I've agonised for days over this and chatting to my wife has made me realise it's not good to keep quiet, especially given my personal experience. This will be a long and ugly thread I'm afraid about the exploitation of children by those who should know better.
It started with a friend, @duckrabbitblog who helped me hone my craft and also has become a voice of reason for an industry that has many skeletons in the closet: photography

The subject was that of agencies selling images of child prostitutes and clearly identifying them.
Then Andy Day @kiell noticed that David Allen Harvey's (a photographer I had immense respect for) work from Thailand in 1989, labelled as ‘Teenage’ & ‘Thai Prostitutes’. was available in the Magnum archives, where users could purchase the images or share them online.
More started to surface, there was outrage and rightly so and then came the justifications, the support.
The justifications were frankly, just odd. I've lived in Thailand, I spent time doing many documentaries there and one thing that was certain was the thriving trade of sex with children. The white man comes in, heads to Pattaya, or up north where you got more for your dollar.
I fully get the right to inform, I'm not disputing that at all and I'm speaking directly from experience here having shot two pieces highlighting the abuse of children in Cambodia.

In 2007 I was tasked with heading to Krong Siem Reap, a resort town in northwestern Cambodia.
Here, the trade was just awful. Many tourists coming to see the amazing ruins of Angkor, but also grab a child in the evening.

Through fixers in Lightstalkers, my wife and I met Knut and family. She was 8, her sisters 4 & 18 months.
We spent an evening with them where we got them dinner, in a restaurant and listened to their story with the help of our fixer.

WE DIDN'T go into a fucking hotel room to take pictures. We didn't need to go this far as I felt my images could depict their story.
Once we left them, I openly cried as I've never done before. To hear how this girl was raped for money to keep the family functioning, was just too much. We wanted to adopt the kids, we tried like mad but it was just incredibly hard.

Knut has never left my mind.
Preventing the exploitation of children, both online and in-person has become almost an obsession for me. I'm immensely proud in having helped catch those who abused kids, I've also done my best to help the Internet Watch Foundation with 2 hackathons to use tech to help
The story sadly was never published. The editors felt it wasn't hard-hitting enough, which made me question wtf I was doing if seeing images like I'd shot weren't enough to make you question what was going on.

Sadly seeing this argument come to life, I now know why
Child exploitation is rising, it's rising because technology has made it easier and less risky than ever before. We have Tor, we have VPNs, we have Tails and hell we even have OPSEC guides.

We also have agencies selling images of those who are abused. Identifying them
I'm at a loss for words as to why an agency I respect more than anything, @MagnumPhotos felt these images were ok to show and sell. There is no art in this, this isn't informing anyone. What it is doing is perpetuating the hell that these kids are in.
I'm glad many other voices are speaking out about this, I didn't want to but I couldn't remain silent. I still think of Knut, I still want to grab her and make her safe, I hated myself for not being able to do anything to help her.
To all those who feel they are justified in doing this, FUCK YOU. You are no artist, you are helping those who abuse them.

Stop sharing images of kids being abused online.
We truly need to wipe out this ugly culture. I’m hoping I can do my bit by hurting them with tech, but it’s clear more needs to be done in other areas too.

Photo agencies, these images are not stock images. They aren’t profit, they are damaging images that keep hurting.
Wow this kicked off, thank you. I've had a few DMs asking how you can help.

I'm proudly associated with https://foundationsentinel.org/about.html  and the work they do is friggin' amazing and they need support.
You can follow @dcuthbert.
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