A chair seat that has broken away from the frame, telling a tale of falling off one’s chair onto a false floor. A face hiding behind a brunette wig, telling the story of people disappearing behind a tissue of lies. An arm showing the marks that a belt wielded in anger can leave behind. Still visible now, but even after they disappear they remain forever. A white bed sheet. If one thinks of a wedding, death may be the bridegroom. And a terse newspaper ad, circled in black. One suspects the circle will reveal itself to be a noose, or as a tunnel from which there is no escape. More likely the entrance to hell itself. These are subtle signs that appear next to the women or in rooms that they have long since left behind. Other girls will follow, and with them the same delicate fragility that provides the basic motif for this essay. Moldova, the poorhouse of Europe, is a hub for an industry that is just as illegal as it is profitable: the trade in sex slaves. The later stages of suffering are well known: prompt delivery to the meat market a bordello, rape, beatings, confiscation of passports, the pressure towards drug addiction. Often schizophrenia is the result, followed by AIDS. A vicious circle that the Romanian photographer Irina Dana Popa has analysed in all its subtlety. Her pictures are of a screaming silence, of women for whom only one pathway to flight remains: the ghastly realm of inner emigration.
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