International Aid Ethiopia

Ethiopia, Ethutopia, Utopia. Is aid working? - Images by Rafael Sanchez


After more than two months just before Summer arranging meetings with international and local Ngos working in Ethiopia and organising the logistics of my trip, I spent about three weeks in the Tigray area around Mekelle, Adigrat and Aksum and two weeks in Lalibela and the Omo Valley. The plan was to document different development projects to try to understand how international aid works in one of the poorest countries in the world, or rather if it is really working after thousands of millions of dollars invested during more than 50 years.
Today more than 80% of people in Ethiopia still live on less than US$2 a day. One in ten children die before their fifth birthday. Many children suffer from malnourishment and even in a good year, when the rains or crops don't fail, around 5 million people need help to get enough to eat. Of the country's 81 million people, half are under the age of 18. More children are now attending primary school, but numbers remain very low in the poorest areas of the country, and girls often don't go to school at all.
The extent and quality of healthcare provision is limited. As a result, children still die every day from preventable diseases such as malaria, and many women still die from complications during childbirth. Only 13% of the population have adequate
sanitation facilities and large numbers don't have access to safe drinking water.
International aid is a huge operation in Ethiopia, with lots of different interpretations depending of your point of view,complex situations and difficult answers.
The only way to explore in depth the subject of my final project was to try to capture the honest and intimate thoughts of aid workers and the beneficiaries of some representatives projects. With the help of International Ngos like Oxfam America and Ngos controlled by the government like Relief Society of Tigray, I was able to document schemes dealing with water sanitation, agriculture development and environment issues. Local Ngos like Operation Rescue and Addis Development Vision gave me the opportunity to visit hospitals and orphanages and understand how private enterprises like Fitsum Birhan Hospital are still absolutely necessary to fight poverty. Every person portrayed in the project is somehow interconnected and the different stories are layers of the same reality.
I have already started editing the different chapters of the story in separate galleries and I am planning to create a multimedia presentation/web documentary with images and audio recorded during interviews to show the narrative of the project in detail, and probably a small book to present in a less conventional way some of the main ideas and unanswered questions behind the project.

Lesotho, a country within a country.

Lesotho, a country within a country - Images by Rafael Sanchez

Lesotho, a small country landlocked by South Africa, was established in 1824 as the mountain fortress for tribes united together against the attacking Zulu and is now home to 2.2 million Basotho. Proud of its African heritage, few people in the highlands of this beautiful and rugged country speaks English or Afrikaans.
Despite a long struggle for freedom and independence, Lesotho’s economy and politics still depend heavily today on some of the more powerful countries in the area.
The use of the traditional legal system in the tribunals is based on the social structure established during colonial times; the investment of foreign companies in local factories goes back in history to the European domination; the arrival of Chinese population to control through chains of supermarkets the food and clothes trade is yet another relatively new global trend to increase dependency, and the development of the overwhelmed health system wouldn’t be possible without international support.
With 29 percent of the population believed to be living with HIV and
less than a quarter knowing they are infected, the rate in Lesotho has risen to the fourth highest in the world. Less than 15 percent of those in need of treatment are receiving it, resulting in thousands of preventable deaths. With high rates of infection, malnourishment, and death, the life expectancy is rapidly approaching 40 years of age. Young women constitute 75 percent of all reported HIV/AIDS cases between the ages of 15-29 years and only five percent of infected pregnant women receive medication to reduce the risk of transmitting HIV to her child, a medication that costs $5.00 per pregnancy.
All Basotho women are considered legally the child of their husband, and must obtain their husband’s approval to have surgery, take contraceptives, take out a loan or run for public office.
The government of Lesotho was initially slow to recognize the scale of the crisis, and its efforts to date in combating the spread of the disease have had limited success.
In 1999, the government finalized its Strategic Plan on HIV/AIDS, a diagram for addressing the education, prevention, counseling, and treatment needs of the population. In 2005, plans for the distribution of anti-retrovirals were initiated. However, such programs remain limited in resources and have relatively few participants.
The economic, social and cultural impact is huge and affects everyone and everything in the community, since 80 percent of Lesotho’s population lives in rural villages and is dependent on subsistence agriculture for livelihood. In places like Mokhotlong, a remote and isolated village with big hopes and challenges, poverty, drought, high unemployment, a dependence on migratory work, and recurring food crises continue to worsen the life conditions of the whole population.
Once known as the loneliest place in Africa, Mokhotlong lies at the end of the tarmac and still gets cut off from the rest of civilization for days or weeks at a time in winter. It began life as a police outpost at the beginning of last century and gradually evolved into a trading centre for the region, but even today continues to get the bulk of its supplies by pony from South Africa.
Volunteers working with organizations like Touching Tiny Lives take care of HIV positive orphans who contracted the virus at birth or from breast-feeding. Other Ngo's like The Louis Gregory Foundation work with local schools to promote different activities within the community to improve their education and awareness regarding AIDS.
One of the main goals is to teach young people in developing countries the moral responsibility and accountability of every individual regarding the destiny of the world. Those living in disadvantaged communities learn to use their skills as potential vehicles for change. Each community adapt the learning plan to the community needs, education standards, human resources and cultural complexities of the society.
More than 800 children in Mokhotlong participate now in the development of their own neighbourhood, addressing big problems in the area like unemployment, alcoholism, ethnic and cultural prejudice and HIV/AIDS infected orphans.

Mokhotlong

I have been editing on Photoshelter most of the images I got last month in Lesotho, a small country landlocked by Southafrica established in 1824 as the mountain fortress for tribes united together against the attacking Zulu and now home to 2.2 million Basotho. I am at the same time trying to figure out how to present and put together the stories of the people of Mokhotlong for the Borders project. The original idea still is to portrait all faces of everyday life and death in a remote and isolated village with big hopes and challenges.
Volunteers working with organizations like Touching Tiny Lives told me about HIV positive orphans who contract the virus at birth or from breast-feeding. Other Ngo's like The Louis Gregory Foundation took me around the district to witness different activities organized for young people within the community to improve their education and awareness regarding AIDS.
Most of the stories in the project focus on children and women in one way or another because all Basotho women are considered legally the child of their husband, and must obtain their husband’s approval to have surgery, take contraceptives, take out a loan or run for public office. Other stories I am considering to introduce in the final multimedia presentation tackle the use of the traditional legal system in the tribunals, the investment of foreign companies in sheep factories, the arrival of chinese population to control through supermarkets the food and clothes trade and the development of the overwhelmed health system.

Major Project Planning

Full Circle Learning is an educational program applied in schools working with Ngo's all around the world (Lesotho, Ethiopia, Zambia, Panama, Japan, China, India..). An American non profit organization based in California developed the model over a decade as a response to community need following the civil unrest of 1992 in Los Angeles. One of the main goals is to teach young people in developing countries the moral responsibility and accountability of every individual regarding the destiny of the world.
I was able to document for my Borders project how about 800 children and youth in Mokhotlong, a small village in the mountain kingdom of Lesotho, participate in the development of their own neighbourhood, addressing big problems in the area like unemployment, alcoholism, poverty, ethnic and cultural prejudice, orphans and HIV. Many stories interconnected and great potential to create a complex multimedia presentation, but still not sure about how to put them together.
I am now both tempted and worried considering the advantages and disadvantages of working with this organization again in Ethiopia for my major project. I have already some contacts and easy access to the One Planet School in Addis Ababa, but still not enough information about their activities and the potential to portrait them in appealing and meaningful images.
Most probably I should start exploring another loose idea that have been at the back of my head for a while, the life and fun of Hispanic communities in London (Mark suggested the big and famous Carnaval del Pueblo for instance), and maybe work on both projects in parallel and play it safe.

Plan B

Working with family in Southafrica for the Borders project wasn't such a good idea after all (conflict of interests!), so I decided to set everything up quickly like being on a real assignment for ten days. Next morning I was going overland straight to Lesotho and contacting some Ngo's on my way. A country within a country.
Travelling at the back of a police van full of sheep through the beautiful landscape of the Sanni Pass, I arrived to Mokhotlong, a remote village in the highlands of the country and the last place in the road from the capital. The initial idea was to show the different faces of life in the middle of nowhere. Patients suffering from TB at the local hospital, kids running for food on a sunny Sunday, workers building cheap coffins and neighbours fighting for a piece of land in the tribunal.
Everything was possible and smooth thanks to the helpful people of the Louis Gregory Foundation, an American non profit organization developing an educational program in the area called Full Circle Learning. The aim was to promote through schools the sharing of skills of all members of the community, as Maureen kindly explained to me while providing me easy access to clinics, factories, orphanages and bars.
There are many different stories in parallel and I am still thinking about the best way to present them and put them together. Inspiration was always right in front of you. A constant flowing of stories was easily at reach. No need of headaches to get close and natural to the situations.
This time for the final project I may try to do something similar in Ethiopia with a bit more of organization and research in advance instead of going backwards, but there will always be space for improvisation and luck.

Festival

Travelling is always a big inspiration when you are looking for images, subjects and stories. People having fun in different countries for different reasons and in different ways has became a long term project for me through the years. Everything people celebrate around the world is connected somehow, despite extreme traditions and cultural differences. History, politics and economy are barriers that become blur when it is time to enjoy the party.

White Christmas

After last tutorial with John, I am starting to focus and develop the idea of portraying the way some white communities celebrates Christmas holidays in South Africa and analyzing at the same time their relationship with religion, tradition and cultural identity. I am going tho spend about a month in Mossel Bay, a popular holiday coastal village in the Garden Route, situated halfway between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. It is a busy summer destination for the Afrikaner population with customs and values sometimes perceived as extreme by Western societies.
I am quite interested in the subject for personal reasons and I have already started to gather some contacts and locations that could make the story potentially meaningful and appealing to foreign audiences. I am thinking about the possibility of recording some interviews and taking some portraits in order to achieve a more intimate feeling within a straight forward 35mm reportage approach.
The other side of the story could be done in places like King's Cross, where every Sunday a rented Welsh chapel on the Pentonville Road is packed with more than 600 worshippers, attending services in Afrikaans of the Dutch Reformed Church, led by the Reverend Francois du Toit. Before the end of white rule and the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa, Afrikaans speakers rarely left the country, insisting it was their home for good and the only place they wanted to be. Extreme nationalists claimed with pride that it was their mission to spread European and Christian culture across the southern tip of Africa.
Exact numbers are not available, because South African visitors to the UK are not recorded by ethnicity, but including all races and creeds, about 300,000 flew to the UK in 2007. Many of those coming to the UK are still in their twenties, taking advantage of South Africa's membership in the Commonwealth and the subsequent availability of two-year "working holiday" visas, but others want money, alarmed by the declining standard of living for white South Africans and policies designed to promote black employment, after years of discrimination.
Already businesses are being set up to serve this new expatriate community, with one South African food supplier, Susmans' Butchery, delivering to shops and operating mail order, selling items such as Mrs Ball's Chutney, Peppermint Crisp chocolates and Boerewors sausages, so the original idea for the project seems to be unfolding in different directions and the story continues in London.

Borders again

Still not convinced about how to approach the project. I keep changing my mind and I am coming up with new ideas every week. After my last visit to the Barbican on a grey and depressing Sunday for instance, I thought It could be interesting to explore the empty urban landscapes and the lives of people working against the current of normal hours and days. Street sweepers in the cold of the street, security guards talking to nobody in front of an old magazine or cleaners travelling by night to do their job without disturbing workers in the office. The contrast between the rhythm and intensity of a Sunday night and a Monday morning must be incredible. Desolation, hardship, loneliness and social exclusion could be potential themes around the story and maybe a mixture of formal strategies the way forward. Photojournalistic images with interviews together with series of portraits and big scale landscapes.
Another possibility starting to develop in my head lately is to show a more intimate analysis of everyday life ambitions, fears and values of white families in South Africa. The whole situation is deteriorating by the day and the political, social and cultural connotations are changing fast. I will be living for three weeks with some members of my girlfriend's family in a small community on the coast during Christmas and I thought it is probably a good idea to try something you know a bit better that others for personal reasons and at the same time something that is close and meaningful to you. Just like Leonie Purchas!

War

Last Sunday I went to the Barbican to have a look at the new exhibition "This Is War!", which includes some never-before-seen photographs and newly discovered documents about Robert Capa (1913-1954) and Gerda Taro (1910–1937). it was very interesting to see closely and in detail the whole process of making iconic images of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, but I was more intrigue about the artistic responses to Iraq and Afghanistan by Omer Fast, Paul Chan, An-My Lê and specially Geert van Kesteren's Why Mister, Why?, and Baghdad Calling, (2008).
Each artist reflects on the subjects of war and their experience of conflict and at the same time each considers how some images mediates our experience and understanding of any given situation. Looking at the photographs taken by local people in everyday life Irak with their mobile phones, I thought straight away about Sco and his use of basic technologies to get close and real to the subject.
Later in the day flicking through the Sunday Times Magazine, I found an article about a new and lucrative relationship between photojournalism and art. Private collectors and galleries are willing to pay huge sums for reportage images taken in the first place to document events and provoke reaction. W Eugene Smith's photograph of a soldier holding a newborn baby during the battle of Saipan sold at Christie's for £4369, Simon Norfolk's photograph of a bullet-scarred apartament building in Kabul fetched almost £6000 and Luc Delahaye's photograph of a deserted road in the aftermath of a bomb blast went for £22100.
This year's Brighton Photo Biennial takes as its main theme the changes in both the production and consumption of war photography. Its curator Julian Stalabrass argues that, as fewer photojournalists are allowed on the front line and censorship often dictates what can and cannot be shot, photographers have to adapt to get heir message across. Today war is as much about suicide bombers and terrorism as opposing armies in the battlefield. The nature of war has changed dramatically so the way we record it it must change too. Finding new ways of communication is the key issue for most practitioners. Hung in an exhibition, these images have huge visual impact and push people to confront them and think and talk about them.

Borders now

I have been reading lately quite a few articles in magazines and newspapers about how the other half live in any given situation. Workers in Dubai living like animals while tourists spend loads of money in luxury hotels. Farmers in Argentina struggling with new taxes while government officials get richer. Street artists fighting social injustice while well established practitioners play with unreal prices in the market.
Getting inspiration for new stories around the world is easy, but for some reason I find it harder in London. This is the place where my everyday life became routine with same patterns over long periods of time. Jono said to me once that Istanbul is full of visual opportunities and Mark was thinking about travelling to the borders between India and Pakistan.Talking about his new film on the IRA hunger strikes, Steve McQueen said that people talk about the abuses in Abu Ghraib, but the same thing was happening here in our own backyard.
I would love to travel somewhere and explore some of the issues I am reading about, but for this new project I will try to work on something a bit closer to me from a cultural and geographical point of view: Spanish and Latin American people in London living somehow detached from any local interference in terms of language, music, food, customs and culture.
The largest modern influx of Spanish people happened after the Spanish Civil War, when political exiles began to settle mainly in Westminster, Kensington, Chelsea and Camden. Many others like me came seeking work, skills and education after the economic crisis in Spain.
Latin American people started arriving in London mainly in the 1970s at a time of much political turmoil and civil unrest in their countries. Around 2,500 Chilean exiles, including businessmen, professors and students, were met by a small community of Latin people who were already here. In the following years people from Argentina, Ecuador and Peru came to London. The mid-1980s saw Colombians arriving not only as political refugees, but also as migrant workers escaping conditions in their country.
Although there are no real Latin American or Spanish districts as such, it is estimated that around 15,000 Spanish people live in North Kensington, focused around Vicente Canada Blanch, the Spanish School in Notting Hill. Other areas with Latin communities are Camden Town, Finsbury Park, Harrow and Wimbledon. In Lambeth the community from Latin America has grown massively within the last five years or so with Spanish being increasingly spoken in the borough. It was Mark again who told me about El Carnaval del Pueblo, the largest Latin American festival in Europe, supported by Southwark Council and attended by more than 130000 people. Such a big and close event I didn't know anything about.

TB

TED, a New York-based organisation that brings together leading scientists, thinkers and designers committed to social change, grants $100000 to three outstanding people each year and gives them one wish to change the world. James Natchtwey is now using his skills as a photojournalist to raise global awareness of extensively drug resistant tuberculosis and in the process demonstrate the power of news photography in the digital age. He travelled to countries as diverse as Cambodia, Siberia, Rwanda and India documenting the XDR-TB and the efforts of governments and NGOs to pioneer new treatment programmes that may arrest the disease's progression.
Last week TED unveiled a slide show of more than 50 images at the Lincoln Center in New York and the National Theatre in London and over the next few weeks the same photographs will be shown on outdoors screens in 50 cities worldwide and on the internet as part of a multimedia campaign that aims to harness the power of viral marketing techniques on the web. The aim is to bring TB into the mass consciousness in the hope of starting an action campaign that can leverage more funds for aid and sponsorship for research.

Copyright

Today I read in The British Journal of Photography that the US Senate has passed an amended version of the controversial Orphan Works Bill, which has been widely criticised for tearing up international accords on artists' copyright. Under current law, a copyright holder has the undeniable right to profit from his work, but this new bill allows pictures editors and art buyers to use images with unknown or incomplete copyright information, as long as they have made sufficient attempts to track down the owner.
If the new legislation passes through the House of Representatives, responsibility passes to the author, who must actively protect his work by process of registration. This system could prove impossible for most photographers due to the time and cost involved in registering works. Companies unscrupulous enough to strip an image of copyright information know that if caught, they would merely have to pay what they would have been charged in the first place.
As we make progress through the course and we start to publish images on the web, it would be interesting to know a bit more in detail about the potential dangers. Internet is a big opportunity for all of us, but in the current economic meltdown the market will test legislative boundaries to the limit, profiting from any grey areas resulting from unclearly defined regulation.
We need to get better at attaching value to our images and protect our work, but for now I will keep posting some more images of the people I met in my last trip and see what happens.

Back in town

I just came back from Sri Lanka last week and five days later I am still getting used to the rhythm of London. Lots of information everywhere. Fast inspirations sometimes difficult to grasp. It is always the same when you come back from holidays. It takes time to adjust to reality and find your balance again between things you want to do and things you have to do. All of the sudden days and weeks and months seem shorter and time slip away of your hands without you even realizing. Some friends have experienced the cycle over the years and call it slightly post traumatic holidays depression. I suppose the answer is to connect again with the people around you and start looking for meaningful stories with people in them. I tried to get some decent images of people I met in my trip and I decided that I will try to develop the human side of the story for the borders project, most probably the life of joy and pain of some Hispanic communities in London.
It is a bit of a struggle to find new concepts in new hostile environments, but at least I found new ideas about how to write my blog. It is a conversation between you and the reader you can't see. It is more like radio than it is like a newspaper column. More intimate, more conversational and more interactive. Asking rhetorical questions to provoke the audience is not a bad idea. You must be prepared to defend every fact and opinion or to apologize when you make mistakes. Among the bloggers there are lots of clever people who simply want to tell you things you didn't know.

Letter

Working full time with different timetables every week and studying at the same time is not always easy. Management of time is therefore so important to me when organizing lessons, tutorials, meetings, and plans for projects. Developing ideas always takes longer than expected and stories unfold into something different most of the times. Working on the human hair trade project during the Summer, I have been trying different approaches, looking at the possibilities from different perspectives and adjusting the outcome in the process. Editing is not that hard if you know where are you going and what are you trying to achieve.
During the first and second term of the course I have been learning to research subjects in depth and solve technical problems by myself. The feedback and comments of the rest of students is very helpful and inspiring and I hope to be able to offer some new experiences back next term.
I have improved my understanding of what really matters in photography. Simple rules not to forget. Composition, light, background, knowledge about the subject, the purpose of the story and growing importance of multimedia tools.
Discovering new names, images and styles during the lectures is very enjoyable and enlightening. Tackling Important issues and concepts I never thought about before is key to have a broaden and deep view of the story of photography.
The essay about Sebastiao Salgado and the relationship between aesthetic beauty and social message made me realize that photography is not just about the technicalities to produce good quality images. Photographers need to know about economy, history, geography and politics for instance because everything is interconnected.
The goals for the next future is to explore and improve the use of audio, video and images within multimedia applications as new concept of telling stories and keep developing new ways of looking when producing images and stories.

Street & Studio

I just came back from Street & Studio, the first exhibition at the Tate Modern to explore the urban photographic portrait through the parallel development of these two environments from the beginning of last century to the present day. It was quite impressive and reassuring to look and recognize some original images we have gone through during the first six months of the course: Walker Evans, Robert Frank, August Sander, Henri Cartier Bresson, Garry Winogrand, Paul Strand, Robert Mapplethorpe, Martin Parr, Richard Avedon. Some images are constructed using costumes and artificial backdrops in a controlled situation within the private space of the studio. Some others offer a new kind of portraiture, capturing people in the streets with new models of small handheld cameras. The encounter with the anonymous passer-by was already one of the key motifs of street photography.
Going through all the rooms to learn more about the urban history of photography, I discovered that Walker Evans was preoccupied with trying to capture what he called ‘ a cross section view of average hard-working people’, and that contemporary photographers like Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Joel Sternfeld work both with large format camera and tripod, though their photographs often resemble snapshots.
I was really surprised by the approach of some photographers I didn’t know anything about before my trip to the exhibition. In Malick Sidibe’s studio in Mali for instance, young people posed playfully with their new possessions, suggesting the euphoria of life after independence and the development of an African culture. David Goldblatt showed black and white citizens together on the streets of Johannesburg and Jeff Wall created images carefully constructed using actors and cinematic lighting of a scene of two police officers arresting a Hispanic man.
Photography is undergoing rapid technological developments during the digital age and I am starting to discover how some photographers came out everyday with different strategies and approaches to create series of images using in new ways sound, light and multimedia tools.

Strength and weakness six months after

Flicking through the July Spanish edition of National Geographic, I found a fantastic example of perfect reportage about the killings of gorillas in Virunga National Park by writer Mark Jenkins and photographer Brent Stirton. The story is about the struggle of the last remaining animals living in Congo, Uganda and Ruanda and the fighting between guerrillas and park rangers to control the illegal traffic of wood. The continuous interferences of governments in the management of the area and the fatal consequences for the refugee camps develop the story even further to attract the attention of a broader audience. Local issues unfold into international facts in front of the reader who live on the other side of the globe. The importance of choosing the right story and finding the right approach to create images that show efficiently to the viewer all sides of the situation is the key for success.
This is probably one of the most important lessons I am learning six months after the beginning of the MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography. I am starting to look at reality from a different perspective as the first step to develop potential ideas.
Choosing and researching the subject from a particular angle is as important as writing an appealing article or producing quality images. The critical question is what are you planning to take photographs of and why are you doing it in the first place, and then how are you going to do it. Always try to show you story as close as possible to your idea.
On the other hand I am still quite lost about all the technicalities in the industry. No confidence or expertise to manage and present my images with the right application or to negotiate with editors or potential clients for instance. So far I have been a consumer rather that a producer, but exploring new ways to use new products and markets with the help of the other students could be the next step.

Photo Essay 3. Human Hair in Chelsea

The idea of Sejour developed after stylist Terry Bishop and colourist Carl Dawson got sick of the trend plaguing London salons: huge, overbearing studios with minimalist design and noisy activity. They met while learning under the hands of Nicky Clarke. After acquiring a broad clientele base, Bishop and Dawson created a home-like space for Chelsea socialites and Saudi royalty, who wanted a more intimate approach to keep their privacy. With a staff of talented Brazilians, South Africans and New Zealanders, customers at Sejour pay around £75 for a cut and around £500 for human hair extensions. One of the most experienced hairdressers in the salon is Zelda, who is currently working with a new generation of young models to enter the prestigious competition for the British Hairdressing Awards 2008. The popularity of human hair extensions has grown to such an extent in Chelsea that many costumers and celebrities living in the area are rarely seen without them. Professionally applied hair extensions are not to be confused with clip-in hair extensions, which are for temporary use and should be removed daily and not left in your hair when sleeping. The main advantage of real human hair extensions is that it is far easier to look after. There is no need to treat it any differently to your own hair and it looks and feels so natural that even a trained eye cannot tell you are wearing them when they are expertly applied. If the client wants to use human hair to thicken her own hair, an average amount of extensions would be approximately 50. The average lengthening process usually requires between 100-120 extensions. At Sejour the costumer can choose between European hair, the most popular choice for its soft natural feel and extensive colour range; Russian hair, the most exclusive and rare type of hair as it has not been dyed or chemically treated in any way; Brazilian hair, the most difficult to find in the UK as it is naturally curly in texture and it will remain curly even after washing, and Indian hair, a very popular choice as the quality is excellent but not quite as good as the European, Russian and Brazilian hair. There is a more limited colour range on this type of hair and it is pre-dyed to match a colour chart from which the hairdressers can match a client's hair.
The cost for Indian hair is £6.00 per extension, £7.00 for European hair, £8.00 for Russian hair and £9.00 for Brazilian hair. All prices include materials, application and finished styling for all hair types. Extensions will last three to four months on average and normally 50% of the human hair can be re-used for future applications.

Photo Essay 2. Human Hair in Brixton

The presence of Caribbeans in London started with the arrival of Jamaicans on the Empire Windrush in1948. Dispersing to many parts of the city, mainly Clapham and Brixton, they came either alone or with new wives and families from all over the islands, setting up home and working mainly for London transport or for the National Health
Service. Jamaicans tended to settle in the south of the city, whereas Trinidadians and Barbadians tended to gravitate to the areas around Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove.
The black community of Caribbean and African residents in London today is fairly spread across town. Although there are hubs of residential areas like Peckham, New Cross, Dalston and Lewisham, one main area do stand out, however: Brixton.
In the middle of the neighbourhood is Brixton Market, a local landmark built between Electric Avenue, Pope’s Road, Brixton Station Road and Atlantic Road.
It’s open six days a week and you’ll find everything from tropical fruit, vegetables, spices, specialist meats and fish as well as Caribbean literature, cards and gifts.
It is also home to Europe’s largest amount of Afro-Caribbean foodstuffs, which obviously appeals to a large contingent of black consumers who can also find specialist hairdressers, barbershops and hair products in the surrounding streets.
One of the most trusted places to cut and blow dry your hair is Eseosa Salon, founded and managed by Sandra, a former model from Nigeria. However most clients come here for human hair extensions. They are incredibly popular and are extremely versatile. Most people choose to use them to lengthen or thicken their existing hair. They are added to their own hair by several means: braiding, bonding, weaving, or strand-by-stand, and typically the process is performed by a skilled hairdresser in a salon. If properly applied, all human hair extensions can be washed, brushed, straightened, and curled and can be worn for up to four months. Extensions come in such a wide range of colours and textures that there are no limitations, providing the real hair is suitable and healthy.
Costumers can get the benefits of having long hair without having to grow out their own for years, but hair extensions can also do considerable damage and cause thinning to their real hair. Long heavy extensions apply pressure to the scalp and some people may experience headaches from the strain of the hair or even react to the bonding glue that is used to apply the extensions.

Photo Essay 1. Human Hair in London

Recycled as expensive hair extensions and wigs for the West or sold for use as raw material for the chemical industry, human hair trade has grown into an extremely profitable business, with more than 95% of all human hair imports coming from India and China.
The human hair business first boomed across India in the Sixties, but sales dropped when synthetic alternatives were introduced. Since then complaints of skin allergies, especially by European consumers, once again boosted the demand for natural hair. The human hair trade has become a large market entirely export-oriented, that thrives on painstaking methods of collecting hair from villages and slums where hair is least likely to be dyed or treated with chemicals. Factory workers as young as 12 years old spend their days sorting, combing and cleaning the hair collected from villagers, barber shops and temples. Women are being increasingly targeted and exploited by unscrupulous agents because there are not specific restrictions on the import and export of human hair. This is obviously an environment that breeds illegality.
The Hindu temples of Tirupati in the southern province of Andhra Pradesh are the centre of the global trade in human hair and the wealthiest in all of India. Each year thousands of worshipers make pilgrimages to visit the statue of Vishnu, where their hair is cut off as an act of religious sacrifice and devotion. Babies are shaved for good luck and adults allow themselves to be shaved to thank the gods. The temples are permitted to spend not more than one third of their revenues from hair sales on expansion and renovation. The rest goes to charities, schools, orphanages and hospitals. Within a few days, tonnes of donated hair make its way from the warehouses in the temple to lucrative auctions and processing factories around the port of Chennai, eventually arriving in Europe and America where it will adorn the heads of Western women. Indian hair is renowned for its quality and is bought raw for between $2 and $5 per kilo. Once processed, it is sold to extensions and wig makers for around $40 per kilo. Lower quality hair is interwoven with other fabrics to make jackets linings, mattresses and cosmetic brushes, or it is converted into amino acids, which in turn are used in food and medicine.
The demand in the UK and US for hair extensions and cosmetic products with hair extracts means that turning faith into fashion has become a new big industry over the past ten years, earning major temples and exporters revenues of more than $3oo million annually. Celebrities are the best advertisement for companies like Great Lenghts, an international conglomerate with 45 distribution offices in 53 countries that controls around 60% of the world market for human hair extensions and processes 5 tons of hair each month. Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, Victoria Beckham, Paris Hilton, Jennifer Lopez and Gwyneth Paltrow have all had long hair extensions glued to their own, and thousands of regular women in the developed world have followed the trend, paying up to $2000 for a full head session to extend volume or length. Women have an average of 100 to 200 grams of hair on their head and the extensions last for six months. By then a person’s own hair will have grown so that the extensions no longer sit properly in place, so the foreign hair is removed and discarded.
The human hair business is growing at the phenomenal rate of 40% annually, creating a network of dealers on all continents and air shipments around the globe. The sole purpose of all this effort is to transfer hair from one head to another, because having one’s own hair is just not enough. Hair has to be shiny, smooth, long and perfect.

Brixton vs Chelsea

Most of the shops I am visiting in Brixton for my project are specialized in African Caribbean hair and beauty products. These products have been specifically developed for Afro consumers and they are generally not available at most high street shops in the UK.
They stock natural human hair wigs, hair extensions, hair braids, hair dryers, black skin care products, afro wigs, hair sprays, oils, moisturizers, gel, hair dyes, hair straightening irons, and everything else you can imagine related to hair.
Most of the salons in the area use these products with local costumers all the time and it is regarded as an important part of their identity, but it is also a big business with other kind of costumers willing to pay huge amounts of money for different reasons in areas like Chelsea. After a few frustrating days wandering around the streets and talking to everyone who wanted to listen to my stories, I am finally getting access to slighty more deep situations with some of the hairdressers and clients in both sides of the industry.
The original idea was to follow the process of buying hair in Brixton and using it in Chelsea by one of the girls working in a posh salon, but maybe it would be more interesting to compare these two opposite worlds in a new way, and raise some other issues potentially related to the main subject, like race, social exclusion or aesthetics in different parts of the world. Basically I haven’t decided yet how to organize the project, so every comment is more that welcome.