“Photography is powerful. In an instant, a single image can create empathy, heighten awareness and be the catalyst for change,” says Social Justice Photographer Robyne Hayes, and indeed it can. Robyne Hayes proved this by helping to solve the issue of child marriage in countries such as Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Nepal by introducing the idea of giving the girls in child marriages a photovoice. However, when the elders of the small communities saw the wives walking around with cameras, the wives and the NGO Hayes worked with received judgment and criticism. Despite this, the effects the cameras had on the girls’ lives were incredible as one girl mentioned: “I don’t have to clean my husband’s feet anymore.”
Child marriage is a very real problem as almost 39,000 girls become child brides per day and if trends continue, 142 million children will be married by 2020. In order to try and tackle this problem, different NGOs have been trying to practice solutions such as establishing and implementing laws and policies, empowering girls, mobilizing children and families and more.
A particular NGO that Hayes worked with tried to set up group sessions with the child brides to see what problems they were having. The girls shared, compared and related to each others’ issues. The NGO taught the girls how to speak up without putting themselves in danger and helped them get out of their relationships.
When Hayes travels to the different communities which have child marriage in their culture, she and the NGO often receive criticism from the other members of the community, especially the older women. When Hayes was explaining this, she didn’t go too much into detail but what she could have been referencing to was the elders being grateful that the girls the NGO was working with had a chance to improve their situations, or they were possibly envious that they were never given the chance to get out of their marriages. They could also be judgemental because they don’t understand how cameras can change the children’s situation.
In the meetings that were held by the NGO for the child brides to attend, some of the experiences they shared shocked Hayes to her core. All the girls could relate to not having any friends, never being allowed to leave the house unless it was to get food and water, and one girl stated that every night after her husband came home from work, she would have to clean his feet. The NGO tried their best to help the girls by empowering them and if there was nothing left to do, they helped the girls to flee. While Hayes was attending these meetings, some children were curious about what Hayes was doing with her cameras so she showed them the photos she took and they were amazed.
Hayes was inspired by this and so she came up with the idea to temporarily give cameras to the girls and let them take pictures of their lives for a week. However, Hayes didn’t have any other cameras so she went onto her facebook page and asked for people to send their old cameras so that the girls she was working with could have a chance to capture what their lives were like through photography. When Hayes had all the cameras, she taught the girls how to use them and the basic skill like how to focus the camera and how to zoom in and out.
After one week, the children came back with a lot of amazing photos and interesting stories. The girls shared the differences in their lifestyle such as having more freedom to move around and leave the house, they had made new friends through the NGO and the girl no longer had to wash her husband’s feet.
When asked the question “how do you feel when you see the changes in [the children’s lives]”, Hayes answered that she felt hope when she saw the changes in the girls lives because if something so terrible can change, it creates hope for the other problems in the world.
By giving the child brides a photovoice, Hayes managed to not only improve the girls’ situations but also inspire others across the globe to take action by donating cameras in order to stop child marriage. If child marriage can be countered by using cameras, why couldn’t other problems be solved using visual imagery?
There have been many studies proving that visual imagery is a more effective way of learning. For example, one study asked a group of students to remember many groups of three words each such as dog, bike, and street. The students who tried to remember the words by repeating them over and over again where bad at remembering. In comparison, the students who made visual associations with the three words, such as imagining a dog riding a bike down a street, had a significantly better recall.
Images can be used to teach students, and some say it’s a more effective way of learning, which may mean that the future of education may lie in a photograph.
Bibliography:
Brides, Girls Not. “How Can We End Child Marriage?” Girls Not Brides. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2018.
“Travel and Social Justice Photography.” Travel and Social Justice Photography. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2018.
