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From this very neighborhood comes yet another incredible face and beautiful spirit. This young girl is the sister to our star from last year. We photographed her sister last year in a hoodie, something quite rare from my experiences in India. We returned this year to find her sister, did so and walked down the alley to an open space to photograph the children.
Amazing face after amazing face walked over to see what was happening, including this young girl. One look at her, and I just knew that she was our star's younger sister. I communicated this to the team, and they then translated my thoughts to the girls. They of course smiled, and nodded in agreement.
She was exquisite, just like her sister from last year. Now keeping everyone around us calm took on more significance, since we were down to the girls with our photography. The boys had already been photographed, and chaos was taking its toll on me. Thanks however to the team, and to two young men from the neighborhood, we were able to maintain some calm until her portrait was finished.
We ended the visit by speaking to her and her sister, standing nearby with some friends. Instead of just packing our gear and walking away, we made the time to speak with them directly. Through my translator my thoughts were communicated. They heard that we returned just for them, that their faces were etched in my mind, and that we hoped they were attending the school funded by Humana Indiain a nearby temple.
They had never been spoken with directly by someone outside of their community, even less so by someone from another country. Their expressions made me truly appreciate the bond formed since last year, and the incredible trust they had placed in me. It is a truly humbling experience to be associated with these girls, to know that they give selflessly. It's time to step up this project, and to fund dozens rather than a dozen schools.
Note: This portrait was made with a Sony RX100M3.
This past visit to India I had the honor of visiting a few villages and documenting the students in various schools, thanks to our hosts Imdadullah and Munshad Ali Chauhan. The trip ended with a visit by Nirvana and his wonderful team at Nirvanavan Foundation.
We visited an area from three years ago, an area affected deeply by the riots of Muzaffarnagar, in which hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Muslims were displaced and harmed beyond description. When Nirvana learned about my plan to visit the area this year, he asked if his team could also visit... perhaps exploring the idea of an inter-faith collaboration.
The visit was so much better than expected. Our hosts of course went well out of their way for us, as expected from my previous visits. However the community embraced the thought of an inter-faith collaboration beautifully, especially the children who watched and listened as Nirvana and his team spoke. It was an enlightening experience and one which has energized me to reach out to the American Muslim community upon my return to the States this weekend.
This young girl attends the government school in our hosts' village. Her school day begins at the mosque, where her classes include Arabic and Islamic courses. Shortly after she and her classmates walk to the government school building where her other classes begin.
We made her portrait in an unused classroom, using a reflector held by my dear friend Javed. Thanks to Imdadullah and Mushad, the leaders of this community, we were able to make this image, otherwise an impossible one to make.
I hope to honor their cooperation, and the spirit of this young girl soon with my efforts to find funding for their schools. The venture is a promising one to write the least, especially in this deeply fractured spot of India.
Note: This image was made with a Sony RX100M3 using a reflector.
When it comes to her imagination limits are irrelevant. She sees another dancer and ideas immediately appear in her exquisite mind. This was the case one day when we went to pick her up from dance school. She introduced us to this incredible, young man and we instantly agreed on a collaboration.
Their forms of dance were quite different, yet they meshed beautifully. He was a few years older and took on the roll with elegance and grace. She accepted his direction with humility and we were there to witness the dance between ballet and contemporary dance... releasing the shutter as they allowed us to do so.
This young man was perfectly ready when we picked him up, and was the same in front of the lens. His physical endurance was admirable, and he gave 110% under the heat of the sun as if he was on a grand stage. This goes the same of course for the Magnificent One, for at only 14 years old she has been photographed by me for over seven years.
I look forward to this summer, and hope we can do much more for these two together!
Note: This image was made with a Sony RX100M2.
While she certainly has never asked to be, for me hers is the face of the current refugee crisis. Two years before the war ravaged this land, her family lived as migrants in Lebanon, hundreds of miles away from her beloved city of Halab. In this cruel setting she is able to portray her joy to us, her sense of hope.
During my visits to these camps, the children's faces were charred from the sun and the wind, while their hair had the consistency of cotton candy. They played in the dirt paths between the tents, sometimes running dangerously close to the streets nearby. Every once in a while a child would be struck by a speeding motorist, the communities shared with me, while local authorities treated such incidents as inconsequential. These brave faces lived on the outskirts of the surrounding society, performing their duties unseen in order to help support their families back home.
For those of us with children, can we imagine for one second our child's face with such scars? Can we imagine the hair on our children's heads having such a consistency? Can we imagine the clothes on our children's backs so fragile, so stained? Can we for one moment endure the dryness of their skin, dirt near their lips?
Yet these children do more than endure, do much more than survive. While there is little doubt that the cruel world has dealt them a hard set of circumstances, they refuse to give up. The boys do what they can with the tools around them, taking for example a long wire and fixing a cylinder to its end as a toy. The girls take flowers from the gardens in front of their tents and adorn themselves, playing with stuffed pieces of cloth as others would do with dolls. While their physical world is limited, they have shown me that their imaginations cannot be restrained.
Note: Images made with a Hasselblad 555 ELD/180 mm lens combination onto Fuji Neopan Acros 100 ISO film.
As 2016 begins I share my gratitude for the generous people in my life who have contributed to the various projects in the past, who continue to do so in the present and who may in the future continue to make sure that girls around the world have their rightful place in this collective society!
Thanks to our successful Costumes for Ballerinas in Cuba Campaign for example, these exquisite dancers had the chance to perform in new outfits, and refused to take the tags off of the pieces!
Here they are, a spontaneous moment in the sea!
Note: Image made with a Sony RX100M2.
This is one face the crowd will see, this is one expression that is undeniable!
This young spirit lives in a refugee camp just outside of my host's village. Her family escaped the horrors of the sectarian violence in her home town, and they have found some solace in this region of Uttar Pradesh. The locals have given their lands for their use, and the families have done the best that they can do, made simple homes and have begun finding work.
The circumstances are dire, since even the people living in this region are quite poor and live life hand to mouth on a daily basis. So we can only imagine how hard it must be for this exquisite child, and others in the camp.
The only thing separating the family from the elements is a thin sheet of plastic covering their sleeping space. While the scene is quite beautiful naturally, schools are non-existent and the basics are luxuries.
Access to medicine is as illusionary as the safety of the water in the distance. I cannot express sufficiently with words the extent of their hardships, and hope that this image begins the conversation more clearly.
www.halimina.org
