So I walked into the developers office to pick up several rolls of the kids film that I had dropped in. I was excited and at the same time a little tentative as to having too many expectations. Most of them had never held a camera before and whenever I gave them mine they stuck fingers into the lens and held it upside it down, taking picture after picture of each other in blurry bizarre angled closeups. Ahhh, deceptive digital and its immediate resutls had left me thinking that there was no way film was going to withstand such trigger-craziness and shutter snapping thrills; in the very least, it gave them something to do for a few days.

“Bad luck, one of them came out blank.”

 Nuts. Oh well, let’s have the rest of them then.

I plucked the other three prints out of his hand, took my refund and headed out to catch the evening train thinking Id wait till I got on the train to sit down and properly look at them. Train station, 15 minute wait so I pulled out the first of the developed rolls and felt completley overwhelmed by the first image I pulled out. A young amputee on the cobbled Kabul pavement looked up at me. His crutch lay in front of him like a shepherds staff and he peered out from the checkered all purpose scarves the Afghani men use. He was incredibly handsome, with skin the color of walnuts and the high angle he had been shot from showed him sitting in a heap amongst all the ragged things he owned. One leg folded under him, and the other taken off at the thigh sits limply in front of him. He looks 17, and he is looking straight at the camera. “Wow-pretty good” I thought.

The next and the next and the next all showed Kabul street scenes that there was no way I would have had any access to. A boy on the bus, his face covered in skin sores clutching a bright red religious book, a young boy with a teapot perched on his head, swathes of mud and muck in the foreground, another man sorts out dyed eggs, good from bad, two boys positioned to the right of the frame arms crossed checking out the photographer whilst a tent city sprawls in the background.

The rest were the same, staggeringly beautiful with small details captured sweetly and composed in the most incredibly artistic way. I cannot stop looking at them, and this is only after developing three rolls. It was immense relief and joy, because it seemed, after all, that something came of it. That this strange curly haired woman raving about light and making squares out of her fingers may have appeared maniacal, but something appealed to them in all of it. The photos are so measured and purposeful and they are deliberate in what they have captured. There were none of the shots of feet or blurry images up noses or inside ears that I had thought would come of it-which would have been fine, because as I learnt quickly the very least you can hope for with a project like this, considering the time limit, language barriers etc, is recreation. Anything more is an added bonus, and in terms of community development, success is so difficult to measure. But this was an art project, they created art. They thought about what they wanted to photograph and they thought about how they wanted to photograph it and there was an exercise of creative agency somewhere, and to me, that made this a riproaring staggering success.

It is important at this point to again thank EVERYONE who donated money, time, music, art and cameras to getting this Kabul project up. This film is your film, these photographs were taken with your cameras, the batteries in them were paid for by you and they are being developed with the money you gave. And I am excited to be able to show everyone what came of it all with a showing in Sydney, and to be able to introduce the kids to you all. So, ShutterSeed will be hosting an exhibition night somewhere in the next few months in Sydney. At the moment alot of the activity is concentrated around some fundraising events in Canberra for Mahbobas Promise, however Sydney has not been forgotten and I am very excited to be show everyone what you all contributed to!! I want to tell you all about each of the photographers, what they were like, what they were like as photographers and how this showed in their photographs.

More news-ShutterSeed has come across an awesome initiative called The Forgotten Diaries project by Youth Action for Change. The project uses the idea of keeping a diary, to train youth who live in areas of ‘forgotten conflict’. Places like Sierra Leone, the Niger Delta, the Caucasus and East Timor who still live with all the uncertainty of unstable political situations. So, Forgotten Diaries is a central place where kids can blog about what they are hearing and seeing. Its a way of making them ‘visible’ in an otherwise overwhelming invisibility instigated by a lack of media coverage, and I think it’s a very resourceful and intelligent way to use the internet. Kids are also trained in project management via the internet, and in ways to affect change. At present they are currently developing a course to train their bloggers in photography skills, and YAC and ShutterSeed are looking into working together on this in the future.

In the meantime check out the following links for both YAC and Forgotten Diaries.

www.forgottendiaries.org Hot tip: Check out the blog for Pakistan  to see the situation in the Swat Valley.

http://www.youthactionforchange.org/

Have finally set up a facebook thingy for ShutterSeed, and make a commitment not to spam with anything unless-only useful things like special invites to special things like exhibitions and music nights

I lugged my suitcase onto the bench in the womens security room at Kabul airport, one of four you get through to leave the country. I chatted in broken Farsi to the security guards and took a piece of gum one ofthem offered me, the last in the pack. Chewing gum and instant coffee, my two creature comforts in Kabul.

The trip came to an end in the third week, replete with weddings, dancing to the thud of drums and pleas for another roll of film. The project had been going well, and I had decided to include a few more kids taking the count to 12. The cameras had held up very well for the three weeks but were beginning to groan and protest everytime we turned them on.  Lots of little fingers had crammed their digits into the shutter release button and the lens’ were opaque with fingermarks. 

The two lady security guards asked me what I was doing in Kabul after spying the film and my camera, and I explained to them that I was teaching some kids at an orphanage run by Mahbobas Promise how to take photographs. “Did they learn?” they asked me.  “I hope so.” I said.

“Good”  one replied. “We need more Afghans with cameras.”

I couldnt agree more. The country is thick as thieves with foreign media, and only just beginning to develop its own media industry. The Kabul Weekly, along with the AINA photo agency have been working hard in the last few years to train Afghanis in photojournalism skills to equip them to tell their own stories.  Having met with Travis Beard, an Australian photographer who lives in Kabul who has worked with AINA in the past, it became clear what the future possibilities are in the field of photography for some of the kids from Hope House.

The possibilities in Afghanistan come up all of a sudden, and diminish in as many seconds. One moment you are laughing and dancing, the next you are watching a small boy sit in the corner and weep for no reason that you can see. One moment the kids are taking photographs of each other doing cartwheels in a clover patch, and the next minute there is news of a wedding and they save their shots for later on.  The wedding of two of the orphans from Hope House who had fallen in love, was an excellent subject for the camera and the kids took to it keenly, acting as wedding photographers at a wedding for orphans.

By the third week, it was great to see the kids begin to think about what they were shooting. Some of them would pause and wait till their subject filled the frame before taking the photo, and others would get in nice and close to get detail of something very smal they had found. Some would shoot off a 24 roll of film in 24 minutes, and others would bring their finished film back after 24 hours. Some would take the camera outside and take photos of each other and the garden, and others would quietly dissappear in to Hope House, emerging a few days later with a film that always felt heavy with mystery.

I arrived with 30 rolls of unused film,a nd left 30 rolls finished. Roaring into Sydney, I saw children at the airport with spongebob backpacks and sugarry biscuits in their hands. They were clean and shiny, and yabbered away to each other as their parents hustled suitcases off the conveyor belt. Even now, I watch children here so closely, with their schoolbooks and lunchboxes and bikes and ipods and I cannot help but change their faces to Marziah, Marjan, Berishna, Noor Ahmed or Fawad from Hope House. These 95 children I spent three weeks with, teaching several of them how to press a button and fil a frame, ended up giving me much more. We talk about strength and we talk abotu adversity and we talk about appreciating all that we have. Some of us do because we know we should, because gratefulness seems like the right thing to do and it is. If I learnt anything at all it is about how we gift one another. Leaving Kabul and leaving the orphanage where there is nothing to give but a rubber band or a dirty plastic sandal, I felt like I had come away with my arms full of presents. Ive learnt how to give, and how to be given, and strangely, after wanting to go to give something, I ended up comign back feeling like it was me who ended up being given the most.

So where to from here? The photos are in the process of being…processed! I am keen as mustard to see how they turn out, and keener still to begin to get them up here for everyone to see. Here’s whats happening, and whats going to happen next

June 19th : ShutterSeed will have it’s first public appearance, with an exhibiton featuring the kids photographs at Old Parliament Hous ein Canberra at a fundraising dinner for Mahbobas Promise.

I went to Kabul with this Australian Aid organization and witnessed the incredible work that is being done by one woman, Mahboba Rawi. AN afghani refugee herself, she single handedly began one of the most effective relief efforts in Kabul. Literally plucking children from the street, Mahboba’s Promise runs several orphanages, with Hope House being the main one in Kabul city. It is an ethereal blue and white building that glistens in amongst Kabuls greys and browns, and it is where I spent my time in Afghanistan. Things are still desperately difficult in Afghanistan with the cost of living going ever up, and a massive number of war widows and war orphans left in very difficult circumstances. Mahboba runs a well organized and important NGO in the midst of it all, giving these kids schooling, three meals a day and a place to run around and play.  The exhibition will be the first of ShutterSeeds fundraising efforts to continue to raise funds in partnership with Mahbobas Promise so that Hope House can continue to be the magical light-filled place that it is.

Website News! Online image gallery coming soon-keep an ear out and a finger clicking to see when its all up and running. See the kids photographs with a bio of each debutante photographer, and check out what Hope House is all about.

Whilst the Afghan chapter is over, the work begins here in Sydney to take the project to the next stage and show you what Afghanistan is about, from the eyes of Afghani kids.

Be sure to visit www.mahbobaspromise.org and http://www.ainaphoto.org.af/

Samanak. Creamy wheat germ cooked, and boiled and worried for 12 hours and containing enough Vitamin D to last you a year. Washed down with cup after cup of green tea, as all good meals are here in Kabul I furrow my brow trying to find a starting point to begin this story.

It is a week today since I arrived in this city, and it has taken equally as long to remember my name, who I am and why I am here. The bewilderment began when 40 minutes out of the chaos of Islamabad airport, high in the sky, I looked to my left and found my small plane window brimming with snow-capped peaks. It was a wonderfully unexpected introduction to one of the most magical cities I have ever seen. Landing at Kabul airport, I noticed we were one of the only commercial aircraft, the rest being army and UN carriers. Driving through the streets to the orphanage run by the Austraian Aid organization Mahbobas Promise, gave a good glimpse of the Kabul I have come to know. Surrounded by mountains the air is thick with dust until it rains, and then the mud sticks to your shoes like gum and you feel the bones become brittle with cold under your skin. UN and Red Cross 4wd appear in the better parts of town but for the most part, Kabul is thick with the toot and swerve of yellow taxis. The streets throng with men making up the five  main ethnic groups-Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek and Balochi. Widowed women sit, swathed in the blue mist of their veils in the middle of the street as the traffic moves around them. Their children cling to them or wander close by, eyes thick with kohl and bare feet. The poverty is incredible. It is very real, and it is how most of this country is right now. Thinking I had seen what poverty was, I was incredulous at the level of destitution here.

Kabul as a city rests in the valley of numerous hillsides and mountain peaks. The mudbrick houses are built into the side of these hills and at night they dot the air with their flickering lights. It is a both a beautiful and melancholic sight.

I arrived at the orphanage and as the big blue gates of Hope House were heaved open I saw 16 pairs of curious eyes peek from windows and behind doors. As I got out I had all ten fingers grabbed by one cold hand each, propelling me around. It was quite wonderful to see some familiar faces too, having volunteered with Mahboba a few years ago. I had the job of entering their photographs into MP’s database and now here they were.

The ShutterSeed camera project began last Thursday afternoon when the sunlight was clear and the mountains tall and mighty. I gathered 5 girls from 7-14 yrs old in a room and was faced squarely with the  futility of trying to explain the word portrait and landscape. Language has been a real challenge and so I decided that the best thing to do was show them what to press, how to hold on tight and not to stick your fingers in the lens. Arming them with a camera and a roll of film I sent them off to shoot whatever they liked. All of them have had their photographs taken perhaps 20 times each, and this was the first time they had held a camera. Of course, I watched them knock off their first roll of film on each other giggling, and at one point shoveling handfuls of clover into their mouths and munching away. It was amusing to see them excited in the same way I was the first time I had a camera, which I had nicked on the sly from it’s pride of place, high up in my parents wardrobe. The thrill, the click, the wind of the reel.

Since then, I have decided to narrow it down to 8 kids.4 girls, and 4 boys. I begin with 4 boys today after having spent a week playing dodge-ball and cricket with a plank of wood. I felt at first like I had created a Frankenstein, as word spread amongst the 117 children that there was a strange tall girl with cameras, and suddenly all the cold little hands holding onto ten fingers began to ask “Komera?Komera?”

It’s been difficult to explain that there are only 8 cameras and so much film and I have felt like a croney old headmistress saying it is only for a few. To get around the problem I have explained that I will be leaving the cameras here and continuing to send film, and that the older kids who are learning are willing to eventually teach the others how to use the cameras we have had donated.

Interestingly, I met a young Afghani boy at a dinner one night who having fled the Taleban, spent some time in Pakistan in a refugee camp. Because of this he had learnt some Urdu and we talked for a while over bread and plates of rice. He is 19 years old, and has picked up his education where he left off, being in the equivalent of a year 10 class. He spied my camera and asked if I would teach him. Since then he has been arriving everyday on his motorbike and learning how to compose pictures and miraculously yesterday-depth of field!

So basically what Ive learnt is that the best plan is to have no plan at all, which is a daunting thought but the most obvious thing to do when you arrive in Kabul where there are no clocks because ‘time’ is how you spend it. I know that some time after lunch time but before the sun disappears behind the tallest hill that we’ll fetch the Komera’s.

The project has been greatly helped by another photographer who is here. Sanoz has helped enormously with translation, and I have really welcomed the extra help. We have been talking about collaborating our images once we return to Sydney.

As a final thought to this long long post, I have to convey what I feel about the organization that I am here with, Mahbobas Promise. Travelling around in a puttering old 6 seater hilux with no security or armed guards, living in the houses of relatives and friends of Mahboba, having our cups filled with a steady stream of tea, and I am tasting Afghanistan. The way we travel is the way that Mahboba’s Promise runs her projects-real, effective, efficient, warm, and with incalculable generosity. As I mentioned earlier, there are over 100 children in this orphanage alone, but it is run by a very dedicated team who work in extremely difficult conditions, limited resources and huge tasks. I have only found the children to be mature, aware and incredibly well-adjusted. This is a direct consequence of the feel and energy of this orphanage and the work of Mahboba who they all call mother. Hope House is run on the smell of an oily rag, but is a real haven for many, many Afghani women and children. The immense complexity and layers of problems plaguing Afghanistan, are tempered, albeit in a small but undeniably effective way, here where I sit and write to you.

We are currently working on getting the image gallery up and running to show all the snaps taken by the kids here in Kabul, so stay tuned. We are hoping in the future to be selling the prints online and have the proceeds come back to Hope House to satisfy the call for the Komera!

Over and out.

Number One.

Here I sit in the northern town of Islamabad in Pakistan. .I start it all here, waiting in transit for two days before heading on a Pakistan International Airways flight to Kabul tomorrow afternoon.This time  tomorrow I will be where I have waiting to be.

Islamabad is a beautiful city, but it has changed in leaps since I was here last.Everywhere is anchored down with checkout points and army rangers behind sandbag bunkers casting wary glances into your car. The hills surrounding the city are wet with rain and they give the eerie feeling of looking down at you.  Part of Islamabad is the Red Zone, which includes the Prime Ministers Secretariat and most of the diplomatic enclave where I am staying. I drove past the Marriot Hotel which was bombed to cinders last year, and there isnt a single tree within 200 metres of it-all demolished by the blast. Pakistan is struggling with it’s own Taliban insurgencies. Crime and kidnappings are a daily occurrence, and inflation is ridiculous.If you were poor and barely surviving two years ago, you’ve got even less of a chance now. Suicides are frequent and the despair and hopelessness is quite pungent. People leave their houses each day with a real fear of not coming back.

But this is how it is. This is how it has been, and this is how it may be for some time yet. People find different places to shop, they pay alittle more to goto the Airforce base and buy groceries from their supermarket, or travel the busier streets after dark. Adjustment and adaptation are a way of life in Pakistan.

Before I left, in conjunction with TunesInBloom records, ShutterSeed had a riproaring fundraiser at the Excelsior in Surry Hills.We raised just under $1000 and had over 85 good people through the door! We also had 14 cameras donate din total which was stellar! The better part of my day was spent trawling through the marketsin Islamabad looking for batteries to get them ready to go. We purchased 40 rolls of film, 10 of them black and white before leaving Sydney, and I am as keen as mustard to have them finished and full, returning with me to Sydney. Im excited about what will become of them and cannot wait for them to be developed. The plan so far is to have ta portfolio prepared for each child who participates in the project at Hope House orphanage, and to display their images on this website in the image gallery which is soon to  come.

The call to prayer is filtering through the window and a pale sun sets on a damp day here in Islamabad. Fingers and toesa crossed for making it to Kabul okay. I heard from the NGO grapevine that PIA is the airline everyone avoids because they share planes with Afghanistans national carrier-Ariana airways. Apparently as you fly into Kabul you see the ‘Ariana Graveyard’ which is a grey heap of 7 planes which have so far crashed jsut outside of Kabul.

Ill make sure I fasten my seatbelt.

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