About This Gallery
These images are taken from a recently published book by photographer Alison Wright. The book - Faces of Hope: Children in a Changing World - is available in bookstores and via Alison's website.
Hope starts with one child. One person can't save the world, but if you can touch just one individual, that makes life worthwhile. With each morning's newspaper, the world's problems can seem so horrific, so immense. Where do we put our hearts that day? It's easy to feel overwhelmed, to become paralyzed, to do nothing when confronted by the problems of the developing world, especially those facing its children.
Yet if we overlook their suffering today, how can we expect them to be our friends tomorrow? They are both potential leaders and adversaries. With 95 percent of all new births occurring in the world's poorest countries, and half of those in dense urban areas, these children are not just our future, they are now. In order to help this new global generation to find its place, we must strive to understand their cultures and current situations. Their fate will be determined largely by how we choose to nurture and guide them in our evolving world. The purpose of these photos, excerpted from the book of the same name, are not to document the suffering of the world's children or their daily struggle to survive, but to celebrate their spirit and the heritage being passed down to them.
Television, tourism, and larger economic forces are creating a global village. From Africa to Asia, the children of these emerging regions are confronting the challenges of having one foot in the modern world and the other in the rapidly eroding world of their own traditional cultures. These young people want more than to work the land or herd cattle as their parents did. A Bedouin mother in Jordan told me that she didn't want her six children living in nomadic tents tending goats. She wants them to go to school, to be doctors and engineers.
The greatest lesson I learned from my travels is that despite our political differences, people the world over are the same in wanting what is best for their children: a sense of identity, health, safety, education, religion, freedom, and well-being. We can all work to make that happen. It is what will bring our world together.
I have tremendous faith in the children of today, especially the forgotten ones, who must overcome such enormous obstacles in their lives. From landmine atrocities in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos; to child labor in Nepal and India; to political repression in Tibet, China, and Burma; to displacement in refugee camps wherever there is war; to the struggle with the AIDS pandemic in Africa and other parts of the developing world; these children have survived in dire situations with a tenacity and resiliency that never ceases to inspire me. Their courage and optimism is impressive, their enthusiasm, delightful. I don't have children myself, but after every trip it seems that I come home with a backpack full of them.
On a recent trip to Laos I got off a riverboat and wandered around the small village of Nong Khiaw. It was my birthday, two days before Christmas, and I was feeling one of those twinges of loneliness that sometimes accompanies life on the road in a distant country. Just as I was wondering what my friends back home were doing, a tiny girl raced up to me to shyly hand me a flower. She wanted nothing in return. As she grinned, I noticed her teeth were rotted to little stumps and her long dark hair was matted. She arrived at just the right moment. I often look at that photo that I snapped of her. To me it shows hope. It shows beauty in a world of chaos and is a reminder that the little things in life are most precious. Never is it so apparent as through the eyes of a child.
About the Photographer
I first decided to travel to the developing world while I was in college. I was drawn to India's spirituality and wanted to explore the human extreme. My parents were apprehensive. They felt it was too far, too strange, too dangerous. They encouraged me to backpack in Europe instead. This didn't sound nearly as compelling, but I agreed. From Spain I had someone send postcards back home to my family telling them how much I was enjoying the beaches. Instead, I jumped on a boat and traveled to North Africa. Those first glimpses of overwhelming poverty and children in need became etched in my mind during that brief visit. It was a defining experience, and I knew then that it was their lives that I cared about and wanted to document.
I have since covered the world in more than two decades of travel as a photographer and writer, and children have been a constant theme. In those early years I lived out my cowgirl dreams, moving to the dusty isolated outback of Australia. I learned how to ride horses and taught local children in a one-room schoolhouse. Back in the United States I spent two years working as a newspaper photographer in San Diego. Often, I crossed over the border into Mexico, photographing orphanages and the plight of destitute children right in my backyard.
One day while thumbing through a magazine, I found myself mesmerized by the pools of light reflecting from the eyes of Indian children staring back at me from the pages. I realized that Asia still beckoned me. I called the photographer to tell him how much I loved his photographs. He happened to work for UNICEF and told me that if I was ever in New York to come by and show him my portfolio. I bought a plane ticket and went to see him the following week. After looking at my photos, he asked me if I wanted to go to Nepal to photograph children. It was exactly what I wanted to do.
I went for what was supposed to be a month-long assignment, although I was so captivated by the magic of Asia that I stayed for more than four years and have continued to return there nearly every year since. I worked not only for UNICEF but for other relief associations such as CARE, ILO (The United Nations International Labor Organization), Save the Children, USAID, SEVA, the Helen Keller Foundation, as well as many other smaller but significant grassroots programs. I photographed children and refugees in all aspects of their daily lives: playing, working, worshipping, learning.
Alison Wright is the San Francisco based author and photographer of "Faces of Hope, Children of a Changing World," published by New World Library. Her other photo books include "A Simple Monk: Writings on His Holiness the Dalai Lama" and "The Spirit of Tibet: Portrait of a Culture in Exile." She is a frequent contributor to the "Travelers Tales" series, as well as "Stories of World Travel" by the Wild Writing Women.
Her photos have been exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution and the American Museum of Natural History and have appeared in major magazines world-wide. She is the recipient of the 1993 Dorothea Lange Award in documentary photography for her photographs of child labor in Asia. She is also the winner of the 2002 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award for her Outside magazine story recounting her astonishing survival and recuperation after a devastating bus accident in Laos. Her website is www.AlisonWright.com.
All photos © 2003 - Alison Wright, unless indicated otherwise.Other Photo Galleries