Human trafficking is a national issue that many Nebraskans may not realize happens so close to home. University of Nebraska–Lincoln geography student Anna Brettman said she hopes to bring light to the local implications of human trafficking through a 14-photograph exhibit that will be on display at the Great Plains Art Museum through March.
The project was influenced by her UNL class, "Human Trafficking in Nebraska and the Great Plains.""Our professor, Rebecca Buller, gave us a project with the simple directions to 'do something that would raise awareness on the topic,' Brettman said. "I, of course, intended to use photography to achieve this goal, and one thing lead to another to get it shown at the [The Great Plains Art Museum]."
Brady Schnieder, a senior English and Spanish major and one of Brettman's classmates, said he really enjoyed Brettman's project.
"The project was incredibly powerful because humans are visual learners," Schnieder said. "Photographs, in her case, brought out emotions in people that words couldn't."
These emotion-jarring photographs are black and white, something Brettman said she believes gives more credibility than color photographs.
Each photo also contains a person with words painted on their body spelling out the "Five W's" – who, what, where, when and why – of human trafficking. Each photo outlines a stereotype about human trafficking.
One of the photos is taken in front of Memorial Stadium, and one is outside of the gates of the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska.
"These photos showcase the where," she said. "Husker gameday and the College World Series games are some of the largest times in which human trafficking occurs."
Each photograph in the series was also shot around Nebraska, and Brettman said she had full artistic control over the process. Brettman, along with the rest of the class in which her interest was sparked, was influenced by recent studies done by Creighton educational courses to begin her project. In the courses, they discovered the massive number of people that human trafficking affects in Nebraska on Backpage. Politicians and police also spoke to the class on the topic and gave her the vision necessary for her project.
This vision was to simply create a way in which people could sympathize with and educate themselves more with human trafficking.
"I didn't quite want to be super direct with the project because that's not always how it is," Brettman said. "Instead, a lot of times, these are ordinary people in ordinary situations. Human trafficking can be very subtle."
Along with this, she said she learned so much more, ranging from simply how complicated human trafficking is to the fact that, when convicted, human trafficking offenders are charged on crimes other than "human trafficking" due to the fact that other convictions receive harsher punishment.
"This project made me realize that Nebraskans love to talk about how safe our state is and how friendly all the people in it are," Schnieder said. "I still hold that to be true; it really shook my inner being to know that horrible things like this can happen in a place like Nebraska."
Everything Brettman learned about human trafficking has stuck with her through this project, and she said she has been keeping up with news regarding human trafficking locally and nationally since completing her project.
She said she feels more people are starting to learn about this issue, and she hopes her photos can help bring some light to the reality of human trafficking.
"There is certainly growing awareness on the topic, and this project will hopefully help with that," Brettman said.
Story and photo from Daily Nebraskan.
