Winners 2022: PROJECTS & PORTFOLIOS

Alain Schroeder – Muay Thai Kids

Children like numbers, children sent to fight like trained pit bulls, exploited, forgotten children, terrified children, children violated of their innocence.
Alan Schroeder’s project is a work that reminds me of all the years I lived in Asia, where the focus of my work has always been aimed at minors.
The victims of those countries are often children, from sexual abuse to child exploitation, to child trafficking in organs, to exploitation for economic purposes.
As in this project, children are just numbers, machines to make money, to enrich an unchanged system that does not tend to wake up from an obsolete and violent program. In these countries there has always been a wall between generations, it is not invested in the needs of children but in the perversions of adults, the child often becomes an instrument of pleasure, catharsis, anger and business. Even today there is no vision of change, in many years I have seen only small miracles, carried out by local activists, like angels on a mission. So, I reward not only the undoubted quality of the photos but above all I want to give strength to this work because it denounces the exploitation of minors, bringing attention back to the problem. Each denunciation is a wish for a possible change and a new vision where children could one day become our teachers.
Shobha / URBAN 2022 Jury President – Projects