ABSTRACT
From 2000 to 2004, I photographed human traffi cking, prostitution 2 and aids in Southeast Asia for non-governmental organizations (NGO), international organizations, and donors. My stories were displayed in airports or shopping malls, and were published in numerous books and international magazines or used by development organizations for campaigning purposes. My fi rst immersion in Mumbai’s infamous Falkland Road red light district at the age of 25 deeply shocked me, and as a result I decided to commit to activism. To do so I started to photograph sex traffi cking in Asia simply to raise awareness in Western countries. While studying fi lmmaking and photojournalism as an undergraduate student, I became par - tisan of the humanist social photography tradition embodied by Magnum Photos photographers, and above all by the notorious American Life Magazine photojournalist Eugene Smith. Following the basic principles of documentary photography, my work always tried to depict life as it was avoiding staging and voyeurism. My goal was to tell the story of thousands of Asian women exerting prostitution by focusing on their living and working conditions, as well as the social relationships they weave between them, with their families or with their clients. After four years of intense fi eldwork in Southeast Asia, my images suddenly began to lose meaning, and to all look alike. How could an Indian, a Burmese or a Cambodian prostitute have the same story? Why does the same narrative scheme seem to reappear again and again? How can a narrator mechanically repeat the same testimony over the years without being aware of the replication process? How do media and NGOs represent sexually exploited children in general? The repetition of the same testimonies through photographed subjects, but also media or NGO communication services iterative demand for identical shed-tear stories, foreshadowed the existence of a conveyed image about sexually exploited children. The questions raised by this chapter emerge naturally: how can a narrator reproduce mechanically the same story during years, subconsciously or not, without being aware of this process? How has this representation been constructed for the last 20 years? What are the implications? And if social actors were not only victims, who are they?
