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God's Prostitutes--Investigating India's Devadasi System
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Two Lives

I photographed this young woman a few months after she had been rescued from a brothel in Mumbai by a rescue foundation. She had been returned to her family in the countryside and was working for $1/day as a farm laborer, supporting her grandmother, mother and sister. She told me through a translator that she didn't know which life was worse--the one she'd had at the brothel or the one she had now. I thought this image captured her sense of being trapped.

Filename
Two_Lives.jpg
Copyright
Julia Cumes
Image Size
4210x2808 / 5.5MB
I photographed this young woman a few months after she had been rescued from a brothel in Mumbai by a rescue foundation. She had been returned to her family in the countryside and was working for $1/day as a farm laborer, supporting her grandmother, mother and sister. She told me through a translator that she didn't know which life was worse--the one she'd had at the brothel or the one she had now. I thought this image captured her sense of being trapped.