Bought & Sold: The Exhibit

"Bought & Sold: Voices of Human Trafficking " speaks to the experiences and suffering of the hundreds of thousands of men, women and children caught up in slavery's web and asks the viewer to consider their plight from their perspective. Looking outward through the victims’ eyes, the images challenge us to imagine the daily horrors, tedium, desperation and ambiguities of their lives -- and to take action.

As a photographer and artist, I create this work by involving trafficking survivors in a process that explores their experience and helps transform how they see themselves and how the public sees them. Since the resulting imagery does not reveal the subject’s identity, their recorded stories are used as counterpoint to bring the actual sounds of each person’s ordeal, suffering and resolve into the artwork.

As a traveling outdoor art installation in well-traversed public spaces, "Bought & Sold" drives home the point that trafficking exists in plain sight, everywhere and in every country.

-- Kay Chernush