DOMESTIC SLAVERY


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France has abolished slavery 160 years ago. Each year, however, France, the Committee against Modern Slavery (CCEM) receive nearly 300 reports : close to home, in major urban centers, suburban or rural areas, people are beaten, humiliated, sometimes maintained for years in a state of servitude and complete destitution. These stories, sadly, are similar. It is mostly women (88% of alerts), often young (30% are under age), who left a foreign country on the promise of a future more lenient, a training or a job. Once in France, their papers are confiscated. Wages and school are not an issue anymore : most work up to twelve hours per day to domestic chores, kidnapped and abused by those they believed their benefactors.
This work, done in collaboration with the CCEM, hopes to increase public awareness of modern slavery. Going back to the places where these were incurred violence, Raphael Dallaporta chose a photo of architecture “the most neutral as possible”. Wherever the eye would find a singularity, an explanation – in the absence of any justification – to cruelty, he shows us the contrary, ordinary, familiar facades. The texts of Ondine Millot echoe what happened “there”. There, behind these windows sometimes without curtains, these facades surrounded by other facades, houses, apartments, neighbours and passers-by.

Raphael Dallaporta, lives in Paris. His work on landmines has been presented at the 35th edition of the Rencontres de la photograpghie d’Arles.
Ondine Millot, journalist and works at the Society department of the daily newspaper Libération, lives and works in Paris.

photographs by Raphael DALLAPORTA - textes de Ondine MILLOT

Sponsor : Comité Contre l'Esclavage Moderne (CCEM)

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