Innovators: The Accidental Teacher

How Zana Briski's life was changed by Calcutta's needy children.

By: Anne Mollegen Smith | Source: NRTA Live & Learn | May 30, 2005

WHEN PHOTOJOURNALIST ZANA BRISKI got on the plane to India in early 1995, her mission was clear: She would turn her unflinching camera's eye on domestic violence, female infanticide, dowry deaths, and other harsh realities for the world's poorest women.

Fast-forward ten years: She is on a Hollywood stage in a satin gown, accepting an Oscar from Leonardo DiCaprio. Her former lover, Ross Kauffman, raises his statuette and salutes her as "the amazing woman next to me." It is like a dream sequence in—well, a Hollywood movie. But Hollywood movies are not what these two people are about. Kauffman, 37, and Briski, 38, are codirectors of Born Into Brothels, a film that racked up some two dozen independent film awards and in February 2005 won the Oscar for Best Documentary.

Rewind to first reel: Zana Briski was born in London and studied biology at Cambridge, then earned a master's in theology. She came to New York to study documentary photography at the International Center of Photography. Photojournalism is not an easy career to launch. Work that interested Briski needed and got support from George Soros's Open Society Institute and from Annie Liebowitz, among others. Twists and turns seem to characterize Briski's life, She shuttled between India and New York for six years. In 1997, a friend took her to Sonagachi, the red light district of Calcutta, a few blocks of beehive-like buildings that housed about 6,000 sex workers. A prostitute would both work and live there—often in a single room shared with her whole family and perhaps her pimp. The giant brothels were home to exactly the women Briski had set out to photograph. To win their trust. Briski spent hours talking with the women "in the line" between customers. Trapped though they were by poverty and complete lack of options, the women struck Briski as strong, resourceful, full of life and humor.

The kids take center stage: Although the women feared her camera because prostitution is a crime, their children were bolder. They took Briski up to their favorite rooftop spaces and flew kites for her. They were curious about "Zana Aunty's" camera and eager to use it. Briski had never thought of herself as a teacher but she bought ten point-and-shoot cameras and invited a handful of kids 9 to 13 years old to a workshop. She taught basics of the camera and composition, and each got a few rolls of film per week. The kids' work soon showed creativity and artistic honesty that astonished her. Briski became ambitious for them. She sent off some photos by Avijit, a talented boy already skilled with watercolor paints, and thrillingly, he was invited to join a Children's Jury for a World Press Photo show in Amsterdam. (Horribly, just at that time, his mother was burned to death, possibly by her pimp. Zana's efforts to get him a passport would prove to be agonizing.)

Recruiting Ross: Briski bought two video cameras, one for herself and the other for her boyfriend in New York, Ross Kauffman, a seasoned documentary film editor. Let's record this, she said. But he said: Making documentaries is full of heartbreak; working together is bad for relationships; documentary filmmakers live in debt for years. And in the end, he said, such a film never changes anything. (All true but the last.) So while Kauffman stayed in New York, Briski taped a father addicted to hash, a husband hustling customers—the dead-end lives that lay ahead for the children—but she captured more: the kids excited to go to the zoo in bright yellow taxis, taking pictures out the window. Kids seeing the ocean for the first time. Zana sent Ross four tapes, and in three weeks he was on a plane to Calcutta. The rest is history—well, Academy Awards history, anyway.

But the story's not over for the children of Sonagachi. Now there's some hope for the future. Supported by sales of their work, this handful of children are studying English, learning computer skills, and living in homes outside the brothels. A new school is being designed by Architecture for Humanity specifically for the children from the brothels. There's more: Three new Kids with Cameras workshops are in the works—for restavecs in Haiti; for Cairo's Zabaleen garbage-pickers; and in Jerusalem for Israeli and Palestinian children.

Anne Mollegen Smith often writes about education and women's and political issues. She has been editor-in-chief of Redbook, Working Woman, McCall's, and The Art of Simple Living. This article was published in the Spring, 2005 issue of NRTA Live & Learn.

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