May 3, 2007
Contemporary Global Slavery
Chris Steele-Perkins
Jang Jum Dol was 14 and on the way to do laundry when she was taken by a Japanese man and told she was going to a factory to make money, but she was tied up in a house with an 11-year-old girl and then taken with some other girls to Manchuria. She tried to escape and was captured and beaten and kept at a sex station for the Japanese military which was surrounded by a wire fence. She had three children there and two of them died, the surviving girl had a weak heart. When she came back to Korea with her daughter after the war she was so poor they had to sleep in the streets. Chris Steele-Perkins/Magnum Photos
2007 marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery within the British Empire. However, two hundred years later, it is estimated that 27 million people across the globe are still enslaved. To help raise awareness of this ongoing human rights crisis, Autograph ABP has commissioned nine Magnum photographers to document slavery as it exists around the world in the anniversary year of its abolition. A major exhibition of the work will open at the Royal Festival Hall in London in February 2008, and will include work on bonded labourers, child labourers, trade slavery, people trafficking, and domestic and sex slavery. Chris Steele-Perkins shares his experience of photographing "Comfort Women" in Korea for the project.
I am sitting in a fire station in South Korea waiting for an incident on the quietest day of the year - so it seems an appropriate moment to write something briefly as it was in South Korea at the end of last year that I did my work for the Slavery project photographing Comfort Women.
Comfort Women was the term used to disguise the use of women as sex slaves to the Japanese military during the Pacific (Second World) War. It happened, not just in Korea, but throughout the region Japan controlled. Some of the Korean women have been particularly courageous and outspoken about what happened to them and organised into a group fighting for recognition of the crimes committed to them and for compensation from the Japanese government. In other countries this openness and organisation has not happened in the same way.
For this reason I chose to work in Korea as I would be able to meet, photograph and talk to some of these women as they had already stepped forward to testify. Think for a moment what a sacrifice that is - to stand up in public, as an old woman, because they kept their shameful past well hidden up until recently, and tell how, for years, you had been systematically raped and abused by the troops of an invading army. It puts you beyond dirt. Yet it is a tribute to the support they have had in the new Korea, that they are now generally considered with great respect and sympathy.
Who knows how many there were? We will never know as most are now dead, and only a few of those remaining have been able to face publicly acknowledging what happened to them over 50 years ago.
These women are some of the oldest surviving slaves and I wanted to include them in this project as a reminder of slavery far removed from the African history, but similar in that it was sponsored and condoned by a national government, not some criminal gang.
I chose to make very simply portraits of them, all in a similar way, and interview them in order to use the portrait and a part of their testimony as the way to represent them in the project. Along with a contextualising text it needs no further embellishment.
It was an emotional experience as just about all of those who agreed to participate broke down in tears as they spoke of what happened to them. I did not photograph this, as I wanted to photograph them as I saw them: strong women who had survived with dignity. Women I admired.
Chris Steele-Perkins, April 3, 2007
Contemporary Global Slavery is produced by Hayward Gallery Touring and generously supported by Arts Council England, MTV Europe Foundation, Concern and Christian Aid.
Autograph ABP: www.autograph-abp.co.uk
Hayward Gallery Touring: www.southbankcentre.co.uk/visual-arts/hayward-touring
Arts Council England: www.artscouncil.org.uk
MTV Europe Foundation: http://217.69.40.171/english/fym/mtvef/
Concern: www.concern.net
Christian Aid: www.christianaid.org.uk/campaign/trade/basics.htm
Published on the Magnum Blog on May 3, 2007
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