Home/Life: 121 Kids from 11 Cities Photograph Their World
Asbeck, Geert van and Bierens, Frank and Kuypers, Christiaan (eds.) (2002).
Amsterdam: Homeless World Foundation; 280 pages. $17.00. ISBN 9077180028.
In Remembering Babylon, David Malouf writes the story of Gemmy Fairley, a 13-year-old boy who, in the mid-1840s, is cast ashore in the far north of Australia and taken in by aborigines. Sixteen years later, when settlers reach the area and stake out a patch of home, he moves back into the world of Europeans. In his initial contact, the apprehensive youth calls out from atop a fence: “Do not shoot, I am a B-b-british object”! His utterance is appropriately symbolic, made from a liminal position, at the edge of a paddock. It is also strikingly accurate in denoting the treatment of a marginalized population as objects, deprived of the rights accorded to citizens.
Street children, too, have long been treated as objects, involving a range of ill-considered approaches the most egregious of which have been the mass shootings of besprizorniki at Russian railway stations in the 1930s and the widely publicized murders of street children in Brazil and Honduras in more recent years. However, well-intentioned approaches have also often dealt with street children as objects- objects in need of proper socialization, medical care, nutrition, protection, etc., dispensed by benevolists in possession of medicines, food, power, knowledge and other resources.
In the wake of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by the United Nations General Assembly in 1989, and its subsequent ratification by all but two countries, street children have become more recognized as actors in their own right, with entitlements and potentials to affect their situation. Volume 13, no. 1, of Children, Youth and Environments featured a special focus on street children, comprising 20 papers that offer examples of this emerging “agency perspective.” The current issue of this journal also reproduces recent publications that similarly attest to the abilities of children to be proactive and underline the significance of policies and programs that support their abilities.[1]
Home/Life is an initiative by the Homeless World Foundation, which, in collaboration with local organizations, set up a series of workshops in 11 cities around the world: Africa (Cairo, Johannesburg, Nairobi), Asia (Jakarta, New Delhi), Eastern Europe (Budapest, Moscow), Europe (Paris, Rotterdam), South America (Paramaribo), and North America (New York). In each case, professional photographers instructed up to 20 street children in the basics of photography. The children, averaging 13 years in age, were given cameras and film to capture their daily lives and document the world around them. Their work resulted in 15,000 images from which the editors selected 150 photos to be included in the book and in an exhibit touring the cities of the participating children. The project is also presented in a web site designed by NairoBits, a program that trains youths from the slums in Nairobi in web design.
The book starts with a brief editorial preface and a short commentary by Anne Ellegood, associate curator of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. Several pages of thematic photo galleries then lead into the bulk of the material, organized in alphabetical order by city. Concise but useful introductions precede these sections, giving some background on the cities and the participating children, although one wishes that these introductions had been elaborated a bit more to create a better sense of context. The book concludes with individual portraits of the child photographers, accompanied by brief autobiographic notes dictated to the workshop coordinators.
After making their selection, Home/Life staff returned to the 11 cities where they managed to re-contact most of the children to talk about their photos and to provide captions for them. Each child also received a copy of the book. Proceeds of the book benefit the Homeless World Foundation, which sets up and supports media projects for underprivileged children around the world with the goal of enabling them to express themselves, develop their creative skills, and gain confidence in their own abilities.
Street children spend a great deal of time in the streets and other public spaces. Aside from this commonality, they may share little else in what they do, their reasons for doing what they do, with whom they live, where they come from, their hopes for the future, and many other aspects of their lives. It comes as little surprise, therefore, that the photos they take would show a corresponding diversity. The selections included in this book provide ample testimony to this diversity, a welcome antidote to the stereotypical images that tend to accompany the depiction of street children in human interest stories offered up by the popular media around religious holidays.
These useful contributions notwithstanding, the book leaves several questions unanswered. The cities represented in this project are from around the world, but the editors provide no explanation for their selection. A municipal judge derailed the project in Rio de Janeiro and government officials thwarted the project in Beijing, insisting that there are no homeless children in China. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary in each of these cities,[2] it would have been interesting to learn more about this lack of cooperation. Likewise, the book offers no information on the selection of the children who took part in the photo workshops and were given cameras. More information on how the workshop coordinators chose the participating children would have provided useful background for viewing the photographs.
The editors selected the 150 photographs included in the book according to artistic merit, the only criterion being “image quality” with consideration of “composition, subject, and emotional charge” (pp. 6-7). It is not clear, however, what this means. Further, while the photos were not cropped or otherwise edited, adults not living on the street selected them, introducing a filter in the portrayal of the homes and lives of street children and raising the question of whether their own selection might have been different.
An early section of the book includes photo galleries organized around themes such as trees, cars, garbage, animals, icons, and neighborhoods. No reason is given for this thematic selection. It is not clear whether a workshop assignment instructed the children to focus on them, whether they emerged as dominant themes from the total pool of photos, or whether the editors chose them and then selected matching photos. Further detail on the contents of the workshop would give better insight into what the children learned and what guidance they received, if any, for taking photographs.
Finally, there is no evaluative information on the workshops. What was the drop out rate? What did the children themselves think of the experience? Is there a follow up opportunity for those who showed an interest in further improving their photographing skills and honing their artistic talents?
The Home/Life initiative is one of a larger number of such programs, which together provide encouragement for and an illustration of the shifting views of street children. For example, a few years ago, a group of 12 to 17 year old boys and girls in Nairobi’s Mathare slum participated in the Shootback project which held weekly meetings where they learned photographic techniques and discussed pressing community concerns. They received cameras with which they produced photos that highlighted aspects of their environment that were important to them. These photos were exhibited internationally and led to exchanges with children in London, Dhaka, and Capetown.
In a similar vein, PhotoVoice, an international non-profit organization based in London, UK, aims to empower those living on the fringes of society through documentary photography. Workshops give participants an opportunity to learn a new skill that can enhance their lives and afford a measure of control over how they are perceived by the rest of the world. PhotoVoice has provided a platform for exhibiting and marketing the work of street children in Vietnam and young refugees from Afghanistan, Angola, Bhutan, Iraq, Nigeria, Romania, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka (for further details, see the field report on PhotoVoice elsewhere in this issue).
The AJA Project (Autosuficiencia Juntada con Apoyo-'Supporting Self-Sufficiency') is similarly dedicated to supporting young people living in areas of violent conflict and social upheaval by providing material support, teacher training and innovative, multi-media vocational programs aimed at supporting artistic expression, increasing self-confidence and creating self-sufficiency. It operates programs in Colombia, Thailand and Burma, and manages a traveling exhibit of student work. In its latest program, AJA students exchange letters and photographs to pen pals in other sites.
Along with these other initiatives, Home/Life represents a positive editorial commitment to photography as a form of socially engaged visual arts. It also serves as a useful reminder that efforts to improve children’s living conditions can benefit greatly if we combine research-based knowledge with contributions from the arts.
Endnotes
1. For example, see Andrew West (2003). “At the Margins: Street Children in Asia and the Pacific.”
2. For Rio de Janeiro, see, for example, Butler, Udi and Irene Rizzini (2003). “Young People Living and Working on the Streets of Brazil: Revisiting the Literature.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1); for Beijing, see West, Andy (2001). “Floating Children in China: The Problems of Street, Migrating, and Trafficked Children- Out of School and out of Place.” Unpublished paper presented at the Conference on Child-focused Anthropology, held at the University of Brunel in London, June 2001.
References
Autosuficiencia Juntada con Apoyo (AJA): http://www.ajaproject.org/
Homeless World Foundation: http://www.homelessworld.org/
Malouf, David (1993). Remembering Babylon. New York: Pantheon Books.
MYSA Kenya: http://www.mysakenya.org
MYSA Shootback Project- A Youth Photography and Development Project: http://www.piac.org/childseye/shootb.htm
PhotoVoice: http://www.photovoice.org/
Reviewer Information
University of Colorado
Willem van Vliet-- is a mental laborer with undefined skills. He serves as co-editor of Children, Youth and Environments.