From Inside to Out

My Photo scholarship 2011 entry

Tanzania | Tuesday, October 4, 2011 | 5 photos

As tourists are paraded through an orphanage in Tanzania they take pictures of the children. I can't lift my camera, but I want to. The children have expressionless faces different from any children I have seen before. I don't know any orphans. I don't know anyone who lives in poverty. They shove notes into the tourists' hands asking them to be pen pals and to send money. I can't lift my camera, but I want to.
As a journalism student, I have always envied photographers who are able to capture human emotion through a lens. In theory, I would love to be a photojournalist. In practice, I cannot lift my camera to photograph the face of a destitute, orphaned child in a country that is not my own.
In my photo journal, I included one picture of a child. It was taken outside a banana farm in a Tanzanian village where my dad passed out cheap pens to all the children. She stared emotionlessly into my camera with the pen in her hand. The pen probably broke within a matter of hours, but I will be able to use her image over and over again for my benefit.
I want to win this scholarship because I need to reconcile my guilt associated with taking people's pictures with my desire to document human emotion. I want a diverse portfolio and a challenging career. This set of photos shows that I can capture the awkward movements of giraffes, the shyness of a crab and the beauty of stained glass against a whitewashed building, but I know it lacks human feeling. This scholarship would help me enhance my portfolio, my career aspects and my life as a journalist by teaching me to photograph nature as well as people.