We Cry in Silence

Published September 2024

FotoEvidence, 2022 | $50

Text in English, Hindi, Bengali

There’s absolutely nothing beautiful about human trafficking. It is one of the most brutal crimes on this planet, yet photojournalist Smita Sharma’s photographs defy the horror, refusing to give in to it, and ensuring that beauty and dignity have the final word. 

This compact hand-sewn hardback book packs a powerful presence. At first glance, the rich colorful photo spreads that include unique quarter-page foldouts, flowers, rooms sheathed in beautiful fabrics, and children jumping rope, seem innocent enough. What could be wrong? Why would these subjects be crying, as the title forewarns? Reading the foreword by Dr. PM Nair, an international expert on human trafficking, the context becomes clear. “Trafficking in persons is the gravest abuse and exploitation of the rights, dignity and freedom of human beings…all of us are, in fact, duty holders in the process of preventing and combatting human trafficking… Sharma’s work both brings out the intimacy with the survivors, inspiring empathy and reveals the psychological manipulation of the traffickers.” Nair explains further that Indian law prohibits identifying trafficking victims, so the job of visually depicting survivors is extremely difficult. In Sharma’s photographs, “shadows are as significant as the light in her work. They speak volumes.” 

The book is organized into sections of full-bleed photo spreads divided by bright yellow text on sky blue color panels. The GIRLS section shows young girls going to school, riding bicycles, fetching water. All seems normal, until you reach the back of the book to find detailed descriptions of their horrifying stories. I am usually not a fan of hunting down captions at the back of a book, but in this instance, it seems like Sharma was intentional in not shaming or stereotyping the girls from the get-go. Looking at the photographs, you assume nothing is awry. But that is the point—these girls should be viewed with dignity, their whole being not defined by their trafficking stories. This is not avoiding or delaying their stories, it is showing their strength.

With each section, TRAIN STATION, THE POLICE, MISSING, THE BROTHEL, the painful process of trafficking becomes clearer. Girls swept up at train stations, lured into work, missing, forced into sex work, or in the case of Indigenous girls, into domestic servitude. What’s even more horrifying is that often the girls’ parents are involved in the trafficking. 

Yellow pen illustrations by Nitin Chawla and Loveleen Chawla intersperse the photographs, part of an accompanying zine insert to raise awareness of trafficking and how to seek help. Emergency call numbers in large blue text also appear in the final sections of the book for how to seek help in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. 

The last section, THE SHELTER, features some of the most beautiful images in the book—colorful portraits of survivors posing with flowers, their faces in shadow. From their postures, it is clear there is a sense of release, relief, and even resilience. They are safe. But again, half page foldouts behind the flowers reveal the details of what happened, in gruesome detail, to the women. But, their beauty is the first thing you see.

Despite working on this project for over six years, Sharma says she never intended to work on the issue of human trafficking. She was “sucked into this dark world…the topic chose me rather than the other way around.” In 2015, she met a 17-year-old girl in West Bengal, India, who had received a random call from a man who said she was beautiful and in love with her and that they should meet. When they did, he had a gift for her and proposed marriage. They met his parents, who were not really his parents but part of the scheme. She believed his charms and ended up locked in a brothel 1,000 miles away from home in Delhi. The story left Sharma “utterly shocked and distraught.” She was compelled to look into why it was so easy to trap a girl, why were they so vulnerable? Patriarchy is deeply ingrained in the societies of these regions along with deprivation of affection and care for young girls. They develop a sense of dependency on their trafficker. 

Sharma says, “Human trafficking stares us right in the face but it is so perverse, and we are so discomforted by the hard truths, that we simply ignore it and block it from our consciousness.” 

As this book so powerfully shows, we all need to do more to stop this atrocity. Girls deserve to grow up in dignity with self-worth and without stigma or shame. No one should cry in silence.

—Barbara Ayotte