Seeing slum life through photos and film

It is a dream come true for several teenage girls and boys from Kenyan slums, who are now making international headlines with great photo exhibitions.
Girl Guides get a feel of what a digital camera can do.

Armed with 20 plastic cameras, 31 boys and girls aged between 12 to 17 set out to “photograph their lives” depicting their trials and triumphs.

And these photo stories, serialised every week over two years, have now graced exhibitions in the world cities of London, Berlin, Tilburg and Washington DC, among others.

The teens’ hard work resulted in witty beautiful images capturing their everyday lives. These visceral images, from youngsters who had never held a camera before, became the basis of a book, Shootback: Photos by Kids from Nairobi Slums.

The Shootback project is a joint initiative of an American photographer, Lana Wong, and Mathare Youth Sports Association (MYSA) leader and renowned footballer Francis Kimanzi.

The two came together in August 1997 to provide young people in Mathare with a means to tell their real life stories.

The photography ‘

story book’, was eventually launched at the Barbican Centre in London, and then exhibited at Kennedy Centre in Washington DC. The book has also received audience from the Staff USA Gallery in New York and the festival Mundial in Tilburg, Netherlands.

It is also on exhibition at the Bildung der Handwerkskammer in Berlin.

The teenagers’ work has not gone unappreciated in Africa, where it was exhibited in Bamako, Mali.

With such exposure, the book is set to make a breakthrough in the lives of the slum teenagers and encourage their peers to similarly exploit their talents.

The aim of the project was to give teenagers hope that they could transform the lives.

Filming is an art that requires resilience, skill and prowess. Perhaps that is why a chosen few venture into this form of art.

Probably, this could be the reason why a decade after the youngsters took their first innovative pictures in Mathare slums, Agnes B Productions is set to present original Shootback exhibition with recent works.

Since its inception, the project continues to train Mathare youths the art of photography to voice their hardships.

Important life skills
Guests at the one-week workshop at Methodist Guest House learnt important skills on digital arts. Boys and girls have set out to capture their every day lives through digital arts.

The project, sponsored by Ford Foundation and United Nations Children’s Fund, hopes to use several initiatives to empower marginalised communities to speak out and achieve positive social change. It also aims to make the beneficiaries self-reliant.

A member of the Shootback project, Julius Mwelu, 22, can now proudly stake a claim, with several photo exhibitions to his name. Now a photographer with the UN in Nairobi, the young man recently launched a website, the Mwelu Foundation, to continue the legacy of youth empowerment through photography.

Mohammed Dahir, 24, fled to Nairobi from Ethiopia as a refugee in 1990. He can now proudly show his family what he has gained from the project - exhibited works. He is also a university student.

James Njuguna, 24, who also trained with Shootback, and got a job with a local newspaper, won the Journalist of the Year Award in 2007.

As part of an upcoming launch, a Paris-based non-profit organisation is planning a live link with the Shootback photographers in Nairobi. The planned exhibition resonates with the engagement of Agnes B Productions, and seeks to promote culture in the broadest sense.

Recently, Longman Kenya in conjunction with its subsidiary company, Pearson Education, launched a one-week workshop on a digital programme for the girl-child.

The two projects collaborate with the Kenya Girl Guide Association and SoS Village Kenya to help the girl-child film her experiences.

The programme also aims to expose the girls to important life skills based on the Sara model. They also learn skills to write short narrative film scripts, and to film and edit their own experiences to create film.

Twenty-one girls from various backgrounds were initiated into the programme.

Longman Kenya General Manager, Mr Kakai Karani, says the project is all about digital art.

“Since most disadvantaged children have minimal or no exposure to computers, the project plans to teach them this,” he says.

He adds: “This being a visual means of voicing their difficulties in life, it is set to draw positive response.”

The film received encouraging response going by the number of guests who viewed its release at the Methodist Guest House, Nairobi, last month.

“Some could not hold back tears as they watched the film solely complied by the girls,” says Karani.

Mobile Media Lab donated five laptops and cameras to the project. The vision by various organisations to help disadvantaged Kenyan youth is indeed reaping fruits.

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