The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has placed Nigeria on its list of the eight countries with the world’s highest rate of human trafficking. The documentary photographer Elena Perlino has spent the past several years exploring its connections with Italy, where a widespread sex industry has developed based on the trade of African women. Perlino’s work is an attempt to understand the complexity and the contradiction of their experience. She has documented their daily lives in Turin, Genoa, Rome, Naples and Palermo.
A former victim of trafficking, Isoke Aikpitanyi has become an important figure for Nigerian women in Italy, publishing two books on the subject: Le ragazze di Benin City (with L. Maragnani, 2007) and 500 storie vere (2011).
This report will be part of the screenings in Perpignan, during the Visa pour l’Image festival on September 4, 2014.
Read the full article on the French version of L’Oeil.
BOOK
Pipeline, Trafficking to Italy
Photographs by Elena Perlino
Schilt Publishing
Septembrer 2014
192 pages
74 images
English
35 €
ISBN: 9789053308240
Le ragazze di Benin City
Laura Maragnani, Isoke Aikpitanyi
Melampo Editore
Milano 2012
Italian
ISBN 978-0-7486-3316-6
