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Up from the brothel
Zana Briski taught photography to the children of Calcutta’s sex workers — and the resulting film may take her from the red-light district to Oscar’s red carpet
BY TAMARA WIEDER

ZANA BRISKI never imagined she’d be pondering what she might wear to the Academy Awards. In the late 1990s, living in a brothel in Calcutta’s red-light district, where she’d gone to photograph the resident prostitutes, Briski was frequently sick, exhausted, and fearful, and often questioned her decision to be there. Even when her focus changed from the sex workers to their children, even when she distributed point-and-shoot cameras and began teaching the kids photography, even when she enlisted the help of filmmaker Ross Kauffman to document the experience, the thought that the resulting film would one day be the winner of more than 20 major-festival prizes — including the 2004 Sundance Audience Award for Best Documentary — and would be short-listed for an Oscar would have been entirely inconceivable.

Yet here she is, juggling interview requests, awards ceremonies, and screenings of that film, Born into Brothels. She’s established a foundation, Kids with Cameras, to empower children in countries like India, Haiti, and Egypt by teaching them photography; the organization has raised more than $100,000 for the Brothel students’ educations by selling their work at festivals and on its Web site. (In the film, Briski works tirelessly to get the kids into boarding schools and away from the red-light district.) Still, though grateful for her film’s success, the London-born Briski, who lives in New York City, is admittedly uncomfortable with the frenzied pace it’s resulted in. "It’s been an incredible experience, and the film is touching so many people, and it’s helping the kids out so much, but personally, it’s not really how I want to live my life at all," Briski says. "I’m really private and shy and quiet, and I don’t like to be busy. And it’s not like I’ve got publicists between me and the public; I actually have to deal with everything myself. I forget to eat."

And for the record, she doesn’t have an Oscar dress picked out, either.

Q: Tell me about the genesis of the film, and how you wound up in India to begin with.

A: I went to India to photograph on my own, different women’s issues, in 1995, and then I went back in ’97 to continue photographing, and on that trip someone took me to the red-light district in Calcutta. It wasn’t anything that I had planned to do. And it just grew from there. It took me a couple of years to really get access, to be able to live in a brothel — which is very much my style, to be a part of what I am trying to capture. The kids were always all over me and really wanted to learn how to take pictures, so I taught them. During this whole time, everybody was asking me for help, and the longer I spent there, the more urgent it became to actually provide that help, so my focus sort of changed. Well, it didn’t change, I was still teaching the photography, but I really wanted to get the kids to safety.

Q: What was it about the red-light district that attracted you?

A: As soon as I saw that place, it was really like a recognition for me, and very strong intuition that that’s where I needed to be. I mean, of course it was lively and colorful and crazy, and I wanted to know what was happening behind all of the doors, but it’s not a rational — I don’t have any rational reasons. I don’t do any research, I don’t do anything like that.

Q: In a recent interview in the New York Times, you were joking that you must’ve been a prostitute in a former life. Did you feel a real connection to these sex workers?

A: Absolutely. And that particular red-light district as well. I’ve been to many others since then, and they’re all fascinating, but it’s that particular place that really attracted me.

Q: What was the experience of living there like? Did it feel dangerous?

A: Yeah, it definitely felt dangerous. It was scary. Anything can happen at any time. It’s very hard living conditions. I’d get sick a lot. It was always difficult to eat, sleep. It was chaotic. Emotions are very volatile, and they could erupt at any time. But it was also a lot of fun, and the women are incredible and feisty and funny. I kind of liked the daily routine of just getting up with them and watching them get ready and waiting with them and just hanging out. I mean, it was mostly just hanging out.

Q: What about the language barrier?

A: That was hard. I had a translator with me sometimes, but not all the time. To actually do interviews, I had a translator. Also that was some sort of protection for me, because sometimes the women would take advantage of me more when I didn’t have anybody there. But I was there alone quite a lot as well.

Q: Did you ever think to yourself, what am I doing here?

A: Oh, all the time. I started learning the language — which I’ve kind of forgotten now — so I could communicate a little bit.

Q: But you never said, forget it, I’m going home, I can’t do this.

A: When I got sick, I would always feel that, but as soon as I got better, I would forget that I was sick. I broke down a lot, for sure. There was nothing easy about the project. I’m actually going back on Monday, and I can’t believe it.

Q: I read that you’re going back. You’re going to build a boarding school?

A: Yeah. It’s to see the kids, to follow up with the kids in the film, and try and get the other ones out [of the red-light district] as well, and then also we’re planning to build a school specifically for children of prostitutes, which will open in 2006, and that will be a school of leadership and the arts. It’s a very radical thing to do, for Calcutta.

 

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Issue Date: January 21 - 27, 2005
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