“A picture is worth a thousand words” is a saying that photographer Lydia Keen – who helped put together a new exhibit of photos taken by children sponsored through World Vision – has heard way too often in the course of her career.

But while her experience teaching photography to Bangladeshi boys and girls shattered scores of clichés, that old chestnut wasn’t one of them.

“I’d always known photography is powerful,” says Keen, 39, who volunteered with World Vision Canada last April to facilitate a five-day photography workshop in Patenga, Bangladesh. “But to give that power to somebody else who never had it before was totally amazing.

“Photography really is a universal language.”

The results of Keen’s workshop will be on display at World Vision’s Mississauga headquarters from 6-9 p.m. on September 30. The exhibit, which is free to the public, will also showcase photographs taken by sponsored children in Zambia.

A World Vision child sponsor, Keen decided to suggest the workshop to the humanitarian organization after seeing the documentary “Born into Brothels.” The 2004 Oscar winner followed the children of Calcutta sex trade workers as they learned the rudiments of photography and then used their newly acquired shutterbug skills to capture eye-opening images of themselves and their world.

“I was really taken with the concept of doing photography with kids in small workshops,” says Keen, who also teaches photography and communicative technologies at Oshawa’s Eastdale Collegiate. “Photography’s such an easy medium to use and yet it’s a really important tool for people to express themselves.

“Through it, you’re able to give a voice to your existence: this is a picture of something that exists; therefore it is.”

The 20 children who took part in Keen’s workshop are all sponsored by Canadians. A mix of boys and girls ranging in ages from 6 to 15, many of them had never used a camera before.

“The first day we did a quick getting-to-know-you session,” Keen says. “It started out very formal, with the kids sitting straight up in their chairs, looking directly ahead. Then we gave them the cameras and asked them to photograph each other from 10 or 15 different perspectives, high angle, low angle, with their partner doing something – no two shots the same.”

That broke the tension more effectively than any icebreaker ever could. “It didn’t take very long until we had kids giggling and running around,” says Keen.

After giving the children basic pointers in photography – such as holding the camera still to minimize blur – she then sent them out with instructions to photograph the things they valued.

“What I found the most charming was that they photographed their mothers,” Keen says. “I thought that was really sweet.”

But it was when she asked them to photograph the people in their community that she feels the children’s creativity really shone through.

“The shots were incredible,” Keen says. “They photographed the local fishermen, kids playing in trees; they even figured out a way to get into a local construction site and photograph the men clearing the land of rocks.”

After devoting the penultimate day to things the children wanted to change – resulting in images of uncovered sewers, open-air garbage dumps, and rundown buildings – Keen instructed the children to spend their final day photographing what they wanted to show the world.

“The interpreter said to me, ‘I don’t think they can understand that. But the kids got it very, very well. They photographed themselves, their friends, their mothers, really, really sweet images.”

At the end of the workshop, each child received a personal portfolio of their work. And their excited community – whom Keen says “enthusiastically embraced this group of little kids taking pictures” – also got to view the photographs for themselves at an exhibit held at a local hotel.

Now it’s Canadians’ turn. And Keen thinks they’ll be at once moved, amused, and surprised by what they see.

“There’s so much to be gained by giving people the power and freedom to choose what to photograph,” she says.

“While I, as a Canadian, might think, ‘Look at this poverty; this is terrible,’ they were saying through their images, ‘Here’s my house: I love it. Here’s my pet. Here’s my grandmother.’ And while maybe I couldn’t see past the fact the grandmother had no teeth, they were able to get a smile from her that was so much more beautiful and authentic because of the relationship the two of them had.”

All told, Keen says, it was a profound learning experience she hopes to share with her fellow Canadians: “You get to discover what’s important to other people and how they look at their world.”

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Karen Flores, World Vision Canada
905-565-6200 ext 3497
416-277-5563 (cell)
karen_flores@worldvision.ca