Fast Fashion’s Problem with Modern Slavery
By Ellyn Kail on April 8, 2021
Last year, a report from the international human rights group Walk Free revealed that one in 130 women and girls around the world are living in modern slavery. Modern slavery includes human trafficking, forced labor, slavery and slavery-like practices, debt bondage, forced marriage, and the worst forms of child labor; in 2018, Walk Free found that, after technology, the fashion industry was the second-largest sector to support modern slavery practices.
These are the numbers, but for the Minneapolis-based photographer and social justice advocate Marla Klein, they only tell part of the story. “When you throw statistics and numbers in peoples’ faces, it doesn’t always make a human connection,” she tells us. “But when you show artwork that gives a face to the movement, people pay attention.”