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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Guide Weather Subscribe Contact Us April 1, 2005 The Art of Hardship By Vickie Aldous Ashland Daily Tidings Give a typical kid a camera and what you'll usually end up with is a tiny image of the family cat dead-centered in a photo. But the photographs on display at Houston's Custom Framing & Fine Art in Ashland through Monday during the Ashland Independent Film Festival are not average photos, and the children who captured these vivid, intimate, joyous and heartbreaking scenes are not typical kids. Photos taken by children of prostitutes during classes with filmmaker Zana Briski are now on display at Houston's Custom Framing and Fine Art in Ashland. The exhibit includes "Man on the Street," taken by 11-year-old Puja. Avijit, Kochi, Gour, Shanti and their friends are the children of prostitutes in the red light district of Calcutta, India. The girls most probable fate was to become prostitutes like their mothers, with the boys filling the roles of pimp or drug-dealer. But in 1998, New York photographer Zana Briski began taking pictures of the prostitute's lives and grew to know the children. Curious to see the world through their eyes, she started teaching weekly photography classes to the kids from 2000 to 2003. The process yielded striking photos, and opened up new opportunities for the children at the bottom of India's lingering caste system. Their transformational journey was captured in the film "Born into Brothels," which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2004, along with a host of other film awards. The documentary has toured dozens of film festivals along with a traveling exhibition of the children's photographs that will be shown at Houston's. The Houston's show is one of three Ashland gallery exhibits featuring artwork related to the film festival. Sales of the photographic prints fund the children's education. Briski, with her organization Kids with Cameras, is in the midst of planning construction of a school to serve red light district children - many of whom are excluded from regular schools or shamed when they are allowed to attend. Most of the children from the documentary now are at boarding schools. Kochi was just a silent, 10 year-old girl when the photography classes began. Then Briski asked her to give an opinion of a photo during a critique, and the floodgates opened, according to Cristina Linclau, the Kids with Cameras exhibition coordinator who will be in Ashland to answer viewers' questions. "She's now at boarding school and speaking fluent English. Zana jokes that she won't stop talking," Linclau said. Kochi's photo "Up the Stairs" is on display. A boy wearing only shorts and sandals totes a plastic bucket up winding stone steps, the bones and sinewy muscles of his calves showing and sweat glistening on his back. Kochi tilted the camera sideways to create a dynamic composition that feels both expert and candid. Her photo "Bengali Moon" also will be at Houston's. A woman in a cream dress glows against a darkened tropical background, a luminous moon hovering to the side. Avijit was 11 years old when the documentary was filmed. A natural artist, he is attending the prestigious Future Hope school. He has traveled to Amsterdam for an international conference on children and has won awards for his paintings, according to Linclau. Avijit's black and white photo "Kids" is an infectiously joyful image of two girls dangling a point-and-shoot camera and a boy with a glowing smile. Many of his other photos can be seen on the Kids with Camera's Web site. In "Dog," an emaciated black stray skulks along the gray ground. Avijit stares, unsmiling, into the camera to create a self-portrait in a narrow, dull brown alley. Behind him, a woman draped in a green sari stands in vividly painted ultramarine entryway. His photo "Kite" depicts a shirtless boy with his back to the camera. He holds aloft a spindle, unreeling a string tethering a kite that is a dark, distant speck against a towering white cloud. The image is a testament to the resiliency of the children, who have managed to keep a sense of wonder and an eye for all that is beautiful even in the worst of places. Photographic prints cost $250 and all proceeds go to benefit the children. Houston's will donate 50 percent of framing costs to Kids with Cameras for anyone who buys a print and has it framed at the shop. The 85-minute "Born into Brothels" screens at the Varsity Theatre, 166 E. Main St., at 6 p.m. on Thursday, 3 p.m. on Friday, 9:30 a.m. on Saturday and 12 p.m. on Sunday. Houston's Custom Framing, 270 E. Main St., will be open until 9 p.m. on Thursday, until 8 p.m. on Friday and all afternoon on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Bloomsbury Books, 290 E. Main St., also is offering a book about the film. More of the children's photographs can be seen at www.kids-with-cameras.org/kidsgallery/. DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Slippers Women's & Men's Slippers Ceramic Piggy Banks heloc libor rate Calenders 2005 Calender 2005 Accelerate Weightloss Products Memory Foam Mattress afsa home equity loans teleconferencing W2 Forms Homeschooling Tatoos student loans Matchmaking & Dating Scripts African Safari Conference Calls - $50/Month Security Systems student loan consolidation diamonds Currancy Exchange Online Casinos Community Fasa Student Loans Tatoo Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams