David L. Parker
Before Their Time: The World of Child Labor
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| Welder, India, 1995 |
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Physician and photographer David L. Parker takes us beyond the headlines
and into the textile factories, stone quarries, and garbage dumps where children
are forced--by unscrupulous adults or by lack of any other economic opportunity--
into the desperate cycle of child labor. His haunting and sensitive portrayal
of these children preserves their dignity and humanity while exposing
their often tragic circumstances.
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| Hauling bricks out of a kiln, Nepal 2002 |
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| Tin miner, Bolivia, 1998 |
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Child labor has all but disappeared in the United States,
eliminated in the wake of reform movements and the passage of laws
such as the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. But around the world,
an estimated 350 million children continue to sacrifice their childhoods,
their educations and often their health working in exploitative and unsafe conditions.
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Parker's photographs thrust another
reality before our eyes.
David Parker has crouched with his camera
in cramped tunnels deep in
Bolivian tin mines.
He has posed as a clothing importer
to sneak photographs in
Indian sweatshops.
He has talked his way into
brick factories in Nepal
and climbed mountains of
rotting trash in the
garbage dumps outside Acapulco, Mexico
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| Hauling animal waste from a tannery, Bangladesh, 1993 |
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"Dr. Parker's work is compassionate, direct, and intimate.
He has provided important historical documentation of
an outgoing human rights problem. This may be the most
comprehensive examination of child labor since
Lewis Hine photographed child labor over one hundred years ago."
--Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and United Nations
High Commisssioner for Human Rights (1997-2002)--
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