the photographer explains : “i was just coming out of a difficult period that was going to change my life forever and my shrink was adamant: i was doing just fine. just fine? what about this nagging sense of dread that wouldn’t leave me alone? and my sleepless nights? she told me that these problems were certainly due to a breakdown in communication with my body. so I began trying everything I could think of –yoga, acupuncture, massage, auricular therapy, sophrology– the list goes on, without any measurable result. It was only when I was at my wit’s end that a woman I know asked me if I ever jerked off. this was a route I had never considered before. i was 33 years old.” drawing on her personal experience, the photographer frédérique barraja came to wonder why female masturbation is always shrouded in mystery. there is a deeply entrenched taboo on self-discovery and self-stimulation by women that years of feminist activism and the sexual revolution have not managed to uproot. talking about this subject with her friends, frédérique realised just how much women could be in the dark. even among university-educated women and others most likely to bring a more evolved perspective to this issue, many had strange ideas like “we pee from our clitoris, too, don’t we?” she quickly came up against one of the most baffling paradoxes of our time: sex is all over the media, we talk about it more freely every day, but on the subject of feminine pleasure people come up with all sorts of crazy theories, so much so that the truth gets lost in the noise. frédérique then decided to initiate two new projects at the same time: a documentary on female masturbation currently in production and a series of photographic portraits entitled “les branleuses” (women wankers), which would be presented at slott in paris, during the month of june 2010.