Kids With Cameras / Zana Briski ed.

In 2004, Born into Brothels won a well-deserved the Best Documentary (feature) Oscar®. The movie is slice of life of Zana Briski working with children in Kolkata’s red light district Sonaguchi. Briski started a class teaching the children photography. By the time I watched the movie though, I only vaguely remembered this fact, so when the film opened with a number of stunning photographs, I was amazed and wondering who took them. Minutes later it was clear that these young children (I believe around 10 or 11 years old) took them. Taking photographs and getting support for taking photographs obviously had a pretty profound effect on the kids. More so than the tragedy of the week parts which focused on their lives, this affected me. The kids had talent and showcasing that made them better people.

After her three year workshop was over in 2003, Briski founded the non-profit Kids with Cameras to start similar workshops in multiple countries, capitalizing on the success of the movie to kick-start the group. And that brings me to the book.

An initial book was titled Born into Brothels: Photographs by the Children of Calcutta and is still available on Amazon and in other bookstores. Kids With Cameras is self-published by the organization and is an updated, longer version of the earlier work. To purchase it, you’ll need to go to the Kids With Cameras web site. Cost is fairly pricy, $65 plus shipping ($12 to Seattle), but the money is used to fund the kids’ educations, and it’s not much more expensive than other photography books.

Click on the picture to purchase a print.

Anyway, the book features 223 pages of photographs, almost all by the kids. A few are by Zana Briski and Ross Kaufman (who filmed the documentary). All nine children features in the movie are featured in the book. Avijit, who had the most skill, gets the largest number of pages. And some of the photographs are truly stunning. My favorite picture Girl On A Roof by Sujitra is in the book (and a smaller version is below the paragraph). It was the cover photograph for the 2003 Amnesty International Calendar. A shot that Avijit took on the beach (Bucket), pouring sand and water out of a bucket in the foreground with people running on the beach in the background is also included. In the film, Avijit studiously composed this shot. Other pictures are book size snapshots, particularly the photos of animals at the zoo. But by and large Briski has picked some wonderful photos.

Click on the picture to purchase a print.

If anyone on your holiday gift list is a liberal lefty save the children kind of person, this is a great gift for them.

Title: Kids with cameras
Editor: Zana Briski
Imprint / publisher: Kids With Cameras
Format: Hardcover
Length: 224 p.
ISBN-10: ISBN 0-9772957-0-2
Subject: Children of prostitutes — India — Calcutta
Subject: Children of prostitutes — India — Calcutta — Pictorial works
Subject: Children — India — Calcutta — Social conditions