DAY 330

SOCIAL & POLITICAL COMMENTARY

Child Labor

CAPTURING ITS ENORMITY

Perpetrators of child labor cover up or prevent the truth from being revealed. Capturing the truth can be dangerous and lead a photographer into unknown areas and countries. Although most countries have laws designed to prevent child labor, many do not enforce them. Children at work in places that are dangerous, working long hours every day, receiving low wages, with no opportunity to acquire schooling and without the concept of hope or a future are victims and a missing link in the community. Photographing their plight is a calling.

Photographs depicting child labor visually establish that the task being asked of the child is larger than the size and knowledge of the child. Capturing visual imbalance happens by using scale to portray the distortion—child against machine, child with a stack or pile of required work for the day, child mixed in with an adult population of workers. In doing so, the photograph conveys the enormity, the monumental crime of tying a child to adult burdens. Added to scale are the revelation of working conditions—cramped quarters, not enough light, dirty facilities. —MLR