Pigalle

When the Hamburg photographer Roswitha Hecke moved to Paris, she rented a room in Pigalle with an eye to photographing the neighborhood's prostitutes. She had presumed her subjects would be women, but she found herself living on a block known for its transsexuals. She stayed for months, settling in, making friends, getting closer to her unexpected subjects. Their comfort in her presence is clear in these uncannily intimate portraits. Back at home she returned to a career in film photography, where her collaborators have included Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Schroeter, and in artist portraits, where her subjects have included William S. Burroughs, Paul Bowles and Ian McEwan. Hecke brings a matter-of-fact clarity, and a special kind of intimacy, to both stardom and the underworld.