Twelve-year-old Judeline crouches at the feet of a much younger girl, lifting high a makeup kit so the little girl, Boubou, can apply a colored pencil to her brow. Boubou studies herself intently in the kit\u2019s mirror; Judeline, hidden to her, stares at us with a look that seems both humiliated and beseeching.<\/p>\n
Taken by the photographer Vlad Sokhin for a series called \u201cRestavek: Child Slavery in Haiti,\u2019\u2019 it is one of the most haunting images (Slide 4) of a Haitian servant child that I have ever seen.<\/p>\n
Judeline\u2019s hair is close-cropped, boyish. Boubou, the 5-year-old daughter of the family for whom Judeline works, is beribboned. Boubou has natural, apparent self-regard; Judeline, her bra strap slipping down her thin arm, has learned to be self-effacing to survive.<\/p>\n
It is not easy to photograph people who are invisible in their own society, to shine a light on them and at the same time reveal how unseen they are to those around them.<\/p>\n
That is the strength of what Mr. Sokhin does, perhaps partly because he approached the subject with the outrage of a fresh eye. Born in Russia and educated in Lisbon, he now lives in Sydney, Australia, and had never set foot in the Americas, much less in Haiti, until last year.<\/p>\n
He visited New York last fall to take part in the Eddie Adams Workshop for photojournalists and in a group exhibition. With a few free weeks between the two events, he said in a phone interview from Australia, \u201cI thought I\u2019d just go to Haiti and see what\u2019s there.\u201d<\/p>\n
While preparing for his trip, Mr. Sokhin, who is drawn to post-disaster and post-conflict societies, happened upon the memoir of a former child servant, Jean-Robert Cadet, who is Haiti\u2019s best-known restavek \u201cabolitionist.\u201d Mr. Sokhin was struck by his story. He had never heard of the restavek phenomenon, he said, and to discover that, in the 21st century, a nation born of a slave revolt was \u201cusing its own children as slaves was ridiculous to me.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n