Born Into Brothels
Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski (2003)
reviewed by Marc Goldin
It’s been commonly thought that among earlier Native-American people, there existed a belief that to be photographed was to have a bit of your soul stolen away. It’s easy to understand this, for to see yourself or someone else captured in a still photograph, frozen forever in that moment, sometimes can feel like a kind of loss. Upon seeing the film, ‘Born into Brothels’, I feel that maybe photography has come full circle, in that it has given back the soul that it’s been said to have stolen all those years ago.
The person behind the film, photographer Zana Briski, stumbled into this project in 1998, through her earlier photojournalistic pursuits. She had gone to India in 1995 to document women’s lives there:
In 1998 I began living with prostitutes in a squalid red light district of Calcutta.
When I first went to India in 1995, I had no idea what lay ahead. I began to travel and photograph the harsh realities of women's lives – female infanticide, child marriage, dowry deaths and widowhood. I had no intention of photographing prostitutes until a friend took me to the red light district in Calcutta. From the moment I stepped foot inside that maze of alleyways, I knew that this was the reason I had come to India.
The film opens with grainy hand-held camera work, floating surrealistically down these lanes in Calcutta’s red light district, the women standing there dreamlike, while Indian music plays. Bollywood it isn’t – Briski’s voiceover soon tells where this is going and then you see the children. Although her work originally intended to document the women, she connected with the children of the prostitutes and began to work with them. The kids, ages 10-14, were fascinated with her camera and she let them play with it. Then it occurred to her that the kids might be interested in pursuing this so on her next trip back, she brought several point and shoot cameras with her, selected eight kids who really seemed to be interested and started actually teaching them photography – lighting, composition and editing proof sheets. She took them out to shoot and the photos they created were astounding in their depth because what they shot was what was right in front of them. It was their way of seeing that was so stunning.
This film doesn’t shrink from the living conditions these kids and the adults live in – there are some staunch scenes but not necessarily horrific and never gratuitous – just daily life going on in extreme poverty and overcrowding. If anything, it feels bleak at moments when you begin to realize that these kids have no way out and will just continue on, the way generations before have done, with the little girls ultimately becoming prostitutes, too; but listening to the kids talking, you also realize that they are sometimes happy and playful, but also realistic and philosophical about their lives. The photography is a way of expressing what they’re forced to suppress, as they are essentially considered non-entities and what they choose to shoot is pure and unbiased.
Briski doesn’t just teach the kids photography – she gets involved with them personally, (living in a room in one of the brothels) and ends up advocating for them in various ways. What’s refreshing is that she is no do-gooder – she states at one point, when encountering difficulties with the authorities over some documents for the kids, that, “I’m not a social worker – I’m just doing what I can”, making it clear that while she’s trying to help, she knows that she can’t save everyone.
She does manage some small triumphs, though – she gets a few of the kids into boarding schools and there are exhilarating moments when she organizes a gallery showing for their work that they get to attend and another, when after days of trying, she gets a passport for Avijit, a particularly talented boy who is tapped to attend a world photo show for kids in Amsterdam. The kids, themselves are wonderful, from the feisty spirited girl, Puja to the serious and reflective boy, Gour -- the whole group has a special feeling to it.
This is a wonderful and bittersweet film. It reminded me, in a small way, of the Brazilian movie, ‘City of God’, in which the main protagonist, living in the slums, discovers photography, which ends up being his ticket out of there. Some of the Calcutta kids might find a way out of their almost pre-destined lives and some may not, and while this is a very emotional film, it is never maudlin or manipulative; neither is it falsely optimistic. Briski simply offers the kids other options and tries to help them succeed. By her own admission, she had no idea what she was doing when she began, had never taught photography, much less worked with kids in totally foreign and deprived situations. With the hellish scenarios going on around the world, for a short time while watching this film, you really get the feeling that someone can make a difference, and even the hardest cynic will find it difficult not to adore these kids. Suchitra, a sad-eyed, quiet girl, mentioned the inevitability of prostitution and talked of the time when she would eventually have to ‘join the line’ but for one moment, said:
"When I have a camera in my hands I feel happy. I feel like I am learning something...I can be someone."