DISPOSABLE PEOPLE:

Contemporary Global Slavery

 

A Hayward Touring exhibition in collaboration with Autograph ABP and Magnum Photos

 

"Slavery in the contemporary world is what it has been since the beginning of human history - the complete control of one person by another. Violence is at the heart of that control, and the aim is profit."  - Kevin Bales, President of 'Free the Slaves'

 

Today, over 200 years after the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, an estimated 27 million people worldwide are still locked into slavery and servitude across the globe. This major new photography exhibition, organised by Hayward Touring in collaboration with the photographic agencies Autograph ABP and Magnum Photos takes an in-depth look at the prevalence of slavery and injustice in the 21st century through the lenses of eight internationally acclaimed documentary photographers. The exhibition began at the Royal Festival, Southbank Centre in London and comes to New Art Exchange in Nottingham as part of a national tour. 

 

 

These eight projects, commissioned by Autograph ABP, are by members of Magnum, the world’s leading photographic agency. All the participating photographers have a strong interest in human rights and a record for world-class photo-journalism.  In the ‘heroic’ era of photo-journalism, roughly from the Spanish Civil War until the late 1960s, it seemed that a single image could define the greatest human dramas and catastrophes.  In our age of digital image manipulation, camera phones and 24-hour news media, the exhibition examines the power of the documentary photograph to record and illuminate human existence.

 

The photographers and subject matters are: 

Abbas – documenting child labour in Bangladesh

Ian Berry – examines the effects of international trade rules on farmers in Ghana

Stuart Franklin – exploring chattel slavery in Sudan

Jim Goldberg – documenting the trafficking of young people from Eastern Europe

Susan Meiselas – investigating the conditions of Indonesian women working in Singapore as domestic servants

Paolo Pellegrin – documenting Haitian ‘Restaveks’ (child slaves)

Chris Steele-Perkins – documenting South Korean women who were held as sex slaves by the Japanese in World War II and are still seeking restitution

Alex Webb – photographing Haitian cane workers held in organised bonded labour in the Dominican Republic

 

 

The exhibition has been conceived and curated by Mark Sealy, Director of Autograph ABP, the international non-profit making photographic agency.  Featuring over 100 photographs in a wide range of formats the exhibition will include commentaries by the photographers and contextual material produced in consultation with Professor Kevin Bales, President of the US based organization, Free the Slaves, and a world expert on modern slavery.

 

 

Images by Bartosz Kali