Images to Educate and Inspire: Child Labor and the Global Village- Photography for Social Change

Abstract

Children, Youth and Environments 14(1), 2004 Images to Educate and Inspire: Child Labor and the Global Village- Photography for Social Change1 S. L. Bachman Julia Dean Nick Madigan Citation: Bachman, Sarah L., Julia Dean and Nick Madigan. (2004). “Images to Educate and Inspire: Child Labor and the Global Village- Photography for Social Change.” Children, Youth and Environments 14(1): 190-207. Comment on This Field Report Keywords: child labor, photography© 2004 Children, Youth and Environments Images to Educate and Inspire 192 Contents Assembling the Team ...................................................................... 193 What Is “Child Labor” and what Role Does “Environment” Play?............. 194 Complexity..................................................................................... 195 Achievements................................................................................. 196 News Media ................................................................................. 196 Exhibits....................................................................................... 196 Education.................................................................................... 196 Hopes......................................................................................... 196 Lessons ......................................................................................... 198 Paying the Bills ............................................................................ 198 Sticking by a Plan......................................................................... 198 Summing Up .................................................................................. 199 Stories .......................................................................................... 199 Brian Finke: Sankar Sells Water at the Railway Station ...................... 199 Clarence Williams: The Army’s Appeal in a War-Torn Land ................. 201 Jon Warren: Recycling Garbage for School Fees................................ 202 Judy Walgren: Trafficked From Nepal to India, Chasing a Dream......... 204 Gigi Cohen: Josiméne’s Story: When a House Is Not a Child Worker’s Home ......................................................................................... 205 Ernesto Bazan: Mornings are for School, Afternoons are for Molding Bricks ................................................................................................. 207 Endnote......................................................................................... 208 Images to Educate and Inspire 193 A small boy walked into the railroad car, as the train click-clacked along the tracks that span India. The boy was small-boned and young-looking: perhaps five years old, or eight, or ten– it was impossible to tell. He wore a shirt and shorts. His feet were bare. The boy clutched a broom made of stiff fibers, about two feet long. He swung the broom on the bare floor beneath the hard seats, sweeping dust, peanut shells, crumbs, bits of paper, and other filth into a pile in the center aisle. Some passengers lifted their feet so that he could sweep the linoleum below. Most ignored the boy and his broom. When the boy lifted his hand, asking for baksheesh, only a few passengers looked in his eyes or placed a coin on his open palm. Julia Dean, a Los Angeles freelance photographer, watched the boy as he swept and begged his way from one end of the railroad car to another. She had seen the boy climb on board at one station. Many stations later, she watched him climb off, cross the tracks, and climb on another train going in the opposite direction. The boy touched Dean’s heart. She decided right then to use photography to do whatever she could to help child laborers, such as the boy she had watched on the train. Assembling the Team More than three years later, Child Labor and the Global Village: Photography for Social Change was born. Dean decided to assemble a team of photographers to produce a series of stories about child labor around the world. She was inspired by the work of great documentary photographers she had studied or worked with, such as Berenice Abbott, a pioneering woman with whom Dean had apprenticed, and the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photo-journalists of the 1930s and 1940s. The FSA team– whose 11 core members included such luminaries as Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans- made images of such power that they still define the Great Depression in the eyes of many Americans. To assemble her own team, Dean began with five talented photographers she knew personally. All had worked with Dean when she operated a stock house (a service that supplies stock photographs to users, who pay for a limited number of uses) that carried photographs on themes related to economic development and humanitarian issues. To choose the other five, Dean conducted a contest. She placed advertisements in photography magazines inviting photographers to send in their portfolios. From the pool of 143 portfolios received, photo editors– from the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and National Geographic– looked for work that both was aesthetically strong and told a clear narrative story. The final team selected included: Ernesto Bazan, Gigi Cohen, Julia Dean, Marie Dorigny, Brian Finke, Joel Sartore, Al Schaben, Judy Walgren, Jon Warren, Clarence Images to Educate and Inspire 194 Williams, and Francesco Zizola. All were full-time freelance or staff photographers...