Photo project

I haven't posted for a while because with the end of the summer looming, I actually have to hand in a memo on my research topic. That's about all I've been up to, so I thought I'd write about a great project my friend Beth Rossi is working on for Legal Aid of Cambodia that has started to bear fruit.

Earlier this summer, Beth identified twenty-two Cambodian kids from Battambang who either have already had or are at risk of getting into trouble with the law. After a couple of introductory sessions, she gave them disposable cameras with which to take photos of their daily lives. Once the results came in, she held a writing workshop where the kids wrote captions for the photos and biographies of themselves, which were exhibited along with the photos in Battambang.

I've posted some of my favorites below. One hundred of the best photos are available here. Pictures of the exhibit going up and of the writing workshop are here.

The next step is to have the captions and biographies translated from Khmer into English. Then Beth can hang prints of the kids' photos at restaurants and retailers around Boston (where she attends law school), with the ultimate goal of helping out Legal Aid of Cambodia. If the project is successful enough, it may well be repeated---and as Beth has pointed out to me, it's a very promising way to build connections between at-risk children and sympathetic lawyers.

Donations are, of course, welcome. You can also buy prints of any photos that catch your eye, with the money going to an excellent cause. Beth's email address is elizabeth.a.rossi [at] gmail.com.

Here's Beth mounting the exhibit with a colleague:

And here are all the kids who took the photos: