This month's Smithsonian Magazine has an excellent article about Born Into Brothels, the Academy Award-winning documentary about children living in Calcutta's red light district. Director Zana Briski gave the children cameras and taught them basic photography skills. Their work is incredibly moving. The film launched Kids With Cameras, "a non-profit organization that teaches the art of photography to marginalized children in communities around the world." From the Smithsonian article (photo by Kochi/Kids with Cameras):
As Briski worked, she was surprised that children — most of them sons and daughters of prostitutes — would surround her, fascinated by her camera. So she started teaching them to take pictures, setting up weekly classes and giving them cheap, point-and-shoot cameras with which to experiment. Their snapshots —arresting portraits of their families, each other and the surrounding streets — capture a chaotic world as few outsiders could.Briski pressed on, securing grants to fund her efforts, soon dubbed Kids with Cameras, and arranging to sell the kids' photographs in Calcutta and New York City galleries. The pictures attracted attention. "These children have what adults most often don't: total openness," says Robert Pledge, co-founder of the Contact Press Images agency. Briski persuaded Pledge to meet the children, and he was soon convinced that the pictures had genuine merit. "Most photography is observation, from the outside," he says. "You're very rarely inside, looking from the inside out."
