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From "Esclavage domestique", portraits of domestic slaves, photos by Raphael Dallaporta, Imaginaid 2010

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Stories of household slaves make headlines only sporadically, such as this one 25 August 2010, where a Sri Lankan woman who had worked for one month as a maid in Saudi Arabia had 23 nails removed from her body. Her employer had tortured her before she escaped and returned home. The reality is often less dramatic, yet traumatic, within arm’s reach and a part of what on the surface is mundane daily life in cities like Geneva, Lausanne and Zurich.

Expect to see it all around you soon in Geneva, thanks to a public spaces exhibit, “Esclavage Domestique”, portraits (12 photos and 12 stories) of household slaves who have escaped, from 6-29 September.

The show is sponsored by the City of Geneva and Imaginaid Gallery, which organized the spectacular “Murs” (Walls) exhibit on the Pont de la Machine in November 2009 and which houses part of the exhibit.

Photos are by Raphaël Dallaporta, who in 2008 had an exhibit of landmine photography in Geneva, remarkable for the chilling beauty of the objects he shot.

The texts were written by Ondine Millot.

The portraits were made in the Paris region, where Dallaporta is based, but as Imaginaid notes on its web site, they could have been made in Swiss urban centres, as well.

The former slaves, who escaped by dint of their own courage, with or without help from vigilant people around them, provide a “vibrant witness to the banalization of an inhumanity that is part of daily life,” according to Imaginaid founder Serge Macia. The Imaginaid site offers a glimpse of these portraits, such as the story of Aina, from Madagascar, imprisoned without pay for two years in a home near Paris where she had hoped to make money to send home to her family, given orders to use only three words. A neighbour finally spotted the “mute” girl in the family garden.