Frame and Fortune

point and shoot: "Cab Ride," a photo by Born Into Brothels' Gour.

Can taking pictures alter the fate of the children in Calcutta's red-light district?

Born Into Brothels

by Cindy Fuchs

The first shot is a naked lightbulb, swarmed by bugs, followed by equally impressionistic images: a child's face, women on the street, a hallway crowded with customers, a woman undressing. The sequence introduces Born into Brothels, a look into the lives of children in Sonagachi, North Calcutta's red-light district. "The men who enter our building are not so good," says Kochi. "They are drunk. They come inside and shout and swear." Behind her, laundry flaps, and an orange sky offers beauty but also presages the coming night, when the men enter.

"Everyone is terrified of the camera. They're frightened of being found out. Everything's illegal," says London-born photojournalist Zana Briski, who serves as Brothels' guide and facilitator. Frustrated by what looked to be the children's lot, Briski gave eight of the children cameras so that they might document and make some artistic sense of their own lives.

The children understand and mostly accept the limits assumed for them. As their mothers work, they also do what they can to earn money, scrubbing dishes and floors, running errands. Tapasi says, "One has to accept life as being sad and painful, that's all." The camera watches from above as she fills buckets with water, a woman in her neighborhood hovering nearby with face out of frame. "You worthless little cunt," the woman yells. "Go tell your mother to get fucked." Briski and co-director Ross Kauffman's camera remains at the foot of the stairway as the child carries her bucket up to her apartment.

As the film's primary narrator, Briski describes her feeling of "connection" to the women, though she admits there's no "rational" reason for her feeling. Briski moved into the district in 1998, then spent two years teaching the kids to use their cameras. These efforts mark a turn from observation to intervention, as she hopes to make other options available for the kids, particularly the girls, who are expected to follow in their mothers' footsteps. One, Briski reports, has been married off at age 11; others are being pushed into prostitution.

Teaching the kids to use their cameras to express themselves ("Take your time to look," says "Zana Auntie" through a translator. "Make sure everything in the whole square looks good."), Briski sits among them, demonstrating how to frame and shoot. "It's very good," she notes, that one child has taken two rolls of film, but it's less good that he shot at night without a flash. Together, they pile excitedly into cars to visit the zoo, where they take photos of elephants, monkeys and peacocks in cages, or to the beach, where they shoot men on horseback and one another, splashing and running along the shore, damp-haired and smiling. Their photographs are posed and candid, colorful and dark, expansive and tightly framed.

Avijit shows a particular talent, and Briski works for months to get him a passport so he might represent the group at a World Press Photo Foundation event in Amsterdam. His photos of scrawny dogs, trolley tracks and children on the street reveal a remarkable talent and passion. He says he likes to draw and take photos, to "express what's on my mind, to put my thoughts into colors." His grandmother shows off the medals he has won for his art, and Briski praises the "details" and "different angles" in his images. At the same time, he tells of his mother's abandonment, his father's hash addiction and his own sense of responsibility.

As Briski notes, "They have absolutely no opportunity without education," so she decides to get them into classes. It's a formidable task because their parents are "all criminals" and the kids themselves need to take tests to show they are HIV-negative. Briski perseveres, knowing that some children will inevitably be lost to financial demands, their parents' fears and administrative ignorance. Indeed, Puja and Suchitra are eventually pulled out of school to "join the line."

To raise money, Briski arranges for the photos to be auctioned at Sotheby's in 2001 and reprinted in Amnesty International's 2003 calendar and a book also called Born into Brothels. (She has since gone on to found Kids with Cameras, a nonprofit organization that continues her work in other places.) At a gallery show in Calcutta, the kids become stars, asked by reporters to explain their work. While Born into Brothels sometimes makes the kids' seeming "otherness" into art, their words and their work keep focus. Poised, knowing, and incredibly energetic, they are repeatedly forced to make difficult and very adult decisions.

Born Into Brothels Directed by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski A ThinkFilm release Opens Friday at Ritz at the Bourse recommended