Interview: Zana Briski

by Sam Adams

After three years photographing the prostitutes of Calcutta, Zana Briski's attention began to turn to their children: girls who would almost certainly enter their mothers' profession as soon as they were old enough; boys who might become pimps, drug dealers or drug addicts. Crossing the border between photojournalist and subject, she began teaching a small group of children how to take their own pictures. Eventually, she convinced her then-boyfriend Ross Kauffman, a documentary film editor in New York, to join her in Calcutta, and the result is Born Into Brothels, their urgent, inspiring, debut film.

A prize-winner at Sundance and an Oscar nominee, Brothels has made its directors' lives briefly more hectic. Briski squeezes in our phone interview before a trip to the dentist, to be followed, no doubt, by still more interviews. But she's hardly complaining. "What moves me most is that people are moved," she says. "They connect with the kids, they're inspired by my story, and they want to make a difference."

The children in the movie, Briski says, are all doing well. Better, in fact, than they were at the end of the movie, when only two of them seized the chance to attend school and work their way out of the red-light district. Now, she says, most are in school. Proceeds from the film are going to build a school specifically for the children of sex workers, who are otherwise so stigmatized that no school will accept them. Briski's Kids with Cameras foundation has started activities in Haiti, Cairo and Jerusalem, and e-mails for the children continue to pour in, opening their eyes to a world outside their seemingly dead-end existence. "It's an incredible thing just for someone to trust them with a valuable piece of equipment," Briski says. "To have the space and the freedom and respect to be who they are is an extraordinary thing for kids who are taught to be ashamed of who they are."

Ironically, Briski has been all but forced to give up her own photography due to time constraints, which she admits is "kind of frustrating." But it's a minor regret attached to what she calls a "heart-opening" experience. Still, much remains to be done. Removing the stigma attached to the children of brothel workers will take a long time; though the movie may spark public discussion elsewhere, Briski promised the women she shot that the movie would never be shown in India. "That's the way the society is," Briski says. "It's not going to change unless the kids change it."