Kate Orne: Pakistan Brothels

To highlight the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop starting in Mexico City this coming Monday, I will focus this week's The Travel Photographer blog posts on various photojournalists and their work. This is the second in the series. Kate Orne is a New York-based photographer who worked amongst the neediest people in Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past seven years. Her mission was to use her craft to fight against indentured slavery and to support the wellbeing of women, children and animals. She worked on several essays on indentured laborers in South East Asia, on victims of domestic abuse, on Kabul orphanages where children lack basic facilities, maternity wards without basic care and imprisoned women. Her website has a number of galleries, documenting the brothels in Pakistan, the maternity hospital and orphanage in Kabul, refugee camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the red light district in Mumbai. I thought her work on the brothels in Pakistan as her most powerful and thought-provoking, as it highlights the paradox that exists between the sex industry and Muslim fundamentalism in this part of the world.