A couple of car accidents changed Joseph Quinnell's life forever, but not in the way one might imagine.
The second accident within several months last year meant the 29-year-old art major had to drop out of his summer classes at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Not wanting to completely waste his summer, Quinnell took the insurance money he'd received and bought a plane ticket to Thailand. He thought he'd pursue a self-designed independent photojournalism project on the notorious sex industry there.
"You can read about it and watch documentaries all you want, but until you're actually there and you're offered children, you can't grasp how horrendous it is," said Quinnell, explaining that his being male, white, solo and in Thailand often added up to the assumption that he was a so-called "sex tourist."
He'll never forget the first time he was offered a girl no older than 12.
"These children didn't choose anything about their lives," he said. "They're just born into it."
So Quinnell, a native of Wisconsin Rapids, took pictures, shooting almost literally from the hip. Photographing the sex trade in action is not something that's encouraged, clearly, and Quinnell says he had to be surreptitious in his shooting. Looking one way, while pointing and shooting the other. He even duct-taped his flash unit down, so it wouldn't accidentally pop up and blow his cover.
"I mean, if you get caught taking photos, they don't just take away your camera," he said. "You're shot in the back of the head, it's over. But it's one of those situations, when you see these children and the situation that they're in, it's actually worth the risk to try and save these individuals."
The resulting exhibit, "An Allowance of Dream," is on display at several locations in the Fox Valley through Nov. 3, including the Appleton Art Center, the Appleton Public Library, Conkey's Book Store, Harmony Cafe, The Grounds Keeper and UW-Fox Valley's Aaron Bohrod Gallery.
Max Schultz, director of the Aaron Bohrod Gallery, was instrumental in bringing the project to the Fox Valley.
"Purely from an artistic standpoint, the photographs are intense," Schultz said. "The portion of the show that we have here, 'The Cancer of Thailand,' is pretty much photographs of the red-light district in Bangkok. Those are pretty intense and for some people they're overwhelming and maybe aren't a subject matter that people want to look at. But at the same time, I think that's what makes it powerful, too.
"At another location you may have these beautiful pictures of typical Thai scenes and Thai people that really don't have anything to do with the prostitution or the sex trade industry. It'll be interesting that you can look at something that's so beautiful and then you can look at something that's so demoralizing and abusive."
The challenge presented by having the exhibit spread out among different venues — and there were way too many photographs to do otherwise — is that people see only part of the story at a time.
"They almost have to go to each location to see what the whole project is about," Schultz said.
Indeed, Quinnell very deliberately wanted to show both sides. "I didn't only want to capture the atrocities of the situation, but also to find a glimmer of hope so that when people are viewing these photos, they could actually put their energy into something."
Quinnell found a source of much-needed hope at the Development Education Program for Daughters and Community (DEPDC) school in the northern city of Mae Sai, where there are about 300 children who have been rescued from brothels or who were at risk of being sold into them. The DEPDC is run by Sompop Jantraka, who has twice been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in battling his country's scourge.
"At DEPDC, it was the most beautiful place I've ever been, this community of children that are taking care of each other," Quinnell said. "These children are given this oasis of childhood and being protected and cared for and loved. So within my 30 days there, I saw the most beautiful things and the most horrendous things I've ever seen, right next to each other."
It's estimated that 25 percent of Thailand's national economy is based on child prostitution. Its victims, however, technically don't exist. The children in the trade, whether born into it or sold into it, do not have papers, birth certificates or any form of identification. Therefore they cannot attend school or work legally. It makes for a vicious circle.
"These children have no options," Quinnell said.
The project also has personal resonance for Quinnell. He openly admits that he was severely abused as a child and knows first-hand the scars that can be left behind.
"You're just trying to survive," he said. "I know what it's like not to have help."
On returning to Stevens Point after his summer in Thailand, Quinnell floundered.
"I'm sitting in class taking notes … and I can't function," he said. "I just had this life-changing experience, but I'm stuck here; I can't help."
But Quinnell didn't accept defeat. He convinced the university to launch a program that would send students to work at the Thai school over winter break. He also put together a photography exhibit with more than 100 images from his trip that turned out to be the largest exhibit ever hosted at UW-Stevens Point.
The most ambitious part of the plan was yet to come. Quinnell proposed that several graduates of the DEPDC school be given the opportunity to study at UWSP. The powers-that-be bought the idea, and, pending sufficient fundraising, the first four students from Thailand will come to Stevens Point next fall.
Quinnell likes to call it "higher education as humanitarian aid." The idea is that these women would then eventually return to Thailand to fight child prostitution. "We're creating educated warriors, basically," he said.
His photo exhibition is not only an awareness campaign but a fundraiser as well.
For Quinnell, the validation that change is possible, one person at a time, comes from a young woman named Mai, whom he met and befriended while researching his project in a brothel.
"She had gone to college for one semester, but couldn't afford it the second semester," Quinnell said. "Her older sister was a prostitute and her mom was pushing her into it. So she was going to do it one year and get out. But once you're in, you can't get out. You see so many of these women, they're not there any more. They're just husks. She was on the edge of losing herself, too."
The women, he said, are given just two days off a month. They wear plastic numbers "like you would see punched in the ears of cattle. When a customer comes in, you call out a number and it's like ordering off the value menu at McDonald's."
Quinnell said he somehow got Mai to trust him, and he talked her into escaping.
"I took her to meet with Sompop and she's now at that school. She teaches kindergarten in the morning and dance in the afternoon," he said. "You could see her life change within eight days."
That transformation is also the subject of one of his exhibits.
"This has taken over my life," Quinnell said. "It's been the happiest I've ever been. When you focus all of your efforts on other people's problems, you don't have any of your own."
Once he graduates from UWSP he hopes to go to graduate school and eventually teach.
"We think of these problems that are so massive, it seems you cannot even begin to work on it," Quinnell said. "It's one at a time."
