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Once again from that very same day in the same Islamic School in Uttar Pradesh another portrait is being shared. The faces that emerged from only one village near Kairana overwhelmed me, and proved once again that such beauty and resolve exist in every village.Here were people who had never seen me before, and some who had never seen an outsider in their young lives prior to this day. Yet they stood in front of the lens without hesitation and expressed themselves with an honesty that is many times missing in parts of the world where the camera has become ubiquitous; where everyone has one and where images are made endlessly.This little girl is without access to traditional education, lives in an area where the government schools are considered so useless that the parents would rather keep their children at home. So my host from last year has set this school up for almost 200 children, and has begun teaching the basics of the Koran to the children of this community. He yearns to also present a traditional curriculum to the student body and has the resolve to do so, now working on the financial end of the equation to hire more teachers. Yet he needs help regarding a curriculum, teaching materials and so on. We are working on arranging a relationship with another foundation whose strength happens to be this man's weakness, and whose presence would present a strong Hindu-Muslim unity in an area sorely missing such.I hope to make the connection in the near future, to bring such a curriculum to this village and to see such unity flourish for the sake of all involved, especially this beautiful student.www.halimina.orgNote: Anyone interested in helping in this matter may feel free to contact me at any time and through this forum of course.
From my last day in the refugee camps of Uttar Pradesh this portrait of two girls comes. We were near the end of the session and still had a dozen or so girls without documentation. We moved quickly to a small spot ten or so meters away from the main stage to continue, and the girls followed two by two.The men were incredibly helpful and arranged the photography for the afternoon. Once they knew that we'd work in the camp that afternoon they called all of the children, an hour before the work could have begun… and all of the children came running immediately. The girls sat behind me to the right while the boys sat behind me to the left.I was overwhelmed and almost frozen in thought. While I knew that the boys would go first, saving the softer light for the girls, the thought of when to begin went through my head over and over again. The idea is to allow the work to flow without pause, and so the beginning was quite important. We began with two hours of light left and photographed the boys in 45 minutes. They walked to the camera two by two, sometimes in groups of three or four. Everyone has fun with this, especially the men sitting around the fringes of the 'stage.'Then came time for the girls and the medium format camera was removed from the camera. Without saying much everyone knew that this was different for me, especially the girls waiting for their turn. Looking at the four dozen or so girls sitting around, my eyes glanced at their features… picking the girls with less dominant features first and reserving the latter portion of the session for the girls with deeper features so as to minimize the shadows on their faces.Girl after incredible girl walked up to the camera, all dressed differently and in their own style. Their expressions took my breath away, for they were responding to the circumstances in which they lived at the moment. In their eyes I witnessed sadness coupled with strength, desperation balanced with hope. They were meters away from the frail tents in which they lived, yet stood in defiance of all that brought them to this point in their lives.Tomorrow I drive to Washington, DC to collect the negatives from India, and will relive this moment… hoping that the camera has done justice to these incredible children.www.halimina.orgNote: This image was made with a Sony RX100M2, in available light then cropped for size and edited for contrast only.
