Photo Galleries

Archival Prints

These selected prints from Stolen Childhoods are offered in limited editions of 100 and signed by the photographer. 10 % of the purchase price goes to support the ongoing work of Stolen Childhoods and its project partners.

Ordering Prints:

Prints are made to order in two sizes

11"x14" (image size 8x12 & panoramic image size 5x12) US$175

13"x19" (Image size 12x16 & panoramic image size 7x18) US$250

All photographs are archival ink jet prints on radiant white water color paper or velvet fine art paper and will be delivered unmatted and unframed.

Custom selium-toned black and white and colored prints can also be ordered by contacting the photographer (845/528-3845). Prices range from $500-1250.

To order, go to Ordering Prints

About the Bekasi Dumpsite

In Bekasi, on the outskirts of Jakarta, is the largest garbage dump in Indonesia. 1087 hectares of trash arrive every day from throughout West Java. And for 24 hours every day, 3000 scavengers work there; 1000 of them are children, some only three years old. The children can earn up to 5000-8000 Pr. (50¢-80¢ US) a week. They usually work in family groupings which earn about $7-$10 US per week for the entire family. The children live at the dump in makeshift shelters assembled from scraps of garbage.
Children face multiple dangers as they dart back and forth turning over fresh trash. Sickness and disease are not the only problems. There is constant danger of getting killed by a bulldozer, falling through the trash and not being able to get out, or being burned by smoldering garbage. Because the work is paid on a piece rate, the atmosphere on the dumpsite is competitive. Children get in fights over plastic bags or metal sticks. The children have no social life outside the dump, as others consider them dirty “untouchables.”

About Migrant Children in Tobacco in Nayarit, Mexico

Indigenous Huichole families migrate from their mountain villages to Nayarit to pick tobacco. During the growing season, families live out in the open in the fields, without sanitation, transportation, clean water or shelter. The entire family works to earn the salary paid to the father.
The families are isolated, and organizing to obtain better living and working conditions is a practical impossibility.

Brick Kiln and Gravel Quarry Children West Bengal, India

Brick kilns and gravel quarries are a common sight in West Bengal, Orissa and the surrounding states of India. The children that work here are exploited 12-16 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Their world consists only of these mud holes, drying fields, kilns, rock piles and grinders. At night they sleep in the open or in makeshift shelter where sanitary conditions are nonexistent. There are no schools here, and for many there isn’t even a family. Over 1/3 of the children working at this kiln and 1/4 of the children at the quarry have been shipped here from other areas, where their parents have been forced to either sell them into slavery or are dependent on the meager wages that these children can provide.

]]> The work is extremely brutal, hazardous, abusive and sometimes lethal. Working all day in the hot sun where temperatures regularly climb above 100º F, these children carry well over one ton of clay and rock each day. At the kiln, they crouch as they fabricate thousands of bricks in old-fashioned molds. At the quarry, they are exposed to rock that leads to respiratory illness.

Nonetheless, the kids come, driven by necessity and often unaware of what they are entering into, as they are sometimes tricked or virtually kidnapped by unscrupulous agents.

The meager pay and hard work are just the beginning. These children tend to be chronically tired from the long hours and irregular rest, increasing the probability of accidents and injuries. Disease, malnutrition and permanent skeletal injury are the common lot. Medical treatment is primitive or non-existent. None of these children go to school.

About Migrant Children in the USA

Backbreaking farmwork is part of life for some 500,000 to 800,000 children in the U.S. and over a hundred million children worldwide. The same poverty that drives children around the world into work also continues to push generations of American children into a similar life of hard labor. Migrant children travel with their families throughout the United States to work in agriculture. They journey from state to state, from one farm to the next, following the crop harvests. They toil, day in and day out, to help their struggling families survive.

]]> Many children are forced to leave for the fields as early as April. Often, they don't return to school until October or even November. Even when they return to school, migrant farmworker children struggle to catch up with their classmates.

While most parents want a better life for their children, a typical farmworker earns $7,500 a year or less—hardly enough money to support a family. As a result, parents are faced with a difficult dilemma: keep their kids in school or send them out into the fields. Year after year, faced with the prospect of falling further and further behind, many children become discouraged and stop attending school altogether. In fact, experts estimate as many as 65 percent of migrant children end up dropping out of school.

For migrant children, the workday begins at 6 a.m. and ends at 6 p.m. For this backbreaking work they are paid as little as a penny a pound. There is little time or opportunity for the usual summertime activities that most American kids take for granted. After returning home from work, they eat dinner, take a shower, and go to bed to rest up for yet another 12-hour workday. Rarely do they get a day off.

In many cases, child farmworkers must endure sweltering temperatures, as there is little shade to shelter them. Among the many dangers children face on the job are pesticides. Migrant children regularly labor in fields that are sprayed with these toxic chemicals, which can cause skin irritations and breathing difficulties, and their small, undeveloped bodies are especially vulnerable.

About the Coffee Children of Kenya

Children work in the coffee plantations in Kenya without any protective gear whatsoever. White dust from pesticides covers their faces and arms, while the sharp spines of the coffee trees cause injuries that can easily get infected. While the film crew was in Kenya, we met a child, Silvia Ngendo, whose leg was badly infected from an untreated injury. Fortunately, Robin Romano travels with a well-stocked first aid kit, and the crew were able to tend to Silvia's wound and save her leg. The parents in the village, who had been hesitant to cooperate with the filming before, now helped us in any way they could. No parents choose to send their children to work. It is a choice born of absolute necessity - and political corruption.

Instead of School

©ROMANO/Stolen Childhoods

Eagle Pass, Texas
Ten year old American migrant worker cuts onions instead of going to school.

More of the Same

©ROMANO/Stolen Childhoods

Eagle Pass, Texas
A 12-year-old prepares to fill another bucket with onions.

A Penny a Pound

©ROMANO/Stolen Childhoods

Eagle Pass, Texas
A 13-year-old works in 92ºF heat picking onions. He is paid a penny a pound.

Waiting

Nayarit, Mexico
A young migrant worker stands in truck waiting for a ride "home" after a long day's work in the tobacco fields.

Hazardous Harvest

Nayarit, Mexico
A young Huichole migrant worker harvests tobacco.

Boy harvesting Tobacco

Nayarit, Mexico
A young migrant worker carries tobacco.

Stringing Tobacco

Nayarit, Mexico
A Huichol girl strings tobacco.

Out of School

Misarara Estate Coffee Plantation
A young boy picks coffee.

Precious Commodity

Misarara Estate Coffee Plantation
A young boy puts spilled beans back into a sack to take back to the sorting house.