DEVELOPING IMAGES
For several years the Geography Department of Whitmore High School, Harrow, has provided disposable cameras to students visiting a range of different countries. With just 27 shots available students are asked to think carefully about the photographs they take. Their brief is to cover a variety of places and people, images which they (and other people in the UK) would think of as typical of that country - plus images which are less typical or unexpected. When they return, two sets of photographs are printed, one for them and one for the school. The school set is captioned by the student and displayed in the geography department. They can then be seen and used by other students as part of their work in geography, either formally or informally. They have proved especially useful to year 9 students studying development and development issues.
So far students have brought back photos from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, China, Sao Paulo (Brazil), the USA, France, Kenya and Australia - covering all the continents except Antarctica ! Apart from showing a wide audience what different countries are like, many of the photos help challenge what can be stereo-typical ideas and perceptions, especially about developing countries
Who lives here ? Where was this photo taken ? In a developed or developing country (MEDC or LEDC) ? What clues are there e.g. type of building materials used, style, cost, weather, vegetation ? This was taken in Sri Lanka - a grand colonial-style house (now called the Hill Club) nestled amongst the tea plantations in Nuwara Eliya. It was one of many photos reproduced here and taken by Katy and Jonathan Stone and their family on their visit in 1997/98. This is what they had to say about what they remembered most: "We travelled to Sri Lanka over Christmas and the New Year to visit friends and to travel around the island. The geography department at school asked us to take a camera and record what we saw - both the expected and unexpected.
Other scenes were more unexpected - up in the hills amongst the tea plantations we came across architecture which would have looked more at home in Surrey (see first photo) ... schools and community health centres with no glass in the windows - until we realised it was so hot that it wasn't really needed.
The trip was always going to be a fantastic experience, and taking a roving camera with us helped us think about aspects of what we saw which we might otherwise have missed." If you have an opportunity to visit a different country, don't just take a camera for holiday snaps - bring back images that tell you more about what the country and its people are like. If your images are from developing countries we may have room to publish some of them in the magazine or on our web site. You may also find that your school may be interested in using or displaying them. Your photos may help someone understand better what life is really like in another country that they haven't had the opportunity to visit themselves.
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We had expected to find the perfect holiday location - golden sands and palm trees and warm seas - and we did. We saw busy luxury resorts and beautiful deserted beaches.... my first memory (Katy) is a perfect beach, and we are the only people on it having arrived after a day's driving in a hot stuffy minibus. We followed the sound of the sea and the surf through the palm trees onto the beach. The picture was breathtakingly beautiful - a perfect image of a tropical beach with nothing missing which is why I think I remember it so clearly.
One of our most vivid memories was the heat and the hustle and bustle of street life. In Kandy there seemed to be a permanent traffic jam - very noisy since each vehicle had two horns freely used by the drivers! The traffic wasn't just cars but buses, minibuses, trucks, trishaws (a rickshaw powered by a motor bike) and hundreds of bicycles. Amazingly nobody seemed cross or bad-tempered, but were calm and smiling despite the slow progress. The streets were full of people - everywhere we went we were struck by how much of the people's lives was lived on the streets. Some were selling pineapples, king coconuts, whole hands of bananas, Christmas cards and decorations, umbrellas and soft drinks. People were buying, mending and then selling shoes or carrying out on-the-spot tailoring. Others were simply shopping and, in the middle of it all, was a working elephant negotiating the traffic. ... When I (Katy) think of the scene I don't just see a picture. There were so many smells (not all pleasant), so many noises and so much to see that I couldn't take it all in at once.