Developing Positive Negatives: Youth on the Edge Capture Images of Their Lives with Help from PhotoVoice

Abstract

Children, Youth and Environments Vol 13, No.2 (2003) ISSN 1546-2250 Developing Positive Negatives: Youth on the Edge Capture Images of Their Lives with Help from PhotoVoice Miranda Gavin Citation: Gavin, Miranda. “Developing Positive Negatives: Youth on the Edge Capture Images of Their Lives with Help from PhotoVoice.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(2), 2003. Retrieved [date] from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye. Keywords: photography; street children; children's empowerment Using photography as a medium for self-expression, a tool for selfadvocacy and a way of empowering those on the fringes of society, London-based charity PhotoVoice aims to enable these groups to speak out about their lives through images and words, by providing in-field photojournalism in the context of development. For the charity's co-founders, Anna Blackman and Tiffany Fairey, both 27, the use of documentary photography is championed as a way of enabling “those who have traditionally been the subject of such work, to become its creator.” Originating in 1998, as part of their academic fieldwork for a masters degree in social anthropology, the pair set up what have now become the charity's founding photography projects, Street Vision in Vietnam and the Rose Class in Nepal. Fairey set up a photography, art and writing project, the Rose Class, in a Bhutanese refugee camp, Beldangi II- one of seven in eastern Nepal- where she taught the youngsters the basics of photography using donated single-lens reflex and automatic cameras. The project gave 30 young people, aged between 15 and 17 years, an opportunity to express themselves in new and creative ways. With no electricity or running water in the camp, she had the films processed by a nearby lab. 255 Meanwhile in Vietnam, Blackman faced different problems. Working with street and working children to raise awareness of their lives and using an assortment of used and new camera equipment, she had to find translators and spaces from which to work, and she had to deal with Vietnamese bureaucracy in realizing Street Vision. Since then, the project has trained more than 120 young people in photography and continues to run annual beginners' and advanced photography courses. The program is now managed by a local NGO, The Ho Chi Minh Child Welfare Foundation. Although Fairey and Blackman were working independently at the time, they discovered that, as well as using similar working methodologies, they also shared a belief in the potential of photography as a means of understanding different cultures. Later, in a bar in Perpignan, France, where they were both attending the annual photojournalism festival, Visa pour l'image 1999, they cemented their partnership and decided to establish a non-profit organization. A year later, they founded PhotoVoice. In 2001, Blackman headed to Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, where she was funded by Christian Aid, to teach 15 HIVpositive women the basics of photography. Over a period of four weeks, she worked with a local, non-profit organization and Christian Aid partner, Fondation Femme Plus (FFP) to enable these women- most of them widows- to openly document their experience of living with HIV in a developing country. Using point-and-shoot cameras, they began to record their daily lives and struggles. Blackman later returned to Kinshasa, to work with six of the original participants on a further project, Positive Negatives, which made its way to London's Africa Centre. Blackman and Fairey now manage six PhotoVoice projects around the world. Last year, the group's Transparency project gave a group of young refugees, aged between 12 and 18, from countries including Afghanistan, Angola, Iraq, Romania, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, the opportunity to express themselves through photography. Working from a community center in east London, the project ran over a three-month period and culminated in a well-received exhibition at the Spitz Gallery, London. Since then, Transparency 256 has toured nationally and one member of the group has gone on to study photography full-time and has secured commissions by the BBC. Another participant was a finalist in a national self-portraiture competition, featured on Channel 4 and exhibited in London's National Portrait Gallery. Working alongside both international organizations and local partners, PhotoVoice takes a...