6/10/2023 0 Comments Stephanie sinclair lightsmithDoes that suggest attitudes toward child marriage are changing? I had learned that after the earthquake in 2015 Durga and Niruta's village had been decimated, and I wanted to re-visit.ĭurga does not want his daughters to marry young. It was made in 2016 and is called "Nepal: A Fragile State," about a couple in Nepal, a child bride and groom, Durga and Niruta, whose wedding I attended and photographed on a previous trip to Nepal about ten years ago. One of those countries is Nepal, where you made a film featured at the Through a Woman's Eyes Film Festival in April. Since then, I have covered child marriage in more than ten countries. I had heard about child marriage but had not realized it was still being practiced, even with pre-pubescent children. When I met her she was still in the hospital, in a lot of pain from her burns, and I learned that she was married when she was nine. Now you don't do something as extreme as this very painful suicide attempt except out of fear. She had set herself on fire because, she told me, she had broken her husband's television set. Though I did not realize it at the time, it was when I was in Afghanistan in 2003 and I about girls self-immolating, setting themselves on fire. When did you begin your series of photos and videos exploring child marriage, "Too Young to Wed"? The real courage belongs to the girls for enduring such trauma and sharing their stories, which they do because they don't want to see these things happen to others. I kept seeing girls who were marrying so young and struggling in very immediate ways - from domestic violence, cyclical poverty, being more prone to HIV, having higher risks in childbirth - and I thought that deserves as much attention as any conflict zone. I was more interested in the intimate stories near the front lines. She passed away in the process of trying to tell the stories of some of the most vulnerable people in the world. I don't profess to have Anja's courage in relentlessly documenting the horrors on the front lines throughout the world. The awards jury cited the "intellectual and emotional courage required to continue to bear witness to scenes of despair." How would you define courage in the context of photography?Ĭourage is relative. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. We spoke to Sinclair, who was born in Miami and lives in upstate New York, about her award, her photos and videos of the travails of child brides around the world, and about recently becoming a mother herself. Now she has won the Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award, granted by the International Women's Media Foundation and named in memory of the Pulitzer Prize-winning German war photographer killed in Afghanistan in 2014. Stephanie Sinclair is the winner of the 2017 Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award.įor 15 years, documentary photographer Stephanie Sinclair has focused her camera on what she calls "everyday brutality" - the violence, genital mutilation and forced marriage endured by girls and young women around the world, including in Afghanistan, India and Nigeria.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |