They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that's the case, every 5th, 6th and 7th grader at Amasango Career School in Grahamstown, South Africa will have provided me with 27,000 words about their lives by the end of next week.
The SNAP foundation (www.snapfoundation.org) in Rochester, New York sent me to South Africa with 80 disposable 27-shot cameras for the kids. We brought them onto the school grounds concealed in
plastic bags so that we could move into the office quickly, without the kids thumbing through the bags.
The cameras were handed out yesterday in true Amasango fashion. It was crazy. It was fun. It was a bit violent, but it was, without a doubt, Amasango: passionate kids who may have never had anything like a new camera for themselves pushing and shoving each other in line, screaming at one another in Xhosa, perhaps afraid that if they didn't push, they wouldn't get one.
They are allowed to take pictures of anything they want so long as it tells a story about their life. 80 cameras, 2160 photos, dozens of life stories.
I was looking over the proposal I sent to the SNAP foundation when I requested the cameras for this project and figured it would be nice to post here about what I hope this project accomplishes.
Who am I?
What should people know about who I am—about where I come from?
Who has helped me to become who am I? Who do I aspire to be like?
What do I struggle with the most?
When everyday is a fight—for dignity, for the hope of a better tomorrow, for the basic necessities so many take for granted—one has no time to reflect on these most basic questions.
Street children living in the Eastern Cape of South Africa have never had the opportunity to reflect: to examine who they are, to tell other people what their life is all about. Perhaps nobody has ever really cared to know the answer. Perhaps these children have been damaged by life and don’t want to know the answers themselves. It is my hope that “L.I.F.E.-as they know it” aims to take both the children photographers and the viewers of the photos on an emotional, excruciating, heart-wrenching at times, joyous at others, journey into the life of a South African street kid. Their sorrows, their triumphs, their lives.
Armed with a camera, watch as dozens of Eastern Cape children branch out to show the world what makes them happy, what makes them cry, what makes them tick, what makes them who they are.
Their histories. Their lives. Their thoughts. Their pictures. Their stories.
“L.I.F.E-as they know it”
[existence through the eyes of South African street children]
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