I’ve continued my experimenting with pinhole over the past few days, opting not to really get going on my Rethink censorship project till I’ve really got the hang of certain things. I’ve been using a combination of digital SLR cameras with pinhole and zone plate body caps instead of lenses, as well as shooting some test film (haven’t done that in a while) in a blender pinhole camera. I’m anxiously waiting to see the results once I get the film developed tomorrow. I’ve also been working on using flash with the pinholes, as I may need that once I get cracking on the portraits I’m planning on doing.
Meanwhile, I quickly shot this image on my 5DMkII earlier this afternoon at the horse race track while on assignment for the paper, using a zone plate body cap, which has an effective aperture of f/45, as opposed to a pinhole proper which gives an aperture of around f/200. Nothing to do with the project, but I quite liked the result.
Rethink - that's the theme of the next photo essay we're all working on as part of our MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography. Guess the advantage of it is that it's so wide in scope that everyone's bound to come up with some great stuff. Apart from tackling a topic which falls under the theme of Rethink, we've also been asked to rethink our technique, and the way we approach photography. Personally, I've had to rethink Rethink a couple of times till I made up my mind how I was going to tackle it.
I've opted to tackle the issue of censorship in Malta. 2009 has been called the Year of Censorship in some sections of the media, and with good reason. After being a dormant issue for several years, it re-exploded onto the scene last year, in what was meant to be the EU's year of Creativity and Innovation. The Anthony Nielson play 'Stitching' was banned by the censors ; At the 'alternative' carnival in Nadur, on Malta's sister island Gozo, people who'd dressed up as Christ or nuns were arrested and arraigned in court ; Malta's only porn cinema was closed down by the police after being openly in operation for decades, just round the corner from the law courts and a police station ; a University art lecturer had his work removed from a collective exhibition becasue it could have been libellous to politicians ; the police walked into a shop and asked the owner to put clothes on his naked mannequins, which were part of an installation that the owner had put up to raise awareness against sex trafficking ; a University of Malta student newspaper was banned from the campus by the Rector on grounds of obscenity after the editor ran a fictional short story about sexual violence - the editor is now facing court proceedings and could end up getting six months imprisonment. The Broadcasting Authority, a government-appointed watchdog which monitors local TV content, charged several programmes with 'bad taste' but let them off with a slap on the wrist.
The backlash has been widespread - Unifaun Theatre, producers of 'Stitching', instituted a court case against the Board of Censors, the Front Against Censorship was formed and demonstrations organised, several newspaper columns and editorials tackled the issues, an anti-censor play was hastily written and performed (yes, it did get past the censors in one piece) ; people have gathered together on Facebook planning to go to the upcoming Nadur carnival in large numbers dressed as Christ, and members of parliament have joined in the debate, with a private member's bill expected to be presented in parliament in May to abolish the Board of Censors. In the last week, government announced plans to re-examine the whole issue of censorship, and admitted the current legislation is antiquated and outdated, and not suitable for the 21st century.
One of the issues I now face is, how do I visualise and photograph things which are now in the past? There are some events I'd shot over the year for the paper, but I can't use those, as I've decided to shoot the whole project on pinhole cameras. I've already made a start shooting some stuff by using a pinhole cap on a digital camera, but in the next couple of weeks, I'll be going back to basics, using real pinhole cameras loaded with film ! (anyone remember film?). The approach will be far removed from my normal technique of shooting whilst moving fast on my feet, carrying a couple of cameras and a selection of lenses. I'm going to have to take my time, set the camera on a tripod, think very carefully about exposure, realy embrace and understand what pinhole does and so on. A lot of the photo essay is likely to be made up of portraits of people who have been involved in these incidents, as well as relevant locations. I shot a Front against Censorship demonstration a short while ago using the pinhole digital - some of the images worked surprising well. I also made it a point to record audio clips of the demonstrators reading from 'steamy' by classic literature. Those pictures can be seen here.
Back to shooting pictures for the MA course, and it feels good – it felt frustrating getting bogged down in critical theory and the like. Peter Fraser’s recent talk on intelligent still life, just like his talk to us last semester, was thought-provoking and inspiring.
He wanted us to shoot with our emotions, let the subject control us, and not the other way round. Take pictures as you feel them and not doing anything contrived or ‘designed’. Using the technique he’d recommended when I was shooting VISIONS – closing one’s eyes for twenty minutes, shutting out all visual stimuli thereby unloading any visual baggage and then opening one’s eyes again and letting emotions guide you as you shoot. He wanted to see where this would take us.
I opted to do the assignment at the house where I used to live, up in what used to be my bedroom – a room I’ve been clearing out bit by bit. The twenty minutes of shuteye must have made me very introspective. I’d already decided I was going to shoot in black and white, and would concentrate on tight details around the room, but had no idea what I’d shoot specifically.
Here are the results - a reflection of my quiet, reflective, nostalgic yet partly foul mood.
Paul’s asked us for a letter to ourselves, a spot of reflection on how the course is going, what we think our strengths and weaknesses are at the moment, where we hope to find ourselves in the future, and areas we need to develop further.
To be honest, I don’t think there’s much I can add to what I wrote in my blog Visions a couple of months ago. I still think I need to be a better editor of my own work, and need to work more on developing relationships over time which will enable me to shoot better pictures, get closer to my subjects and create more meaningful bodies of work. I also need to start to trust my gut instincts better, particularly during the editing process. I'll continue to play with audio and improve on that - there's no doubt in my mind that multimedia is the way of the future (and present for that matter), and printed newspapers are pretty much a dying breed. And whilst I’m starting to shed my newspaper mode of shooting, I realise I still have a long way to go till I find my own voice or style in the documentary work I do. That’s why I’m doing this Masters. I know the academic side of it is going to continue to be particularly tough, but let’s face it, there’s nothing like a real challenge to set our pulses racing, is there?
Ugandan children sing beautifully. I’m drawn towards the classrooms by the angelic sounding voices tempered with an unmistakably African rhythm. The songs are more than just a welcoming ritual - they’re an everyday part of life, something quintessentially African.
The outside walls of Katoosa Primary School in Kyenjonjo in western Uganda are colourfully painted, an extension to the classrooms themselves as they’re covered with maps and biology diagrams. The dimly lit rooms are packed with enthusiastic children, peering through the large windows with more than just idle curiosity.
There is no such thing as a typical Ugandan school - Some are no more than open air classrooms under a tree in the middle of a field, the blackboard hanging from a low lying tree branch. The teachers have few or no teaching aids.
At Loro Primary school, in Oyam in the north of the country, the classrooms are huts with corrugated iron roofs. Barefoot pupils sit on the dusty floor cross-legged for hours on end, deep in concentration as they try to follow lessons. The children tightly clutch onto their bundles of pencils as though they’re their most precious possessions – maybe that’s exactly why.
Many of the young pupils don't have a meal throughout a whole day at school because their parents can't afford the 5000 shillings (2 US $) a term to pay for school meals. How must that hungry child feel, when he has nothing to eat and the student sitting in the grass next to him is gobbling down his food? How can that child be expected to learn and develop at school, listen to the teacher, when the only thing he can hear is his rumbling empty stomach?
Whilst primary education is supposed to be universal, many families can't afford to send their children to school, for the simple reason that they're expected to pay for the child's meals. The government is trying to eradicate the practice of schools charging for school meals, but much remains to be done in that area. There is also a chronic lack of teachers. Government policy only allows districts to employ a certain number of teachers, but given the rapid population growth, those numbers are nowhere near sufficient.
Some children are luckier and attend private school. The Kyamusansala Primary School in Masaka in southern Uganda, run by nuns of the Sacred Heart, is one of the better schools in the region. The pupils, all girls, are boarders, many orphans who lost both parents to AIDS, and they're guaranteed to get their meals every day. Teaching standards are high, classrooms are well equipped, the pupils wear smart, meticulously cared-for uniforms, discipline is strict but fair, and by and large, things appear no different to a well-funded school in the West.
Reminders of the scourge of AIDS are never far away. A wooden signpost nailed to a tree near the main entrance reads “Be aware of HIV/AIDS”. At the Katoosa Primary School in Kyenjonjo in western Uganda, a patch of grass in an otherwise dusty field is dotted with boulders with similar messages painted on them “AIDS kills,” Together we can fight AIDS, AIDS Petients (sic) need care and support.” With Uganda having been one of the worst affected countries, authorities are making sure that AIDS awareness campaigns target children by the earliest possible age.
According to UN figures, some 75 million children worldwide are denied the basic right of a primary school education. These children, left without the chance to learn, will grow up in poverty, with no hope, no ambition and no future. Uganda appears to be one of the success stories – in only 5 years, the country managed to double the number of children in primary schools to over 90%.
Yet, the issue is not so clear cut. The Millennium Development Goals, which were agreed internationally to reduce poverty levels and improve education and health worldwide, were imposed on African countries as a condition for debt relief. The pressure this exerted on the education system has almost brought it to its knees, according to Madeleine Bunting writing in The Guardian. Classes of over 75 students are commonplace; there aren’t enough books, blackboards, teaching materials. The priorities are access, equality and quality - in that order - putting the Ugandan authorities in a dilemma over whether to go for quantity or quality, which is no choice at all.
Some pupils at Kyamusansala School are intently watching me, but they shyly turn away when they realize I’ve noticed. They’re interested in my cameras. We strike up a conversation of sorts, I show them some pictures, and ask them what they want to do when they grow up. One wants to be a doctor, another wants to join the Sisters of Sacred Heart. All the children have dreams, and given the chance, given the right education, many will achieve those ambitions, however lofty they may appear.
This is the fifth in a series of reports from Uganda raising awareness about the UN Millennium Development Goals with the cooperation of SOS Malta.
It's been a busy time these past months which goes some way to explaining why this blog's been neglected for so long, apart from posting stories I'd written for my newspaper and a couple of audio slideshows, my first proper attempts at doing them. I have an exhibition about the L'Aquila earthquake on at the moment, but I'll write about that another time.
Coursework these past months has all been taken up with photo essays. After doing a number of smaller picture essays during my travels in Uganda and the Italian earthquake zone, (my submitted photo essays during tutorials showed me very clearly that I need to work on my editing skills - it didn't take me long to realise I was often including the wrong pictures and leaving out some good stuff), I moved on to a more in depth photo essay. I was tipped off to the subject matter by the TV programme Xarabank. Since then, for the past three months, I've been documenting what's happening at the hill of Borg in-Nadur, outside Birzebbugia, in the south of the island, where a visionary/stigmatic has been leading prayer meetings and seeing apparations. It's been interesting and is probably a project I'll keep revisiting on and off over the coming months, though it will of course have to shift downwards on my list of priorities. I'm planning on moving on to something else for my big final project which will be shot over several months - actually I started shooting it ages ago, though for purposes of the MA course I'll keep it restricted to what I've shot since starting the course.
I learnt a lot from this project I called VISIONS, primarily the value of patience,and sticking with a story in the long term, even if at times one almost despairs at getting the sort of shots one needs (there were a couple of occasions when I considered dropping the project altogether and moving onto something else, but both my tutors John Easterby and Homer Sykes convinced me to keep at it). I learnt the value of really discussing pictures in a profound way with my peers (they know who they are!),of blending into the surroundings, letting people get used to my presence, getting to know people so they can let me have a peek into their lives. Admittedly, I got off to bad start in that respect, as in the first minutes of my first visit there, I was standing right where the apparations are supposed to take place, much to the horror of many people present!
One interesting technique I picked up from Peter Fraser during a tutorial was - once I got to the location, I sat down and closed my eyes, and just listened to sounds around me. Peter had suggested doing this for about twenty minutes, I lost all sense of time and carried on for forty. Opening my eyes after that long stretch, I started to see things in a different way from the norm (I did this on one of my later visits), the pictures I took were different from the usual stuff, and though none of them made the final edit as they didn't quite fit in with the rest of the set, I still think they're some of the more interesting images. Naturally it's not the sort of thing one can do when covering a news assignment, but it's certainly something to consider doing more often.
There are still huge gaps in VISIONS, but access to some things I needed to shoot has proven to be next to impossible, though there have been some positive indications that that may change for the better sometime soon. That's one of the things which is motivating me to continue monitoring this story. The door hasn't been opened to me, but it seems the window has... so I might get there eventually. It's taken a long time for the inner circle of people involved in this to come to trust me, to accept me - in this regard, my working for the biggest newspaper on the island worked against me, as they have a deep distrust of the media, having been ruthlessly attacked by some sections of it in the past. They've now understood this is something I want to follow in the long term, and that I haven't been doing this as a newspaper assignment. At the same time though, I'm not keen on the occasional suggestion that it's ok to shoot something as long as it's just for an MA assignment but not for publication. I don't see the sense of that - out in the real world, it's always going to be for possible publication, isn't it? So may as well get it right to start with.
These events will probably carry on for a very long time, so in a sense, there's no rush. In the meantime, I'll look deeper into how to widen the scope of the story, build on the trust I've garnered, meet more people in their homes and so on.
Re the story itself, whether it turns out to be true or just the result of fraud, deceit or some form of mental illness, shouldn't affect the importance of the work I'm producing. It remains something that needs to be documented journalistically because it has anthropological, historical, social and religious value.
So, what is VISIONS all about?
Once a week, come rain or shine, a growing number of religiously devout people walk up a narrow slippery path to what was once a Bronze Age settlement at the top of a small hill of Borg in-Nadur (meaning ‘group of stones on a hill in an archaic Maltese dialect). They come out of religious piety and a good dose of curiosity to see and listen to Angelik Caruana, a telephone operator in his early 40s, and now a visionary and stigmatic, who claims to receive apparitions from guardian angels and the Mother of God, who he calls The Lady.
What first started as a private matter at home in 2006, with a statue of the Blessed Virgin shedding tears of blood (now kept away from prying eyes due to ongoing scientific investigations), soon became a growing phenomenon. The apparition, visiting Caruana on a regular basis, told him to go to the hill of Borg in-Nadur as that is where she wanted to appear in future. A cross was erected at the spot indicated, and that has now become the focal point of the activities.
The devotees, many carrying chairs and stools, come to the hill to pray, to recite the Rosary, and to listen to any messages from The Lady passed through Caruana. They also hope to see a miracle for themselves, such the sun spinning on its axis and descending on them before retreating again; a vision of The Lady appearing in the sun; a Eucharist host appearing on the palm of Caruana’s hand out of nowhere. Unusual shaped clouds become supernatural visions. Because they are told it won’t hurt their eyes, they spend several minutes, practically unblinking, staring into the setting sun in the hope of seeing something.
At the end of the prayer meeting, several pilgrims go to the cross, to touch it, to ask for blessings, or to put a note or a photo of a departed loved one in between the rubble stones.
Caruana is surrounded by an entourage of “chosen ones” who include a spiritual advisor, his wife and a small number of friends. They are the only people allowed at the foot of the cross during the apparitions (apparitions of The Lady, angels, and occasionally - of hell), with one exception – a psychiatrist who is closely monitoring the case, carrying out scientific investigations, looking out for anything that might indicate fraud, deceit and mental illness. The investigations remain ongoing.
Once a month, the apparitions also take place on Malta’s sister island, Gozo.
Caruana also claims to receive the stigmata every Friday afternoon, when he goes rigid in a crucified position on his bed, and marks form on his hands and feet. It remains a very private moment however, strictly off limits to all except the “chosen ones.”
The Church authorities have yet to pronounce themselves on the matter, waiting for the results of scientific, psychological and theological investigations. In the meantime, it takes the position that nobody is obliged to believe in apparitions, even if they are officially recognised, but if it helps people in their faith and daily life, then they shouldn’t be rejected.
Women in colourful headscarves are out in the scorching sun on the rim of the quarry, sitting among mounds of granite rubble, lost in the rhythmic motion of hammering. Their young babies are next to them, oblivious to the danger posed by flying shards of granite as the women smash the rubble stones into smaller pieces using crude mallets.
Condemned by fate and circumstances to a life of hard labour, these are the Acholi tribe people who have fled their homes over the last twenty years because of the civil war raging in the north of the country.
For close to two decades, the cult-like Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda has carried out civilian massacres and mutilations on a horrifying scale. Its enigmatic leader Joseph Kony wants to run the country on the lines of the biblical Ten Commandments, yet his methods could hardly be more evil.
The United Nations estimates that over 20,000 children have been abducted by the LRA to serve as child soldiers or sex slaves. More than 1.6 million people have been displaced and ten of thousands of civilians have been killed.
To date, a comprehensive peace agreement remains elusive.
The internally displaced people's camp, the Acholi tribe quarters in Mbuya, on a hill on the outskirts of the Ugandan capital, Kampala, is dominated by two granite quarries on either side. The land belongs to king of Buganda, one of the traditional but politically impotent kings in Uganda, and is now home to over 5000 people who were forced to flee their villages in the north.
The densely populated slum, much like any other slum around the country, is a haven for diseases such as malaria, dysentery, tuberculosis, HIV, scabies. Sanitation is poor, drainage facilities are virtually non-existent.
The quarries are huge gashes in the side of the hill – what were in themselves hills ten years ago are now deep gorges, providing what for several years was the only way of earning some sort of livelihood for the people in the camp. On a good day, a woman might fill twenty jerry cans with the small stones, for which she’ll be paid 2000 shillings, equivalent to around 60 euro cents, barely enough to feed herself and her family.
Haggard looking men, their features worn by long hours in the sun and the sheer hardship of working in the quarry, carry sacks of rocks from the bottom of the gorge. Others perch perilously on the side of the steep slope, yielding sledgehammers to smash the rocks off the cliff face into smaller manageable pieces.
The heat from burning tyres is used to crack large rocks, making the quarrying process moderately easier.
It’s the sort of place where there’s no such thing as health and safety. The job is extremely dangerous. Accidents ranging from a smashed hand or finger because of a mis-aimed mallet, to rock falls which leave workers buried with every bone in their bodies pulverized, are a frequent fact of life and one the workers have become fatalistic about.
“You never know if you will return home in the evening,” says one woman in between shoveling stones into her jerry can. “We don’t quarrel or fight because we’re all working in a dangerous place together; when the stones fall on you, then you die together.”
There is an alternative.
Recently, many residents have found a safer work, making cosmetic jewellery out of paper, glue and varnishing. A traditional handicraft of the Acholi tribe, the beads are hand-rolled using scraps of paper, usually from old magazines, glued and handpainted with a layer of protective lacquer. Each piece of jewellery is unique as they are all handmade and individually designed by the makers.
The beaders got organized into a cooperative through BeadforLife, instigated by three American women - Torkin Wakefield, Ginny Jordan, and Devin Hibbard – who, while on a visit to Uganda, stopped to admire the beads being made a Ugandan woman named Millie and learned that there was no market for her jewellery, and that Millie worked for a dollar a day in the rock quarry crushing stones.
Sensing a business opportunity, they set about training the women to improve the quality of the beads, come up with several styles of necklaces and bracelets, as well as develop a marketing strategy. It had now grown into a cottage industry, complete with beads parties in the US, along the lines of Tupperware parties, and all profits go back into the community projects aimed at helping people work their way out of poverty. The beads have come to mean income, health, dignity, education and hope, in a place where hope is so desperately needed.
This is the fourth in a series of reports from Uganda raising awareness about the UN Millennium Development Goals with the cooperation of SOS Malta.
