Filipino Migrant Worker Spends 10 Years Photographing Hong Kong On Her Days Off And Wins Prestigious Scholarship (29 Pics)

27 year old domestic worker Xyza Cruz Bacani, a migrant worker from the Philippines, became famous for her street photographs of Hong Kong, where she travels to work. Her dark and gritty photos even earned her the Magnum Foundation’s Human Rights Fellowship for 2015, which will allow her to take an intensive six week (fixed -ed.) photography study in New York and use her knowledge to improve human rights in her own country.

Xyza‘s photographs already deal with important topics in the Philippines. Her work documenting the lives of women in abused domestic worker shelters helped catch the eye of the Magnum Foundation, and for a good reason. The Philippines are a big country with poor people who are forced to look for work elsewhere, and many of them become migrant workers that travel to Hong Kong.

Xyza’s photos prove that work does not always provide people with the salvation they expect.