1st Update [Mar.10, 1200Hrs]: A reader who works in a sex workers' rights organisation informed us that some of the women photographed were unaware that their photos were taken and published. In other words, they have not given their explicit consent. Hence, Mothership.sg has decided to remove the photos in question.

2nd Update [Mar.10, 2100Hrs]: Italian photographer Luciano Checco has requested Mothership.sg to remove all his photos. Yesterday, Checco thanked the readers for their compliments on Mothership.sg’s FB.

The photos have also been removed from his Facebook page.

Women rights group AWARE (Association of Women for Action and Research) and sex workers rights group Project X criticised Checco as they raised concerns about the privacy violations of his subjects.

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In a brilliant photo series titled "The Other Singapore", Singapore-based Italian photographer Luciano Checco shows a part of Singapore that we know exists but had no concrete idea of what it looked like.

Shot at Geylang and Little India, it features street-style photography capturing the gritty side of life in a part of Singapore that one rarely ventures to.

In an interview with the Leica Blog, Checco, who Vice President of a German company that supplies equipment to the oil and gas industry, took over three years to capture these photographs.

When asked about the meaning of "The Other Singapore", Checco said:

"The whole world has, over the last few decades, seen Singapore as the Switzerland of Southeast Asia. It has the reputation of being clean, modern, efficient, safe, with one of the best airlines in the world, and perhaps the most efficient port and airport of the world. It’s the site of the Formula One Grand Prix where the cameras keep showing its beautiful modern skyline and gleaming buildings. Not many people know about the reality that is shown in my photos. Singapore has been built using and exploiting cheap manpower from countries like India, China, and Bangladesh. Six to eight workers very often share a single room, paying $200 USD each per month so you can easily calculate what the owner can recoup out of an apartment of three-four rooms that would normally be good only as storage space or a house for rats. Those workers are rewarded with discrimination, racism and are totally isolated from the posh reality of the country that is projected to the world."

Photographs of the seedier part of Geylang has been extremely rare simply because streets at night are too dark, and there is the real danger of provoking a violent response from the subjects caught on camera.

For Checco, the price he had to pay for these photographs was a beating from some transvestites when they heard his camera shutter clicking. That earned him a pair of broken spectacles, a bleeding head, and some really powerful photographs.

Here's a sampling of his work, from Luciano Checco's Facebook Album:

Top photo from Getty Images.

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