually come and go, voyeurs wander and loiter, people who work in the ateliers pass by daily, women post up on corners and in alleys, and their clients scuttle to them.

French Flair and Impudence

Rue Saint Denis is not comparable to the notorious and sleazy red-light districts of northern Europe. It tries to preserve its own peculiar gaiety and French impudence. The film Irma la Douce by Billy Wilder is set in the Rue Saint Denis neighborhood. B-M. Koltès’ dark, tragic, mixed-up monologue La Nuit Juste Avant les Forêts/The Night Just Before the Forests was based on events and characters here. I have shared it below as a backdrop to these photographs.

I made these photographs, which date back to the mid-eighties and early nineties, over the course of several visits, and I made them for the because I was interested and because I wanted to make a socio-cultural record of the time and the milieu.

Now, the open practice of prostitution is greatly reduced, due mainly to property speculation (Saint Denis is in the center of Paris) and also due to neo-moralizing campaigns to which the organized movement of the Parisian sex workers opposed. Instead, sex workers organized the annual Pute Pride, a festival similar to the common gay pride celebrations but with the rights of sex workers at its core.