00:01Smita Sharma starts her day early.
00:04She is heading to a rural village in India's northern state of Haryana.
00:09Every assignment begins with observation and something has caught her attention.
00:26A brief conversation follows. Within moments, she earns the trust and permission to click.
00:35I am Smita Sharma, a photojournalist and visual storyteller based in Delhi.
00:41And I specialize in social issues, human rights, gender and environmental issues.
00:53An award-winning photojournalist, visual storyteller and speaker,
00:58her work amplifies the voices of those whose stories rarely make headlines.
01:03I am more aligned to working on things, issues, which are not seen,
01:09where awareness is minimum or sometimes where there is no acknowledgement also.
01:15I love investigation. I love digging. I love seeing what is beneath the surface.
01:21Today, she is on a long-term assignment documenting the trafficking of women.
01:26Investigating this hidden world comes with immense risks,
01:30often taking her into hostile and dangerous environments.
01:34In Northern Uttar Pradesh, I was working on trafficking.
01:39I was meeting a girl and that region is heavily into sand mining.
01:44And there is sand mafia.
01:45And somehow the village headmen, of course, got to know that there is a car that has come from outside.
01:51There is an outsider because obviously I am an outsider, even if I am an Indian, you know.
01:55There were like 12 men and they had bicycle chains in their fist.
02:00Some of them, I think, they were high on marijuana.
02:04They did not look very normal.
02:06They had really bloody red eyes and they could not stand still and they were very agitated.
02:12So it was very difficult to handle a situation like that.
02:15Because first of all, of course, it's my safety. I want to get out of there safely.
02:20But it's also the girl and the family where I am.
02:24I don't want them to fall in trouble after I leave, right?
02:28And you know, village headmen, they are very powerful people, right?
02:33I started talking to the men as like, why are you angry?
02:38Can we sit down and talk calmly?
02:40And I did not raise my temper or I was completely calm.
02:45And I completely, as you say, surrendered to them.
02:49So immediately, I saw that there was a kind of the pressure had gone down a little.
02:54They were still angry, but it took some interventions, some calming down.
02:59And after an hour of conversation, the same men went and got samosas and chai for me.
03:13Personal security is only one of the barriers.
03:17Photojournalism remains one of the country's most male-dominated fields,
03:21with women making up only a small fraction of it.
03:24For Smita, the challenges began with her decision to pursue this career.
03:28I didn't know where to start from, I didn't have any mentor, I didn't know where to go.
03:33I wanted to do those stories, but I didn't know whether it was even possible to do it.
03:38My father told me that, I think photography is for, you know, children of rich people,
03:44and you are not, you are from middle class families.
03:47I mean, I have done assignments for pretty big publications when I didn't have, you know,
03:52the full-frame camera, when I didn't have the money to buy those.
03:55So I would either rent it out, or I would borrow it from a friend.
03:58And I was too embarrassed to tell anyone.
04:00Despite the early hurdles, Smita's determination and hard work have shaped a formidable body of work.
04:07Her assignments have taken her across India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Central African Republic, and Kenya,
04:13with her stories featured in National Geographic, Time, The New York Times,
04:18and other leading international publications.
04:28Human trafficking is a multi-billion dollar crime that disproportionately affects women and girls across South Asia,
04:36driven by poverty, inequality, and limited opportunities.
04:40The UN estimates that more than 150,000 people are trafficked annually in South Asia,
04:46with women and girls among the most affected.
04:49For Smita, it is a story she feels deeply compelled to tell.
04:54But gaining survivors' trust and documenting their experiences requires patience, sensitivity, and even a dollop of humor.
05:13Her story, Vikrai in silence, is an ongoing body of work documenting this issue.
05:19This is M, who was a trafficking survivor.
05:23She was trafficked by a man she had met at a private computer coaching class.
05:30She fell in love with him and she eloped with him and went to Delhi, from where she was sold
05:34to a brothel.
05:36Ultimately, you know, one client, who took mercy on her, gave her his phone,
05:43and then she made a call to her father and gave the location and that's how the West Bengal police
05:48went to Delhi.
05:50And then the West Bengal and Delhi police both raided the red light area and GB road and then they
05:57rescued her.
05:58This photo was taken when I was traveling with them.
06:00We had lunch together and we were traveling by the local train and they were waiting for the train to
06:06come.
06:06And this is her younger cousin and she was holding her hand.
06:10And it also shows the vulnerability, you know, these young girls who don't know how the outside world is and
06:17how they fall into the traps.
06:19So, this was the lead image, you know, this was the cover story in India.
06:26Globally, it was the second, you know, lead in the magazine.
06:30And it was a 26 page story, which is a pretty big deal, especially these days when everything is drying
06:37up.
06:45But why in the world's most populous nation have the people behind the camera overwhelmingly been men?
06:51Sabina Gadiok is a professor and photo historian.
06:54In other parts of the world, photography became popularized very quickly.
06:59We call it the Kodak moment where everybody could have a camera and everybody could, you know, photograph.
07:04In this part of the world, photography was a very elite pursuit because the Kodak moment never happened.
07:10People could not afford cameras of their own.
07:12So, people would go to the studio to be photographed.
07:15And there were very few photographers, but most of them were men.
07:18She's also the biographer of Homai Vyarawala.
07:22Homai Vyarawala was India's first woman press photographer from this part of the world.
07:27When I say this part of the world, it's not like we had press photographers in Sri Lanka or, you
07:31know, in Bangladesh or wherever.
07:32I mean, of course, Bangladesh had not been created at that time.
07:35We are talking about the 40s, 50s and 60s.
07:37She was also the first woman, you know, photographer, photographing in an arena that was dominated by men, that is
07:44politics.
07:44Homai was born in 1913 and documented some of India's most defining moments during and after independence in 1947.
07:53She photographed prominent figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru,
08:00and India's first woman Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, as well as visiting dignitaries and celebrities.
08:05And her style was distinct.
08:09She could capture the most amazing candid photographs.
08:12There's this lovely photograph of Nehru smiling, standing next to a board and it says photography prohibited.
08:18And he's standing next to the board and he's deliberately posing for her.
08:21But how did she do it as the sole woman among a crowd of male photographers?
08:25She always talked about being very patient.
08:28She said, as a woman, I learned patience.
08:29I'm socialized to waiting.
08:31I would not go with the men right in front and be in this rush to kind of push and
08:36shove and take the first photograph.
08:38I would wait.
08:38When everybody had cleared out, I would go forward and I would take the picture and sometimes she would take
08:42the best photographs
08:43because she had the intelligence to know that all that pushing and shoving is not going to get her a
08:49good image.
08:50I think that inherently she believed in the dignity of the subject.
08:53I think that makes for a good camera person.
08:55Barriers for women photographers were even more stark in Homai's time.
09:00At that time, the only way that her photographs could be printed in magazines like the Illustrated Weekly of India
09:06was under her husband's name.
09:07Her husband was a photographer as well and she learned her photography from him.
09:11After a while, photographs start to be published under her name.
09:14You can imagine this amazing sight of a woman cycling in Delhi with all those cameras on her shoulders,
09:20strapped around her, flash bulbs which are like the size of an ashtray, big thing mum, even bigger than that.
09:26You know, all that paraphernalia traveling on a cycle.
09:29The next challenge comes when she has a son.
09:31And she has to have the responsibility of being a parent who's, you know, looking after her son,
09:37doing all the household work and going out and working in the field, you know, with her husband.
09:43In this regard, not much has changed.
09:45Motherhood and family responsibilities continue to add another layer of challenges for women photojournalists.
09:51Not just photojournalism, take any job where you don't have a routine.
09:58Because our jobs, there's no routine.
10:00You get an assignment, sometimes you leave at three o'clock in the morning.
10:04You have to read somewhere by five in the morning for that morning light.
10:08My first priority is of a mother.
10:10And then, of course, my profession is equally important.
10:13That doesn't make me a bad photographer or irresponsible.
10:16But I do need certain space to make certain arrangements.
10:20She brings nuance to her work, recognizing that women photographers can gain access
10:27to spaces and experiences that often remain invisible to others.
10:31So this is in the tea gardens of West Bengal in the Doors region.
10:36And this is the girl's mother who was showing her photograph,
10:40the last and only photograph of her daughter who has gone missing.
10:44And she's still missing even today.
10:45In her work, she avoids viewing stories through a black and white lens,
10:50instead exploring their complex realities.
10:59Again, I had a very different view about trafficking.
11:02I always thought that there is some kind of dude, you know, who is like a Bollywood villain
11:11who would come and, you know, tell some sob stories or to the girls, brainwash them and then kidnap them.
11:19But in most cases, most of the traffickers that I met, they were very simple looking.
11:25You would not even believe that they were traffickers.
11:28And there were so many women traffickers involved, which I did not know.
11:32And these will only happen when you spend time, when you dig enough, right?
11:35When you investigate.
11:36And there were so many women who are involved in it.
11:39Women who are mothers, women who have their own children, but they are trafficking other girls.
11:44And once I remember, I spoke to this woman who had trafficked six girls within her community from the surrounding
11:51villages.
11:52And then I asked her, you have your own three daughters and you have, you know, taken these girls.
11:58Don't you have any shame?
12:00And she said, what is there to be ashamed of?
12:02I have given them a better life.
12:04Then I asked her, who are you to judge whether that life is better or not?
12:08And what about the dignity and respect?
12:10And what about the violence that they are undergoing every day?
12:12And what about the consent?
12:14They are not consenting to it.
12:16You have pushed them into it.
12:1890% of the times that I've seen the women and girls that have met, all of them, they end
12:23up saying that, you know,
12:24we only want people to take us normally, to treat us normally.
12:29We don't want victimhood.
12:30We don't want that.
12:31We don't want pity.
12:32Just treat us as normal human beings.
12:35Just talk to us like that.
12:36We are happy.
12:36We are dealing with what we have the best way we can.
12:39And I think that's a big lesson that even I learned.
12:45Photography for me has a greater purpose, right?
12:49I'm not just sharing the stories.
12:52I think I'm also healing myself in many ways.
13:03That's what I did.
13:03That's wonderful.
13:04That's cool.
13:05I'll see you again.
13:07I think that's your best way.
13:07You can tell us a better way.
13:08You
Comments