The Shootback Project and Book By Lana Wong

Children have vivid and important stories to tell, and cameras are dynamic tools for this expression. Lana Wong started the Shootback Project to help give young people in Mathare the means to tell their own stories. In August 1997, under the auspices of Africa’s largest youth sports and development NGO, the Mathare Youth Sports Association and with support from the Ford Foundation and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), youth leader Francis Kimanzi and Lana started teaching photography and writing to a group of 31 boys and girls, aged 12 to 17. The kids had never held cameras before.

Equiped with 30 dollar plastic cameras the Shootback Team photographed their lives and wrote about them every week for almost 2 years. The results were honest, raw, amusing and beautiful - these visceral images became the basis of a 200-page book called Shootback: Photos by Kids from the Nairobi Slums (Booth-Clibborn Editions, London 1999). The book was launched at the Barbican Centre in London with an exhibition that toured around the world.

The Shootback Project continues to train young photographers in Mathare today and their photos are displayed both in the slum and in international shows. An exhibition in Paris with agnes b. to commemorate Shootback’s tenth anniversary is planned for Spring 2008.

Read an Excerpt from Shootback