Dana Popa

not Natasha

September 1 - October 2, 2011

"not Natasha" is a series of compelling color photographs that traces the tragically fractured and damaged lives of young girls and women caught up in human trafficking for prostitution within Europe. Artist Dana Popa is a native of Romania, and her focus is on women who originate from the neighbouring Republic of Moldova, the poorest nation in Europe and from which thousands choose to migrate each year.

Popa photographed these women in a variety of environments that give stark and revealing context to their tragic stories. To balance the hard documentary facts of the message, the images in the series are filled with a sense of loss, reverie, and foreboding. And there is a wider message about identity since the faces are rarely seen. Popa's work displays the hard authenticity and passion born of local knowledge and a strong sense of the complexities of the situation and its deep injustice.

"Natasha is a nickname given to prostitutes with Eastern European looks, and sex trafficked girls hate it. I photographed sex trafficked women after they had returned to Moldova to show how they managed to live in a world that knows nothing of their suffering, and with the huge shadow of fear that their mother or husband might find out and throw them out in the street."

Dana Popa graduated in 2006 with an MA in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism from London College of Communication. She was awarded the Jerwood Photography prize for the first series of her project, 'not Natasha,' and most recently won the first prize for Centre's Project Competition, Sante Fe, USA in 2010. Autograph ABP, a photographic arts agency that promotes cultural identity and human rights commissioned part of the project and published it as an artists' book, not Natasha, in 2009.

Presentation of "not Natasha" at Blue Sky is a collaboration with Autograph ABP.