Pedro Orrego

FLORIAN FRANKE - episode 3-10

It feels a little like hunting an unpredictable, somewhat dangerous animal. We sit in a New York yellow cab, cruising that city's seediest neighborhoods, in search of stylish streetwalking prostitutes who would be willing to let us shoot them in provocative poses. "It's a slow night" photographer Florian Franke keeps saying, "I don't understand it, on a Thursday, it's usually crawling with them by this time." It's three am.

Florian once worked as a fashion photographer in Milan. Grunge was in, and heroin chic was the fashion extension of it. He quickly grew tired of shooting innocent, fresh debutantes dressed like burned out junkies. He decided that if he was going to shoot gritty urban scenes, it was going to be with real people.
Shortly after moving to New York from Munich, he began to drive a taxi to make some quick money. "I saw the prostitutes, and I found them so cool and exciting" he explains. Finally, the kinds of models he'd always wanted to shoot. Franke, applied everything he'd learned in the fashion world, with renewed gusto, to his new subject.

"I think if we go to the meat packing district, we'll be sure to find some." Jim (the cameraman) and I are starting to lose hope. The streets are dead. To keep us interested, Florian tells us stories of his confrontations with pimps. Not so long ago for example, he had been pursued by a pimp with a gun, and had been forced to drive his cab full force into him. The pimp had managed to smash the passenger side window, spraying glass all over the girl Florian was with. "It would have made a great picture, if she wasn't so upset." he jokes.

Meat packing district, 4 am. At long last, we see some working girls. Florian parks the cab, gets out and begins to give two foxy transsexuals his spiel. Jim & I hold our breaths. Yes, they are walking towards us. Yes! They get in the cab… right beside me. Bored, presumably from a slow night, they begin to have some fun with me. "You look like Ricky Martin" one smiles, "let me touch your dick…c'mon don't be scared." Jim is laughing hysterically in the front seat, and I'm pressing the camera bag down on my lap with a little more force.
After a hot photo shoot in a particularly seedy side street, we are ready to call it a night. "I think I got some really good stuff!" Florian says, "you never know what you are going to get, that's part of the fun." He drives off, and we see him run a series of red lights.

Pedro Orrego
Associate Producer, SEXTV