Kids with Cameras was founded in 2002 by photographer Zana Briski out of her work teaching photography to children in Calcutta’s red-light district.
In 2005 the film, ‘Born Into Brothels’, based on her work, won an Oscar for the best documentary film.
The film works so well because it focuses on the message of hope. Briski is under no illusions that she is making wholesale social changes but by making a difference for this group of kids she shows that change on even this small scale is better than apathy or pessimism.
Without her intervention they were destined to lives with no proper education and the girls were certain to follow their mothers into a life of prostitution. The photographs the children take on cheap non digital cameras are used to raise funds to pay for school fees.
The most naturally gifted, Avijit, was invited by the World Press Photo Foundation in Amsterdam to be part of their Children’s Jury in 2002. In 2005, Avijit received a four year high school scholarship to attend Tisch School of the Arts in America.
Briski made this possible by patiently battling against the Kafkaesque bureaucracy and persuading the authorities to recognise these children as as individuals rather than as criminals with no rights.
