In December 2006 I began a two-month stay in Beijing. I was struck by various social and cultural mannerisms, particularly people’s interaction with public spaces, and the points of difference between this new environment and my life in Brisbane. Points of difference are immediately noticed in a new place and the nature of public mark-making drew me in. Phone numbers are scrawled onto walls across the city (and later painted over). Some offer forged drivers’ licenses or university degrees. Most numbers, however, belong to prostitutes.

All the Wrong Places is an exploration into the human psyche. City officials proudly proclaim to have effectively stopped prostitution in Beijing, but in reality it has merely been pushed from the inner city to the outer suburbs. An already marginalised group is pushed further to fringes. The series is an investigation of interpersonal relationships and the nexus between personal and public domains. More broadly, All the Wrong Places is about trying to pinpoint one’s place in the world. The service provider is doing her best to put food on the table. The customer (presumably) takes comfort in a false intimacy that is mediated by money.

The title is taken from the song Lookin’ for Love. It’s a syrupy country number that is full of clichés, yet it is a universal tale about the pursuit of companionship. These women’s stories, however, are very different. They are not touting in an effort to find a mate, but to survive. The sex industry is fraught with danger, exploitation and violence, yet for many they have no option but to partake in the world’s oldest profession. And while their phone numbers are literally sprayed across walls, the people involved are nowhere to be seen. They are hidden away, anonymous; their identities removed and replaced with numbers like a barcode or, more tellingly, a prison number.

The series was photographed on an early 1960s medium format camera. Idiosyncrasies inherent in the old equipment reflect the nature of the village within the city in which the photographs were taken. It is an area that has been sheltered from Beijing’s recent rapid development but which inevitably be razed and rebuilt as modern apartments, probably within the next five years.