In 2002, New York-based photographer Zana Brinski started a class called Kids with Cameras to teach the children of Calcutta’s red light district how to photograph and what constitutes an engaging image. She sent the kids out into the streets with cameras. She taught them to edit with their hearts. She taught the joy of making art and the practice of focus in chaotic urban back-alleys. The result of her work is a series of beautiful photos made by the children, a documentary film (Born Into Brothels), and a chance at a boarding school education for a handful of kids who would otherwise have no choices.
The film itself alternates between profiles of each student and glimpses of their lives, slideshows of their work backed by tabla music, scenes from the classroom, and the story of Brinski’s struggle to find schools for the children. “I know about what my mom does for work,” says one of the girls at the brothel, “and I don’t want to do it.” With mothers beaten and murdered by pimps, fathers drugged up and useless, and bitter grandmothers blasting them with demands and insults, these children have learned 1,000 lessons of suffering by the age of twelve. But their eyes filled with the hopes and curiosities of childhood. With no real path in front of them, they don’t have feelings of entitlement or inflated expectations of what life has to offer. Their photographs show a stark freedom, and they are stunning because of the colorful world around the children, the comfort they have with their subjects, and their natural desire to work hard. The kids soak up everything they can learn from Brinski; they apply themselves fully. And their spirit of caring and kindness in an uncaring and unkind environment is totally refreshing.
In locating schools for the children, Brinski faces a struggle against time, social stigmas, and often the children’s families. At the cusp of adolescence, facing increased pressure from their parents to make money for the family, you get a sense that things are about to get a lot worse for these children: they’ll be out on the line in less than a year, or dealing drugs. Brinski searches for months before finding a school that will accept children of sex workers. Once she does, she must push through webs of red tape, dig up birth certificates and ration cards, drag everyone to the clinic for HIV tests, stand in the passport lines for eight hours. But as she battles Indian bureaucracy and discrimination for the children, she leverages her American connections to build a non-profit to support their education. She finds galleries in India and New York for their photography, she gets their work into a Sotheby’s auction, and she wins a scholarship for one of the most talented students.
The parents—many of whom desire an education for their children—struggle to make ends meet on a daily basis and have neither time nor contacts to devote to this task. So Brinski’s footwork is ultimately her biggest contribution to the kids’ lives. Of the eight children, three are now in boarding schools. But the success of Born Into Brothels puts Brinski’s organization on the map. She now has the means to help more children. The Kids With Cameras School of Leadership and the Arts is scheduled to open its doors in Calcutta’s red light district next fall.