Andrea Motta: 1st Moments in Greece
Trade – Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation
© imagr from "Trade - Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation
The book “Trade – Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation” is a photographic documentary of young women being trafficked, into the sex trade from and to the whole world under our eyes, in an informal way and immense volume.
© VASA and Andrea Motta
The book “Trade – Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation” is a photographic documentary of young women being trafficked, into the sex trade from and to the whole world under our eyes, in an informal way and immense volume.
My introduction to the world of trafficking happened almost by chance.
In 1996 I was living and studying in New York City. I started photographing a Brazilian stripper in Queens and although she was there voluntarily, on the periphery of her world there were whispers of new competition from women from the former Soviet Union. They were taller and blonder and, because they were being trafficked, they were cheaper.
The photographs that comprise “Trade” were taken in twenty different countries over a period of eighteen years. “Trade” is a kaleidoscopic view of the many places and faces of trafficking that I went on to photograph. Within this kaleidoscope are cycles of poverty, desperation, oppression, and sometimes of liberation and rehabilitation being drawn and redrawn, criss-crossing borders and generations.
The collection evokes the ugly normalcy of trafficking, showing us that it has become so ubiquitous as to be almost banal. If we are anticipating shock at extremes of violence and depravity, or a stark break with the familiar, we are instead more surprised at how mundane this parallel reality is. It is evidently a place where far too many people are forced to make a life.
According to the Global Report on Trafficking in Persons launched by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) each year, an estimated 800,000 women and children are trafficked across international borders—though additional numbers of women and young girls are trafficked within countries. There are at least 20.9 million people trafficked worldwide into the sex industry and forced labor which (79%) is for sexual exploitation predominantly women and girls.
My aim of “Trade” is to show all sides of the human trafficking for sexual exploitation; to make people aware that young women are being trafficked in subtle ways to almost everywhere. It is to sensitize people, that at least 8 out of 10 foreign girls working in the brothels, massages parlors, spas and strip clubs, either in public or hidden locations are trafficked. These women and children are not there, working as prostitutes on their own will, just because they want a way out of their lives, vulnerable or not. But they are there because there are people taking advantage of their situation of being trafficked, tortured and threatened.
© Andrea Motta
Book Overview: Trade – Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation