BABIES HEADBAND

American artist Kresta K.C. Venning, M.A. Photography, partnered with Africa Humanitarian Action(AHA) to offer a Photography Workshop in which 5 days training in basic digital Nikon camera skills were offered to 6 male and 4 female refugees ages 19 - 26. This training occurred over two weeks from August 15 - August 29 and took place at the Health Center at Kiziba Refugee Camp in Kibuye, Rwanda. In addition to the classroom, field workshops were held at various sites across several Quartiers and Villages throughout Kiziba Camp, including students' homes, churches, football fields, pastures, community gathering places, potable water collection and/or laundry/washing sites, a secondary school, a grave site, and a hill-top village. The objectives of this visual arts project was three-fold: 1) teach basic camera skills with an emphasis on basic portraiture technique so that students might later, if provided cameras to share from AHA, be able to earn income making refugees' portraits 2) encourage an artistic outlet and 3) encourage young refugees to depict, dignify, and reflect upon their lives as refugees, for both a local refugee audience as well as a foreign, international audience. The training consisted of 4 days of 3 hour workshops for each group of 5 students, supplemented with several hours of optional photography field-trip classes around the camp the first weekend. (These extra hours were optional as several students had unavoidable church or family commitments.) Following the camera technique workshops, students also participated in selecting from 100s of photographs 30 that they deemed exhibition-worthy images. From these 30 photographs, Kresta then chose the final 5 photographs per student that would be exhibited in Kiziba Camp's Youth Hall, August 29. During classroom time, students were also asked 6 questions to guide their written artist's personal statements. These statements accompanied the final 5 photographs and served to give exhibition viewers insight/context into the individual bodies of work, as well as the photography workshop itself. (Kresta selected the final 5 images herself only because the camp lost power for days and the students were not able to select the photographs themselves from Kresta's laptop.)

Prior to this Photography Workshop, 8 of the students had never held a camera or taken a photograph. As many did not have a single childhood photograph of themselves. Thus, this workshop was full of firsts. First time touching a camera, first time taking a picture, first time making a portrait of their mother, brother, sister, cousin, friend, local shop owner. Implications of this basic camera training are that students thoroughly enjoyed the training, were challenged and inspired to be creative artistically, felt encouraged to develop a technical and artistic eye, and hope to receive cameras to share from AHA. Along with cameras, a laptop is required, otherwise students cannot edit (using photoshop or a similar editing software program). Needless to say, there was no time to teach basic photo-editing skills during this photography workshop. That would be the next phase, if AHA is to develop this training. As for the final 50 photographs included in the exhibition, Kresta edited each one for color saturation and contrast/brightness. Such editing is standard practice and must be taught to the photography students if they are to make photographs that are in fact "sellable" as AHA has mentioned it envisions. This Photography Workshop was unprecedented, as was the culminating photography exhibition that was attended by 100 friends, family members, AHA staff, and one UNHCR representative.

In this exhibition we learn about food distribution--rations of maize(cornmeal), common beans, and cooking oil delivered in massive World Food Programme lorries and packaged in thick neutral or white sacks or plastic jugs--and food, goat's meat, processed after a bloody slaughter, the meat man slashing the goat's flesh with a dull knife in a tiny unventilated mud room. We appreciate a trinity of ripe avocados as abstract art, witness a bride and groom 'I do'. We observe students seated eagerly on long classroom benches the first day back at school, or wide-eyed babies swaddled to their sisters' small backs. We realize that places of hard work might also double as places of play: the cement laundry slab where children both wash clothes and pretend to be gymnasts toddling on thin, soapy balance beams. We are reminded that when we live in a mud home, we must frequently repair it with more mud, slabbing the wet earth to the home's side, an act of necessity and humility. If these 50 photographs say anything, they say we live in tiny homes with few possessions--a radio, mosquito net, knife, bowl, bed--and we take care of what we own. We make meager meals from wood that we chop, water that we carry, in round smoky huts with singed walls and sloping floors. In other words, we labor to live. This exhib

While wandering around Hoi An, Vietnam, we came across a small shop selling propoganda posters on rice paper. I really loved the posters and billboards I had seen and taken lots of pictures of, so I was ecstatic to find this shop. Unfortunately, most of the posters were not appropriate for my living room (celebrating the victory at Dien Bien Phu or talking about American bombs killing babies, that sort of thing). However, this was had a lovely image and neutral message, "Nuoc bac, Com vang," which means something like "Water is silver, rice is gold." At least according to the translation taped to the back. I do know that "nuoc" is water and "com" is rice, so this seems plausible! We now have it hanging in our living room and I just love it!