Nº 30

«Barack Obama was one of these disposed kids»

It all started here, at the funeral in the photo above, but it actually comes from long ago. Since the beginning of his career as a photographer in 1967, Steven Shames has shown a clear interest: the lives of disadvantaged, abandoned and poor children. His images are stunning documents which speak for themselves, and are part of permanent collections of institutions like the International Center of Photography in New York, or the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, to name a few. Nine years ago, Shames was in Uganda, working on a story of AIDS orphans, and photographed the funeral of a woman, who left five orphaned children behind. The youngest, just a few months old, was called Sarah. Steven Shames decided to take over the education of the little Sarah, her family, and later also of a dozen orphans from the village. He wanted them to attend the best schools in Africa. In 2004, his interest had grown to an unprecedented educational project: LEAD Uganda. Today, the lives of more than 70 children, including Sarah, have been transformed. Steven Shames tells us the details of this fascinating adventure in this interview.

Versión en español

KINDSEIN: How do you feel when coming back from Africa and finding somebody without motivation?

STEVEN SHAMES: I go through culture shock not when I go to Africa, where I feel home, but when I come back to the U. S. and hear people complain about meaningless things like they spilled coffee on their new shirt. I mean who cares? We have an expression here, “a bad hair day”. To have a bad hair day is to be miserable because your hair is not “right”. Many people are concerned about superficial things. They are obsessed with material objects. Focusing on extraneous things can make life empty.  But, our job is to educate people. Many people here do no know any better. After all, we are all products of our environments. People in Africa often do not have the choice. It is not that they are better.

KINDSEIN: Do you think a project like LEAD Uganda would work in a Western country? Have you found any difference between a child from Uganda and a child in any depressed area of New York, for example?

STEVEN SHAMES: There are more similarities than differences between children in Africa and those in the U. S. or Europe. There are cultural differences but basically a program like ours could work here also. In fact, there are programs that do what we do here.  

The Barrack Obama story proves this beyond any doubt. He was one of these disposed kids. I have personally mentored two children from The Bronx, who are now almost 40. Both are leaders. One who grew up without his father owns his own business, another --whose mom was a crack addict -- is a supervisor at a food company.

KINDSEIN: Do you have anything to do with “Friends of the Children”? Are you also involved with it?

STEVEN SHAMES: No, Friends of the Children is a program I wrote about and photographed. I did a video on them. I used them as a model for LEAD Uganda. Another model was A Better Chance, an educational program for poor children (mostly from ghetto areas) in the United States.