For over two months, I walked around Intendente, one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Lisbon, that has been stigmatized for decades of prostitution and drug addiction. I met lives that had once dreamed of different goals, before slipping into drug abuse and living on the streets. They took me to their rooms, to their abandoned houses, to the drug hubs. These are the people no one wants to see during their nice walks around the renovated Intendente, drinking aromatic gin and tonic.
But these people could be any one of us. Shortly after seeing her for the first time at the stairwell converted into an injection room, I spotted her walking down the street.
Someone standing next to me exclaimed:. Soraia looks so skinny. She was so hot when she first arrived here. That same night, at the injection room stairwell where I met her, and photographed her smoking crack, I realized that I wanted her as the central focus for my work.
I saw her again, a few days later, walking hastily down the street to Largo do Intendente, with a friend. I said hello and tried to walk alongside them:. And they kept on walking, crossed the street and met a guy who was waiting. The three of them got in a taxi that speeded down the avenue.
And then after a frustrating day, hanging out for hours at the bars in Rua dos Anjos, drinking, so that I could approach the girls sitting at the counter, looking out for any character of my work and with whom I intended to follow up with.
