Photojournalist, Stephanie Sinclair, met 15-year-old Marzia back in 2003 when she was on assignment, doing a story on the burn ward in Herat, Afghanistan. Married off at the tender age of 9, she had broken her husband’s television and was so afraid of the consequences that she set herself on fire; it was in fact an attempted suicide. Sinclair came across many other girls like Marzia in the burn unit that she learned were married at a very young age. The more time she spent trying to understand the reasons why these girls would put themselves through such a painful act, she slowly awakened to the reality of child marriages that occur not only in Afghanistan, but various countries around the world.

“They all gave different reasons for why they would do this; like someone didn’t make the tea hot enough. They weren’t reasons that I could comprehend. The more I researched about their lives, I learned that more than half of those girls were married underage.  Now, I don’t believe that’s the only reason why those girls did that but at the same time, it was a common denominator I couldn’t deny. I wanted to look at the issues that would lead to such a horrific act,” said Sinclair in a National Geographic presentation.

Sinclair has dedicated over a decade of her life to visually documenting and telling the stories of these young girls who were robbed of their childhood, denied education and forced into relationships they didn’t fully understand. In her travels, she encountered girls as young as 5 being married off, and the parents of all girls give different reasons for it. For some it’s a financial matter, they’re unable to support all their children and hope for a better life for their daughter after marriage; others cite it as a useful tool to form family alliances or a manner of repaying debts. Each culture where the practice of child marriage exists handles it differently. With international treaties and laws banning child marriage in existence, the reality is that enforcing these laws at the ground- level is not an easy task.

Child marriage involves the marriage of any girl or boy who is under the legal age. The practice is not limited to any particular religion, race or caste. Since she started the work in the Middle East, Sinclair didn’t want her work to be misinterpreted as a rally against any religious practice in particular. She started shooting child brides in Afghanistan and soon travelled to India, Guatemala, Yemen, Nepal, and Ethiopia capturing the faces and voices of these young brides.

“I was focusing, specifically at the beginning of the project, on the kinds of harmful repercussions because I wanted that message to get out, but at the same time I wanted to show the cultures of the weddings and the beauty in these cultures, and that was one of the reasons why I actually wanted to show the weddings themselves...that some of the people in these weddings that were participating, were actually against the practice but they were walking a fine line between trying to like speak out but also they were part of the culture. They wanted to help me out and help be their voice.”

Writer Cynthia Gorney was conducting fieldwork in Rajasthan when she first met Sinclair. She was studying this area where the practice of child marriage is more widespread than anywhere else in India, though it occurs in numerous other states as well. It was at the time of Akshaya Tritiya in particular that both Gorney and Sinclair got to attend a secret wedding ceremony held late into the night, to stay clear of law enforcement for their illegal act. Akshaya Tritiya is an incredibly auspicious time in the Vedic calendar, not just for marriage but any new enterprise set in motion on the day is said to reach great success.

“ This farmer, whom I will call Mr. M, was both proud and wary as he surveyed guests funneling up the rocky path toward the bright silks draped over poles for shade; he knew that if a non-bribable police officer found out what was under way, the wedding might be interrupted mid-ceremony, bringing criminal arrests and lingering shame to his family,” writes Gorney in her article for National Geographic.

Sinclair and Gorney put their brilliantly creative minds together and in 2011 collaborated on a 10 minute documentary film. ‘Too Young To Wed: The Secret World of Child Brides’ combines Sinclairs powerful visuals and Gorneys beautiful words to tell the stories of these young married girls, children infact, around the world. 2012 saw the launch of Sinclairs non-profit organisation Too Young To Wed (TYTW) that advocates for the eradication of child marriage. Her photographs are evidence of the challenges that these women and girls face on a daily basis, in many small areas of the world you’d never give a second thought to. Having tied up with various international and local NGO’s, creating awareness and implementing changes at the ground-level is the organisation’s main aim.
As of 2017, UNICEF reported India having the highest absolute number of child brides in the world with 27% of girls in India marrying before their 18th birthday and 7%  marrying before the age of 15. Child marriage was outlawed in 1929 and has undergone several revisions since the time of independence. Despite its criminalisation, It remains a harsh reality for an approximated  23 million girls. Activism is meeting art for women and children related issues in many cases around the world, In India itself we works such as Leena Kejriwals M.I.S.S.I.N.G project  of public installations drawing attention to the girls lost to trafficking and the ‘White Bindi Art Project’ exhibition held in 2014 at the Indian Habitat Centre, New Delhi, by the No Child Brides movement and non-governmental organization Child Survival India.

“You’re protecting your child from possible rape because you live in a society in which loss of virginity before marriage renders a young woman an outcast, number one. Number two, you know in the abstract that people from the government have told you schooling is important. But that’s kind of irrelevant when you live in a village where the only schooling your child can get to goes up to fifth grade.  After fifth grade, there’s a long bus ride that’s required. There are predatory men on the bus which makes the bus ride itself dangerous. If you’re in a culture like this, you don’t send your child to that school no matter what a government person is telling you about the importance of schooling. That stops right there.  If you have no cultural option, no effective schooling past fifth grade, no tradition of regard for the importance of individual right in choosing a marriage, a clear life involving rural life, agricultural work and some kind of poverty in your future, what do you do to protect your child? You make sure she’s marrying into a good family and you do it very young so that she won’t be attacked.”
With awareness and funds being raised for the girls who have fallen prey to a young marriage though work of organisations such as TYTW and people like Sinclair, change is underway; apart from growing awareness of the problem, girls themselves are actively refusing early marriages and even getting divorces. Since the time she began her work till today, the number of underage girls being married off has declined, and Sinclair has majorly contributed to it by taking visual proof to the public at an international level. The rate is declining but not fast enough; according to the International Center for Research on Women, if present trends continue, 150 million girls will be married before their 18th birthday over the next decade. That’s an average of 15 million girls each year.
Scroll down to see some of Sinclair’s poignant and thought-provoking photographs that are equally heartwarming and gut-wrenching. All photographs and captions are by Stephanie Sinclair/Too Young To Wed, unless otherwise mentioned.