December 2002 - Nr. 13
Berlin Photo Project Captures World of Contrasts
TWIG - "Imagine … your photos will open my eyes." This gentle suggestion is the inspiration behind a touring photography exhibition making a one-month stop at the German Foreign Office in Berlin starting this week. On display are a vast array images from 45 countries that, despite their diversity, have one thing in common: They were all taken on April 30, 2002, by young adults under the age of 16.
The exhibition was conceived by Phillip Abresch, a 27-year-old journalist and political science student in Berlin, and carried out with assistance from the German Society for Technical Cooperation (Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, GTZ), an organization that coordinates German development projects worldwide. German foreign aid workers stationed abroad commissioned 500 photographers age 9 to 16 to take pictures for the show. Participants were supplied with cameras and film and asked to find images that tell something about their daily lives.
The result is a collection of startling breadth and poignancy, with moods ranging from the spontaneity of a barefoot soccer game in Morocco to the loneliness of a war widow in Kosovo. Photographers were invited to explain why they chose the subjects they did. One 13-year-old from Zambia used her camera to create a large family portrait. "I took this picture because I wanted to show other people this rare sight," she wrote. "It is so seldom in a country like Zambia, with its poverty and AIDS, that so many generations of a family are still living." Another photographer, 14-year-old Ivan Tumko of Bosnia-Herzegovina, wrote of her photograph, showing a UN jeep in a parking lot, "The UN soldiers brought peace. For me they mean safety." Photographs from the project can be viewed on online at www.imagine.gtz.de.
