slums Archives - annabel smith

How would you feel if a complete stranger had a photograph of you on their fridge? Your hair a mess at the end of a tiring day, caught at an unflattering angle in your oldest clothes, damp and sweaty, longing for a shower.

You might feel that your soul had been stolen – plenty of people see cameras as frightening, not just annoying – or you might just be furious that your privacy had been violated by someone who doesn’t even know your name. A few years ago a group of young Chinese men surrounded me at a tourist spot in northern India, friendly, laughing, snapping away. I asked them to stop, but they didn’t. A tiny window into the lives of those whose faces pop up as screen savers the world over.

It can be tempting just to snap away vaguely, presuming it does no harm, but a quick walk round the block in someone else’s shoes provides a sharp reminder that it does. Many people who go on slum or township tours equate the experience to a trip to the zoo.

Enough.

Clicking the shutter should be the last thing you do.

Why are you taking the picture anyway? What will you use it for?

Now we don’t have to load film, check it’s caught, wind on, keep it in a dark place, make sure it’s developed safely and hope, pray we got the shot we saw. We’re digital, we’re point and shoot, we can take thousands of frames at no extra cost.

Yet it’s no coincidence that most photographers who have worked for long periods in war zones, disaster zones and among the desperately poor, are haunted. One ex-Sunday Times reporter told me he could not longer take those pictures after his first child was born.

You want to show people what you saw, but don’t give up on words. I won’t forget watching a student tell a friend about her day at a school in a South African township. Her voice became soft and tears came to her eyes as she realised that the children she was describing were far too small for their age because they had never had enough to eat. Talking forces us to engage; photography can let us off the hook.

Use the power of your camera wisely. Access to the lives of others is a privilege, so bring both good intentions and a critical mind.

Don’t forget to capture details, insights on the condition of people’s lives. Look for the things you can’t see. A near-empty drugs cupboard in a hospital can tell you far more than a picture of someone dying, and doesn’t compromise anyone’s dignity. Heads bent over a shared textbook, an unnecessary flower garden, feet in new shoes.

Seek out contrasts, juxtapositions that illuminate. Ordinary objects that tell stories.

Talk to people. Introduce yourself. Ask.

Sometimes people say no. Perhaps one of their friends, or someone nearby will say yes. Take the photo. Show them. Do it carefully, move to catch the light and their best angle. Many people have never seen a photograph of themselves. Don’t start if you don’t have time to finish.

Last January I was in Tamale, northern Ghana. I walked through the market with a local guide. He knew everyone, they catcalled as we went past. With his permission I took shots of the market, a riot of colour and activity. But I wanted the women. So I asked. Some said no. Some said yes. I started taking pictures and when I had a good one, I showed them. They were delighted. They were beautiful, astonishingly beautiful. Those who had said no, now fought to be next in line. We laughed, I teased them, they teased me, we had fun.

I took their names and asked permission to use the photos. Although I had showed everyone their pictures, I couldn’t give them copies. I promised I would send them, and I did. I don’t know if they arrived. If I could have done I would have printed them on the spot. We lost something very precious with the demise of the polaroid. I was converted after a trip to a remote part of Madagascar in the mid 90s by friends who insisted on taking and giving people their photographs. I had been completely against the idea. I could not have been more wrong. What could be more precious than a picture of your family?

Don’t underestimate the power of photography. In thoughtful hands a camera shrinks space, connects strangers and illuminates lives. In thoughtless hands it snatches and grabs, hits and runs, confirms stereotypes. Used to tell stories it is still the magic lantern that captivated our forefathers and made us leave home in the first place.

* See Susan Sontag’s 1977 book of the same name, and her later Regarding the Pain of Others. Also The Bang Bang Club and Ken Light’s Witness in our Time

Before we give up on Broken Britain, here’s some inspiration from the girls of Loreto Day School in Kolkata. Over the last 30 years they’ve changed thousands of lives by turning their school into a multi-faith hub for social justice. They also passed all their exams. If they can do it, why can’t we?

In 1979 LDS Sealdah was a traditional girl’s Catholic school with a small group of scholarship students. This left the new Principal, Sister Cyril, ‘uneasy’, so she began to open the school up, to create a ‘healthy mix’. Now twice the size, half the pupils are from families so poor that the school not only buys their uniforms, food, medicines and books, but also pays their parents’ rent in the nearby slums.

Meanwhile, the girls daily passed hundreds of children who were living on the pavements and railway platforms with no hope of an education. So the girls began an amazing experiment, gradually drawing street children into an after school program of games and lessons. It was so successful that within a few years they had created a fully integrated school-within-a-school. The children became known as the Rainbows, a source of joy and also a revelation: with regular attendance, an illiterate ten or eleven year-old Rainbow can be ready to join a mainstream class of girls her age within a year.

Teaching the Rainbows is Work Education, a curricular subject which takes place twice a week. Girls are taught to teach literacy, numeracy, life skills and crafts, vital for survival and income generation.The huge top-floor room is filled with children, half in blue and white uniforms, half in ragamuffin cast-offs. All are intent on the lesson, holding up cards with sounds and letters, spelling out words, laughing and shouting encouragement. In a country still riven by the legacy of caste – where a high caste woman may work to support a low caste woman but not touch a cup of tea she has made – it’s an amazing sight.

Work Education can also be completed in local villages – 150 girls go on their day off every week to teach 3,500 rural children – with Childline, the Hidden Child Domestic Labour Project, or in the local slums. Girls regularly encounter cases of injustice and abuse and are challenged to get involved. They learn to use their voices and their skills, gathering evidence, lobbying and advocating for children’s rights.

Values Education is also compulsory, designed to make girls think and to promote social change. Together these two programs, equal in importance to the traditional subjects, make a curriculum of agency. This honestly recognises that the world outside the window is not ok and prepares young women to be part of the solution: Loreto graduates are confident, informed and dynamic.

The school survives from hand to mouth, on gifts and grants and prayers. It’s by no means perfect, Sister Cyril can be distinctly dictatorial and some of the education is old-fashioned and dull. But several very powerful myths have been exploded by these merry girls with blue hair ribbons: they have demonstrated beyond doubt that compassion is more productive than competition, and that doing the right thing is about love, not money.

London is not like Kolkata and many of Sister Cyril’s programs would be crushed by Health and Safety before the ink was dry. But across the UK things are not ok either. People are separated from one another by gulfs of inequality and unfamiliarity; children are abused, homeless, hungry and frightened. It’s time for our own radical vision. So let’s be inspired by the Rainbows and get started.