A space to lay down the words behind the images. From Asia to Africa to the Americas, the portraits are made, stories are recorded and lives are represented through photography.
We are looking at a smile three years in the making. This young woman is associated with the Humana People to People movement in India. Up until last year, she attends a foundation school for girls in her village.
She is married now and has begun her own family. When we arrive last year to make portraits of the girls' school, she is missing. She has graduated from her classes into a marriage at a young age.
Nonetheless, she joins us for a wonderful afternoon of photography and produces this smile for us.
'And as always in the question of development it is about promoting and preventing.
Preventing the dehumanising of society, of institutions and of you and me. Promoting the humanization of mankind, the only art form that contains the seeds to the flowers of happiness for all. From black-white to all colours at random. From the struggle for liberation to the struggle for development.'
After the women and girls of the Nat and Kanjar Communities had seen their portraits and experienced our photography, Nirvana Bodhisattva of Nirvanavan Foundation was kind enough to share his thoughts with us. He speaks of their reactions to the work and how this has affected the project as a whole.
Interview with Nirvana Bodhisattva
Q: How did the girls feel about their photographs?
They were very, very happy and there is a definite change of attitude. At Ramgarh a few of the sex-workers also came to the show. Which meant a lot. Your work has certainly made an impact. We can now work to build on it.
Q: What did the presence of the sex-workers mean?
The presence of the sex-workers meant that they have come out of their shells and will be ready to photograph themselves when you come next. I have asked the teachers to make a local committee mainly of women and particularly sex-workers who will look after the school. This will generate more interest in them and they may ask their younger sisters to go to school.
Q: Have any improvements been made as a result of the photography?
I am sure that we will be able to open all the closed schools. The new session begins from July. We will have three new schools this year. We will establish them first before we open the last two.
Earlier today an email arrives from across a wall, one that has been in place for the last fifty years. It speaks of a time when perhaps we will sit down at the same table, have a meal as family and speak the same language of humanity.
My friend's name is Elina. She lives in Havana, Cuba.
She tells me of her family, of her sister's daughter that had been photographed by me last year. Her niece's name is Irina, but her family calls her Irinita. She is almost finished with school and is getting ready for summer break.
They will be spending time with each other in the family's hometown this summer.
She will be taking news of my photography to her family, to share with them the faces from other countries, other cultures. She will show them the faces that are their sisters and brothers from India and Kenya, as well as Lebanon and Senegal. She believes in a future that belongs to us all.
In her own words:
'Eso de comer juntos y compartir eso es lo mejor que se pueda imaginar para unos amigos y familias, compartir ese momento si yo me lo imagino muy lindo entre nosotros, compartir luego de la cena sus videos y fotos.'
This friendship goes back to a single moment one year ago. A group of parents and their daughters are waiting outside a dance school, waiting for the previous group of girls to finish with their lessons. I am also waiting for a family to arrive nearby for a photographic session. It seems like a perfect opportunity, the sun is just right and the building across the school is reflecting the sun perfectly.
With my limited Spanish, I begin talking to small groups of parents, asking their permission to photograph their daughters. While only some agree, all listen openly to my story. The very first girl to be photographed is Irinita, with the others following in her footsteps. Her trust in me, as well as her mother's trust in the work, is immense.
We will one day have dinner together under the same roof.
Over the past three years, this tribe was photographed in collaboration with the good people of Humana People to People India. The video above is made during the session that produces these very portraits.
In the beginning, this specific tribe is associated with a foundation school near Behror, Rajasthan. This past year, they move further away in order to remove themselves from the urban chaos and in search of their more traditional way of life.
This results in their children losing access to the foundation's school, one in which they are enrolled for about three hours per day, outside of their daily chores and work duties. While outside of class, these children collect plastic and so forth in order to sell in bulk later. They also approach certain people for donations in the streets.
As a matter of fact, in our search for this very group of children in Behror while stopping for some bananas, children very much like them from a different Banjara collective approach us. While my friends are a bit worried, both Indian and British, it seems like a good opportunity to find out what had happened to the tribe in the video from the previous year. My photographic album is shown to them and to the amazement of the people around us, the children chang their expressions and soften their stances, smile at the sight of their friends in the book and then begin to tell us where they had moved to since last year.
They do more for us than anyone could have done.
The moving images show the children reacting to our arrival after being directed to their village by those magnificent children the day before in Behror, Rajasthan. They give us more than can ever be given in return. We hope to change this very last point and, with your help, give them a chance at an education once again.
Should you like to be involved with this work, you are more than welcome to join the conversation. We can be reached at the information below:
As noted in Wikipedia, 'women are known to wear colorful and beautiful costumes and have tattoos on their hands.The dress is considered fancy and attractive by Western cultures. They use mirror chips and often coins to decorate it. Women put on thick bangles on their arms [Patli].Their ornaments are made up of silver rings, coins,chain and hair pleat are tied together at the end by Chotla.'
You can learn more about this most beautiful people at:
As part of the Humana People to People India collaborative, they are making much progress and are deeply motivated. They show us nothing but love, compassion, sympathy, cooperation and the kindest qualities of humanity. They are an example for the rest of us.
Working with HPPI allows me access to them as well as others living in different villages. Over the span of three years as of 2008, portraits are made of fourteen girls' schools and their associated villages, as well as a handful of working girls' schools associated with the most beautiful Banjara Tribes.
According to its mission:
'Humana People to People India's mission is to create development in the broadest sense. Especially through the establishment and implementation of projects that aim at transferring knowledge, skills and capacity to individuals and communities that need assistance to come out of poverty and dehumanized conditions.'
'Humana People to People India works with the people as partners in finding solutions and in creating the necessary conditions to improve their living standards and to achieve their aspiration for a just and humanized life for themselves, their families and their communities.'
'It is further Humana People to People India's mission to promote humanization of man, and to protect the weak and the outcast and to go against all forms of discrimination, oppression and exploitation. Humana People to People India aims to have an effect on the eradication of poverty, the control of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, education for all, health care for all and for people to have the power do decide over their own.'
We walk around after a photographic session, the smells and sounds of rural India all around us. Having just photographed several hundred children, the landscape overtakes me.
We talk while we walk, they are surprised every time the shutter is clicked, for them this is their neighborhood.
What's so important about a mountain of straw?
That's their neighbor walking by, why the picture?
Next time, I will stop more often for these images.
When we start our working relationship in 2007, seven of the ten schools are functional, with three of the schools in financial distress. The following year, a benefit at Lucky's Cafe helps raise funding, along with others, to open three more schools.
During a visit in November of 2008, Nirvana and his team guide me through all ten villages and four others as well, hopeful recipients of a school in the future. Since these villages are deemed outcast by the rest of society, more from their professions rather than their caste, a school offered by the foundation is seen as the only hope by the children.
We must remember that life was different for these communities in the past. Before turning in desperation to the trade of sex, the Nat and Kanjar Communities were artisans as well as the traditional entertainers to everyone from royalty to village folk.
While being regarded as the lowest caste, they nonetheless earned their living from the traditional system of extending services among castes, with the women performing and the men supporting with music. With the decline of this social structure and the rise of other forms of entertainment, they were left with a nomadic lifestyle and without a traditional means of survival. The community has since turned to prostitution and is on the outside of society, having little access to education, medicine, justice and basic human rights. They are approached only for their work and ignored the rest of their lives.
With my own eyes, I see children sitting and listening to the teacher with an eagerness that teachers in the West may perhaps rarely experience. They sing songs, write their names, dance in circles and smile from ear to ear.
Sure, their sisters perform the trade known to these villages while all of this happens in front of me, but we only need to look at our own most recent civil rights struggles to understand that such changes take time and doing nothing cannot be accepted.
This is a beginning and we hope that you can be a part of it.
In her own words:
'Eso de comer juntos y compartir eso es lo mejor que se pueda imaginar para unos amigos y familias, compartir ese momento si yo me lo imagino muy lindo entre nosotros, compartir luego de la cena sus videos y fotos.'
This friendship goes back to a single moment one year ago. A group of parents and their daughters are waiting outside a dance school, waiting for the previous group of girls to finish with their lessons. I am also waiting for a family to arrive nearby for a photographic session. It seems like a perfect opportunity, the sun is just right and the building across the school is reflecting the sun perfectly.
With my limited Spanish, I begin talking to small groups of parents, asking their permission to photograph their daughters. While only some agree, all listen openly to my story. The very first girl to be photographed is Irinita, with the others following in her footsteps. Her trust in me, as well as her mother's trust in the work, is immense.
We will one day have dinner together under the same roof.
