Before Their Time: The World of Child Labor by David L. Parker

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Before Their Time: The World of Child Labor

Photographs by David L. Parker

Foreword by Senator Tom Harkin

Published by Quantuck Lane

163 pages. 135 photographs. Dimensions (in inches): 10.8 x 9.8 x 0.6

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Before Their Time: The World of Child Labor

Photographs by David L. Parker

Reviewed by Christina Erb.

It is easy to travel in the developing world and ignore the all-too-prevalent instances of sex trafficking and child labor, the uglier side of life.

But David Parker doesn’t shy away from this truth in his compelling photography collection, Before Their Time: The World of Child Labor. He seeks it out in textile factories, coca fields — and red light districts. He shows us the predictable images of children combing garbage dumps — along with the shocking images of tiny circus workers in Nepal.

And in most of these black and white photographs, a child’s eyes can be found staring at the lens. The eyes bring life to a smile, a laugh — or a moment of torment. Parker shows us the realm of human emotion.

Youthful duty

A young Nicaraguan girl uses her hands to mix food, and it is easy to think for a moment that she is helping her mother cook dinner as she stares absentmindedly away from the bowl.

She isn’t. She’s a home worker. Half a dozen images later, we see barefoot children combing a landfill in Mexico. Here, with this image, there is no question.

Empty legalities

So, without U.S. Senator Tom Harkin’s haunting foreword and the periodic descriptions of prominent child labor industries throughout the world, it would be difficult to determine in many of these images whether the children are playing or working, helping a family member or getting paid even cents a day. But Senator Harkin’s words clarify everything. The young Nicaraguan girl isn’t cooking by choice — it is her job, her duty.

Treaties have been signed — the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the UN’s 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, among others.

A prescient issue

But child labor still exists in staggering numbers. More than 320 million children under the age of 16 work worldwide — and about a fourth of them will never attend school.

In India, indentured circus performers laugh in groups, contort their bodies — and pet leopards. It is easier than making bricks, trading sex for money or working in the depths of a mine. They laugh because they make do, because they find happiness where they can.

Laughing — but slaves

It is an ambiguous image — one that’s not easy for the uninformed viewer to understand. The children are laughing but they’re bonded laborers.

Their families are tricked into selling them, and they are forced to work without pay for an indeterminable amount of time. They are slaves. They are laughing — but they are slaves.

They labor as migrant cotton pickers in Turkey, mix clay for bricks in India, swing axes in stone quarries in Nicaragua — and turn metal into sellable objects in Morocco. They wear little clothing and even less protective gear. They are abused physically, emotionally and sexually.

Not the first time

It is a searing reality, and David Parker steers clear of such brutal moments. We see before and after shots — a young Thai girl straddling an overweight tourist in the Red Light District and a young, scarred combatant holding a knife to his neck in Sierra Leone.

We know this isn’t her first time, just as we know this boy is a murderer. They’re both innocent, they’re both used — and as with all these children, they need a way out of their existence. Parker and Harkin are begging you, in these pages, to care about them.

About Dr. David L. Parker

Both a photographer and a medical epidemiologist, Dr. David L. Parker is an acclaimed advocate of children’s human rights. He is the author of the Minnesota Book Award-winning Stolen Dreams: Portraits of Working Children, and has traveled worldwide to bring these children’s stories and photographs back to the United States.

About Senator Tom Harkin

Iowa Senator Tom Harkin has long been at the forefront of the war against child labor and has been involved with the Child Labor Coalition since its creation in 1989.


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