Laid up for more than two weeks with an exasperating virus
that's left me with no physical energy and fragmented concentration
span, I'm looking through some very old negatives.
I don't know who the kiddy on the left is, but from the
context I can be certain that she lived in northern France in the
early spring of 1974 ... so must be in her forties now. It's not a memorable photograph, but put that aside for the moment. I probably took it as a subconscious
or even conscious background pursuance of the module on “The young
individual and society”, for which I would at that time have been preparing my final paper.
Looking at this picture I am struck by the fact that I
would, today, be constrained in taking a photograph of a child
(particularly a girl child) in a place where I was an itinerant
stranger.
Those were, in some ways, more innocent times ... though
also times of greater denial.
I was, at the time, considering a career as a child
social worker ... a career for which I was probably profoundly
unsuited. Looking back, had I embarked on that career I would have
discovered that a dark veil hid many childhoods from the sort of
sunny light which had imbued my own – and I'm glad that it has been
at least partially drawn aside in the decades since, even if
comparatively rare “stranger danger” gets unrealistically
disproportionate attention compared to the far more prevalent family
abuse.
Since then, I have been married to one courageous abuse
survivor and have now spent more than twenty years with a partner working
in exactly that career path which I didn't take. There have been
exposed scandals from Magdalen
Laundries and Catholic
abuse cases through care
home abuse rings to the Jimmy
Saville furoré. I would not for one moment ask that the clock be
turned back.
And yet ... looking at this photograph I do also,
simultaneously, feel sad that I probably wouldn't, today, take it. It's not a particularly good picture in itself; but the fact of
its possibility feels important.
1 comment:
A photo appealing to people around the globe who care about abuse of children. The heartbreaking stance and expression of this alone child speaks volumes to every person with even one iota of compassion. I see the photo as a reminder, even a wake up call, to the desparate need of societies to address every type of child abuse.
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