I think beauty is the splendor of truth, so if the people I portray think they're beautiful, they're beautiful. I don't make them that way.

Sometimes the presence of a camera is like opening a door, because many people want what Andy Warhol called "15 minutes of fame." But prostitutes don't want that.

I don't aestheticize anything. I don't even use lights. The working girls do one thing all day: They make themselves pretty. That's their job and their money. In a way, I had the best makeup artists, hairdressers, and art designers in the world.

A young man in Bangladesh can't even hold hands with a young woman. Without marriage there is no kissing, no holding hands, no going anywhere. So young boys can only go to the brothels for sex before marriage.

On one hand, they [prostitutes] don't struggle because it's simply their life. In Mexico and elsewhere, once they get out of these places [brothels] they have a pretty square life.

If you connect with someone just once, that's something. But if you can connect twice, that's something else.

I've made many documentaries, but prostitution was the hardest in terms of gaining the trust of the people being filmed.