by Davin Risk

The Story

In 1995, New York photojournalist Zana Briski traveled in India photographing “the harsh realities of women's lives – female infanticide, child marriage, dowry deaths and widowhood.” When a friend took Briski through Calcutta’s densely-populated red light district she was taken by the place and it's people. The over 7000 women and children in the Calcutta brothels drew Briski to spend the next two years finding a way to live among them and photograph them – to hope for some understanding of their lives.

By 1998, Briski was doing just that, living in a Calcutta brothel for months at a time and slowly attempting to gain the trust of the women working there. She says it was the children who first embraced her presence. These children are some of the lowest in India's caste system, shunned more so than even their mothers by the stigma of prostitution. While the children didn't understand why Briski was living with them at first, they were fascinated by her and her camera. There to document and explore this world with her camera, Briski soon began sharing the basics of photography with the children of the brothels. By introducing the kids to photography a new source of expression was opened to them – a way of possibly telling their stories in their own voice.

"I want to show in pictures how people live in this city. I want to put across the behavior of man." - Gour, 13

On her next trip, Briski brought a number of point-and-shoot cameras with her and gathered a group of the kids most eager to learn about photography and taking their own photos. The response from the kids and their resulting images made Briski put her own camera down and devote her time to teaching the children between 2000 and 2003. Early on, Briski realized that she wanted to document the weekly classes and began taking video of the children as they explored photography.

Out of these years came two things: The 2004 Academy Award® winning documentary Born into Brothels Briski made with Ross Kauffman and the non-profit organization Kids with Cameras which Briski founded in 2002. The mission of Kids with Cameras is to “use photography to capture the imaginations of children, to empower them, building confidence, self-esteem and hope.”

Today

The Kids with Cameras organization are currently trying to build a school for the children of Calcutta's brothels and are also conducting new workshops with the children of Jerusalem, Haiti, and Cairo. In order to further their mission, the group sells prints of the children's work as well as the Born into Brothels companion book which features photos by the kids in Calcutta and Zana Briski's own documentary photography.

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Find out more about Kids with Cameras and the Born into Brothels documentary at kids-with-cameras.org.