Hidden Angels

• Photographer
  Mauro De Bettio

Is called Daulatdia, the largest brothels in the world. A gigantic trap with over two thousand shacks, each housing a prostitute. On the skin the indelible marks of violent clients- bruises, cuts and burns. They call them 'sex workers' and every day they momentarily satiate the ardor of about three thousand men. The average age of newly arriving sex workers is 14 years old, meaning some are even younger, and they earn about two, three or four dollars at a time, depending on the man's satisfaction. Sometimes the man thinks the woman is not worth paying anything at all.

Born and raised in a little village in the Italian Alps, now based in Barcelona, Mauro already felt from young age the desire to tell. He discovered that the camera was the right tool for him, the eye through which he could speak to the world. An instrument that began to walk by his side towards a long journey of discovery. “Although it is difficult to express, I think that the photograph represents my way of speaking and what I try to do through my language is to capture the sense of what I breathe and touch with my hands. Not only in appearance but also, and especially, in the essence".