De Middel wants to shake off the clichés surrounding the photography of sex work: “If aliens came to Earth and tried to understand what prostitution is about,” she states on her website, “they would believe it is a business based on naked women staying in dirty rooms.” The rooms are indeed dirty, but in making the other half of the business visible, she renews our understanding of the so-called oldest profession. She elicits distinct but strikingly similar stories from the men and presents them in extended captions, which are inseparable from the images. Many of their stories, relayed without commentary by De Middel, entail misogyny in one form or another. The story of Hugo, an elderly Brazilian, is typical. In his oversize shirt, with his paunch and his white beard, Hugo looks like Santa Claus, which is how he makes his living. He also has the dreamy melancholy of an aging man. What the caption reveals, though, is an embedded violence:

Hugo, 70 years old. Santa Claus. Single and, as far as he knows, doesn’t have any children. He visits prostitutes 2 or 3 times a day and usually doesn’t pay. He started visiting prostitutes at the age of 12 and he continues to do so because he believes that’s what women are made for.

Pillows, sheets, towels, phones, furniture, windows: The portraits are interspersed with photographs of details. The effect is not dissimilar to other projects about sex work. But De Middel has shifted the center of our attention. When it’s a man lying half-nude across the bed, we read the image in a new way. Is it still pitiable? Or tender? Or sexy? We might even form a thought that we don’t usually express when the subjects are women: “Why would anyone reveal themselves in this way?”