Hana Jakrlova

Big sister

Big Sister is an internet brothel in Prague. Clients have sex for free, as long as they sign a contract agreeing to being filmed. All rooms are equipped with web cams, and the entire action goes out live on the Internet. Tens of thousands of people worldwide enjoy the live virtual reality for a fee, paid by credit card, on the company’s website. The prostitutes in Big Sister do the job of their choice; the clients are generally normal, mostly nice guys.

I have never been attracted to investigative photography. As much as I appreciate and respect the work of photographers who capture the darker aspects of life, I find documenting the «unbearable lightness» and the «decisive moments» of ordinary existence more intriguing. There is not much to investigate, at Big Sister: the whole thing is legal and nobody is being mistreated or abused. Working there was a challenge, a different kind of journey than my previous projects.

Big Sister is very much of the 21st century: of the relativity of things — and of charms and the dangers of relativizing things. As many others, I have experienced how life has been changed and challenged by the Internet and how it has been made easier and more complicated at the same time. Physical distance is no longer a big issue. Relationships and intimacy have both been enabled and relativized by instant and permanent virtual communication and a (sometimes false) sense of closeness. Issues of «truth» and «integrity» are being raised — and sometimes conveniently ignored. Virtual reality became a question, an obsession... and an alternative.

Mirroring our life with the Internet, Big Sister shows the fine line between virtual and «real» realities. We all experiment on the net and questions are being asked... even if just to re-assure, that if life is a playground, one can’t play for free. In Big Sister, everybody has different justifications, and everybody faces different questions: Some answers can be found, others still roam out there, in the vast space of «Cyberia». And a price is being paid.

Hana Jakrlova is a Czech photographer born in 1969, currently based in Paris and living also in Prague and New York.

After studying architecture in Prague, she enrolled the documentary photography program at the Institute of Creative Photography in the Czech Republic and subsequently at the International Center of Photography in New York.

Hana travelled in Europe extensively, between 1997 and 2003. This personal journey around European cities resulted in subjective documentary series, «Europeans». Photography book «In the Meantime» Europe" with the foreword by Vaclav Havel was published in 2006, in co-production of Czech, Dutch and English publishers.

The «Europeans» were featured in the Czech Photography of the 20th Century exhibition in Museum of Applied Arts in Prague and the Contemporary Czech Photography exhibition in the Leica gallery in New York. The «Europeans» collection, as well as other photography series based in and outside of Europe («End of Elsewhere», «Russian Holidays», «Holy Cities: India», «Sudetenland», «Solitude: New York») have been published in number of photography magazines and they are found in museums, institutions and private collections at home and abroad, including the Camera Work Gallery in Berlin, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Bibliotheque National de France, the Czech National Bank and the Museum of Applied Arts in Prague.

In 2005, Hana begun photographing the Big Sister, Internet brothel in Prague. Fascinated by the ways Internet changes our world, and challenged by the subject, Hana explored the extreme, surprising and world-wide effect, Internet has on our sense of intimacy and privacy. Documenting the absurd and existential «decisive moments» recorded on the World Wide Web, Hana completed the series which can be seen as the sign of our times.

The «Big Sister» has been awarded and exhibited at the Arles Rencontres in 2007. It is currently being exhibited at the Museum of Photography in Charleroi, Belgium, and it has been featured in several photography and art magazines.

The «Big Sister» series is going to be published as photography book.

The work has been included into several important collections and museum exhibitions around the world, such as the Wilson Centre for Photography, Museum of Photography in Charleroi, and Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.