39,000. That’s the number of girls, under the age of 18, who are married every single day. Photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair has spent the last 11 years of her career telling the stories of young girls whose traditions and economic situations forced them into early marriages. Her images have led her across four continents and through many religions and cultures.

THE  UNFPA (The United Nations Population Fund) and the photography agency, VII, collaborated to produce this worldwide exhibition and online learning campaign to promote change and awareness about child marriage and its' devastating effects on girls. These stories have appeared in more than one thousand online and print media outlets including CNN, The New York Times and National Geographic.

Inspired by this campaign, Too Young to Wed formed a nonprofit dedicated to providing visual evidence of child marriage and it’s related effects, as well as on-the-ground support to the communities where the women and girls in these stories reside.

World leaders have begun to take up arms against the issue of child marriage as well. “Ending Child Marriage” was proposed as a crucial indicator for addressing global poverty in the post-2015 development agenda. In September 2013, over 100 states adopted first-ever resolution on child early and forced marriage at the Human Rights Council and in December, African ministers set an ambitious target to eliminate child marriage by 2020.

Since 1985, the International Center of Photography has recognized outstanding achievements in photography with its prestigious Infinity Awards. The awards ceremony is also ICP’s primary fundraising benefit, with its revenues assisting the center's various programs.

Harbers Studios commissioned MediaStorm, on behalf of ICP, to create a short film about each of the recipients to screen at the awards ceremony and to later remain online. The films serve as an introduction of the recipients to the audience as well as a showcase of their work, highlighting the motivations for honoring them with Infinity Awards.

The Too Young to Wed campaign has done a great job of bringing attention to the story of child marriage. The challenge was to make an original video that celebrated the work these two women have done, but also emphasized the important changes this campaign has championed in the fight against child marriage.

We incorporated several different speeches by world leaders such as Hillary Clinton as well as news anchors like Christiane Amanpour.

In the past two years, incredible steps were taken to prevent child marriage, and Too Young to Wed has been at the center of that campaign. In some cases, the girls themselves are starting to fight for their right to an education and an innocent childhood. In order to tell the complete story, we felt that we must include these milestones, whether they were at the grassroots level or an international one.

MediaStorm interviewed the recipients and gathered images to create stories about each of their careers. The resulting six short films serve individually as biographical glimpses into the recipients’ work and collectively as a portrait of some of the important contributors to photography today.

As a privately funded nonprofit arts and education organization, ICP depends in large part on friends such as you for support. Your generosity is vital to ICP as it continues to grow and succeed in its mission: to present photography's extraordinary power to the public.

There are many ways to give to ICP: Donate to the Annual Fund, create a scholarship, sponsor exhibitions and education programs, contribute to the Collection, or make a planned gift.