Raphael Dallaporta's 'Domestic Slavery'

This is an extract from an essay I wrote earlier this year to accompany a project I was involved in, where I combined text and imagery to give more of an insight into the story I was trying to tell.

Documentary photographer, Raphael Dallaporta’s work shows he is concerned with public issues, addressing human rights as well as symbolic subjects such as the fragility of life. His long-term projects that combine text and image are a product of his collaborations with professionals from a wide range of fields. In his series Domestic Slavery, Dallaporta worked with Ordine Millot, a reporter who covers social work as it intersects with the law. Together, they address an often-ignored issue related to human trafficking: modern slavery.

Dallaporta manipulates the element of surprise is his favour, catching his viewer unaware. The image (above) shows a home, that looks cold and stark, photographed with natural light (as are all of his images in this collection) from Paris. The photos aren’t eye-catching or unusual. To an audience, this photo on its own would hold no purpose, and encourage no response, but when twinned with the story, the photo is given a new haunted feeling, a ‘chilling portrait of hidden agony’. Dallaporta cleverly uses a wide range of buildings and places, as well as what else he decides to include in the frame, to make this as relatable as possible to the public. For example, in the image above, Dallaporta chooses to feature a car, and some of the flowers blooming on the building, within the frame. These, combined with the absence of people in the image, make the photo seem isolated and eerie. As a viewer, the stories of cruelty are so shocking on their own, but when also tied with a picture of a home that could easily be somewhere familiar to the audience, it makes the photo even more chilling, and then leaves the spectator with a lasting impression.

Not only does Dallaporta combine text and image in this collection, he has done it in other collections, such as ’ANTIPERSONNNEL’ (below) where he beautifully frames and photographs landmines. At first glance you admire their beauty, then you realise they are items of cruelty, and the picture has a whole new meaning to you.