Wendy Ewald Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

Photo by Jane Scherr

Page 3 of 6

Kids and Cameras

How does the camera affect their relations with their parents? Some of the places you go to are pretty rural, pretty underdeveloped, and so on.

Yeah, I mean it's very different in different situations. In Appalachia, for example, the parents were pretty thrilled about it and proud and very helpful. In India, on the other hand, it was a little bit difficult in the beginning because the parents didn't understand why I wasn't working with them and not the children. They didn't think it was going to work out. Once the children began making pictures, they still sort of wanted to control it. Then, when I suggested that the kids could make pictures of people when they weren't looking at the camera, that was a little dicey because they weren't sure whether that was actually making fun of them. But after a month of this, things calmed down and they realized that they had to do what the kids said, because the kid had the camera and they were going to decide. So it turned the tables.

What has surprised you most about the relation of the kids to photography?

I guess what surprises me most is that they're really great photographers, and it continues to surprise me. Every time I do a project I think, this isn't working, these kids maybe aren't that talented or I'm not connecting. If I just stick with it and I look at the images enough and I start seeing what they see, then there are some incredible pictures there. You could give me any group of kids anywhere and that would happen. It leads me to think a lot about photography; who's a photographer and who's not a photographer -- you know, these categories that we make about who can speak and who can't.

Are there common themes that you see in the children's pictures whether they're in Appalachia or India, Morocco, or wherever?

Well yes. Part of that is me. I'm there in all those places, although I try to be open. I mean, to start off, I ask them to do similar things like photograph their families or their community and try to ask them to photograph their dreams or fantasies. And when they do make fantasy pictures, most of them tend to be pretty violent, that's similar. And most kids, except in the Arab world, like to photograph their family most of all.

Are these pictures shaped by their social reality?

Yes, I think they are. I think the compositions are different, the way the camera is used is different, what they choose to photograph is different. In South Africa, for example, the portraits that the kids made were amazing. They had a sense of the body that the kids that I worked with in Chiapas, for example, just didn't have. But the kids in Chiapas made amazing fantasy pictures, very complicated and free. So in different places, different things emerge.

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