Visual Griots of Mali: empowering youth through the Art of Photography.

"We must stop thinking that everything must arrive on a wave from the West, and realize that we are capable of creating an image of our own that can ride its own wave in the opposite direction."

--Alioune Ba, workshop instructor; photographer, National Museum of Mali 

"Try this," Ba said, handing me a pair of old pliers. "They belonged to Seydou Keita." I had been framing photographs with fellow photographers Nestor Hernandez and Alioune Ba since the second call to prayer, save the occasional break for roasted peanuts and a short glass of the intense, bittersweet mint tea. We stood on the open veranda of the Seydou Keita Association in dusty Bamako, Mali. An enormous sheet of plywood balanced on a small wooden desk served as our workplace.

I gripped the pliers and imagined them in Seydou Keita's hands, the same hands that released the shutter of his large-format camera over 10,000 times, immortalizing the residents of Bamako, Mali from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. These black-and-white studio portraits became popular in the art markets of Paris and New York in the early 1990s and are responsible in large part for bringing Malian and African photography onto the world stage. It was November 2005, and I had joined my colleagues to help bring some young Malian photographers up onto that same stage.

Four Malian seventh graders, Michel, Chantal, David, and Kuihan, were soon arriving from the countryside to mount fifty black-and-white photographs in an exhibit titled "Visual Griots." Twelve of the images were theirs; the rest belonged to eighteen of their fellow classmates, who were cheering them on from home. No one had ever dreamed that their own photographs would travel so far and speak to so many different people.

Combining Forces: "Visual Griots" Takes Root

In late 2003, Nestor Hernandez, a friend and fellow Washington, DC-based photographer, called me up with an invitation to join him in developing a youth photography project he was calling "Visual Griots." He had just returned from Mali where he had attended the fifth African Encounters of Photography--a pan-African biennial seated in Mali's capital, Bamako, since 1994. I had been encouraging Nestor for some time to visit Mali, where I had served as a Peace Corps volunteer from 1996-1998 and eagerly listened to his enthusiastic report.

During his trip, Nestor visited an exhibit at the Seydou Keita Association--a small organization tasked with managing the Malian master's photographic legacy. Since Nestor has spent the past twenty-five years teaching photography to children, he was inspired to learn that the second half of the Association's mission is to promote photography to Malian youth.

That same day Nestor met Alioune Ba, the Association's director and an official photographer of the National Museum of Mali. Ba's poetic images, detailing the daily lives of his fellow countrymen, distinguish themselves from the formal portraiture of the previous generation of Malian photographers. His work reflects his own humility in its lack of pretension.

In Ba, Nestor sensed a kindred spirit and proposed a project that would unite a team of Malian and US photographers to work with youth. They would use photography to enable the younger generation to articulate their own vision of their world and communicate it to others.

A few days later, Nestor was introduced to Jude Thera, the Malian director of Association Vigne, a local nonprofit that supports community-based schools in Mali's Bwa country, near the Burkina Faso border. Jude happened to be setting off on the 500km (311 mile) journey east to the Bwa villages of Damy and Kouara to deliver school supplies. Nestor decided to tag along. The Bwa are not as well known as their Dogon neighbors to the north or the Bambara to the south. An agriculture-based society and minority ethnic group, the Bwa only number about 125,000 in Mali. In Damy and Kouara, though there is no electricity or running water, each village of approximately 800 inhabitants boasts a community school with classes up to the sixth grade. Nestor visited the schools with Jude and met many of the students, who he was surprised to find had Christian names. The Bwa are predominantly Christian or practice traditional religion--a rarity in Mali, which is 90% Muslim. After attending church on Sunday, Nestor photographed the cotton harvest and a village spinner named Cecile Kamate, whose daughter Chantal would become one of our star photographers. Nestor had found the two communities that he would return to work with. The final groundwork for the project was laid.

He decided to call the project "Visual Griots." A griot is a traditional storyteller in West Africa who perpetuates the oral traditions of a family or village. The "Visual Griots" title underscores the fact that there has existed for centuries a strong artistic tradition of documentation of village life in Mali. The students who would attend our workshop would use images instead of words and music to tell their stories. Furthermore, the project would present photography not as a uniquely Western concept, but one that has a history, its own masters, and a bright future in Mali.

The Ride to Bwa Country

In January 2005, after a year of planning and fundraising, I set off for Mali with Nestor and a third US photographer, Sora Devore. The Academy for Educational Development (AED), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit (and my employer) had responded generously to our proposal with financial aid and institutional support. "Visual Griots" was now an official AED project. Additional donations from various artist friends and supporters of Mali filled in the gaps. Nestor, Sora, and I joined Ba and his photographer colleague Amadou Sow in Bamako to form the team of "Visual Griots" instructors. Jude, a native of Bwa country and our link to the village schools, handled logistics and served as cultural interpreter. A total of twenty-two sixth graders awaited--twelve in Damy and ten in Kouara.

The temperature hovered around 100[degrees]F the day we drove away from Bamako. Five hundred hot and dry kilometers lay between us and Bwa country, where we would conduct two four-day youth photography workshops for which we had high hopes.

High hopes because the project looked fantastic on paper and we had a snazzy title. We hoped to build confidence and self-esteem in our students and to further develop their critical thinking skills. We also expected to open the door to new opportunities, but in a way that would at the same time highlight and pay respect to village traditions. Ultimately, we were aiming for an end product--a body of photographs--that would communicate the experience of Malian youth, the way they see it, to a much wider audience.

However, only 60km (37 miles) from Bamako--when we got the first of our four flat tires--I remember sitting in a pile of brittle leaves under a baobab tree, watching the heat rise in waves off of the sizzling black top, and having my doubts. Would the students' families and fellow villagers allow them the freedom to shoot at will, or would we end up with hundreds of the stiff formal portraits with downcast eyes that I had seen so often? How effective would we Americans be, given the handicap of the language barrier? Finally, how would the village respond to the resulting images? Would they care? The driver honked his horn. We piled in and moved on.

Talking Pictures 

Involving Malian photographers, teachers, and community leaders in the planning and implementation of the workshop was key to the success of "Visual Griots." Upon arrival in Bwa country, our team's first stop was a courtesy call to the regional school administration. We had invited the local school administrators to select the students based on a few key criteria: an equal number of boys and girls and a fair representation of all ethnic and religious groups in the village. We were disappointed to learn that they had chosen academic achievement as the third criteria-thus excluding some students who may have thrived in our program. But remembering our commitment to making this a community-based project, we accepted their decision.

In that same spirit, we spent day one of each four-day workshop with the Parent Teacher Association and village council, first in Damy, then in Kouara. We would wait to meet our students the following day. After all, we might spend all the time in the world in these villages teaching photography, but unless the communities embraced the project, the students wouldn't be free to shoot.

"What will they be told to take pictures of?" asked one parent.

"The students will make their own choices," replied Ba. "They can take pictures of anything that is important to them. A picture is a mark of respect to its subject."

"How much will we have to pay them if they take our picture?" asked someone's father, catching me off guard. Photography at the village level is understood solely in the context of portraiture. A single 4" x 6" (10cm x 15cm) print from a makeshift studio in the nearby market town costs roughly the equivalent of $1.00--a luxury in these parts. "There is no charge," I replied. Had this simple question been left unanswered, it could have seriously limited the cooperation of the villagers to be photographed.

I invited members of each community to lay ground rules for our students. We agreed to instruct them to avoid sacred spaces; to ask before shooting; and to respect someone's choice to not be photographed. The most pressing question was if the villagers would be able to see the photographs. I laid out the timeframe of the four-day workshop and explained that, in both Damy and Kouara, it would culminate with a village exhibit.

In Kouara, Nestor took a moment to hand out some pictures that he had taken in the village during his visit the year before. Indeed, the villagers were thrilled to see him again. Cecile, the cotton spinner, was so moved by an 8" x 10" (20cm x 25cm) print of her at work that she stood up to address us all. "This picture is talking and I can hear it!" she said. "I see myself in this picture and know that people around the world can look at it and know that the work I do is good."

The Workshops: Seeing Things Differently

None of our students had ever touched a camera. This included David, Michel, Chantal, and Kuihan, who would travel to Bamako nine months later to represent the group at the photography biennial. With only four days to work with each school, we needed to move quickly (Fig. 1). Mornings were reserved for class instruction, afternoons for shooting. The first task was to show the students enough photographs to expand their understanding of the possibilities at hand, without inhibiting their originality. How would these first-time photographers frame their world?

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

We wanted to demonstrate to the students that photography could tell a story that transcends language barriers. Sofa began by displaying a series of self-portraits and images of her apartment, family, and pet dog. Ba pointed out to the students that they could not speak to Sofa without a translator. Their task was to see what they could learn about her through the photographs.

As another example, I turned and wrote a sentence on the chalkboard in English: "The woman carries a gourd on her head." Ba, who speaks no English, made an exaggerated effort to pronounce the foreign words, throwing up his arms in defeat. I then revealed a photograph of a woman carrying a gourd on her head. Everyone got it--the pictures were talking.

Halfway through the first day of the Damy workshop, I wondered if I would ever see a student smile. This was supposed to be fun! We placed a simple point-and-shoot camera on each of their desks (Fig. 2). The students looked like they thought the cameras might bite them. We slowed our pace and exchanged each camera for a piece of paper with a rectangle cut out of the middle. For a long time, we practiced closing one eye and looking through our paper viewfinders (Fig. 3). We talked about decision-making--what you want to include and exclude in your picture. The students got up from their desks and practiced walking closer to and further away from their chosen subject; turning the camera from a horizontal to a vertical position--and noting the effect. We climbed on desks and crouched down on the floor to learn about perspective and all the choices we could make (Fig. 4). The students were smiling.

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The next day when I walked into the classroom and stood, ready to begin the lesson, little Kuihan bolted straight out of her desk, twisted the camera into the position that gave her the view that pleased her, and snapped a picture of me. Her friends giggled, as she smiled and blushed, surprised at her own bold action.

In both villages, the transformation of the once bashful students into daring photographers was amazing. By the end of day two of each workshop, they would walk out of the school, proudly holding their cameras, and lead us through their villages down a string of paths, documenting their mothers and sisters in full shea-nut butter production, grandparents resting on mats in the shade, beloved animals scampering through the family compounds, the village church, and girls at the well (Fig. 5).

[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]

It was fascinating to watch them stop and turn their cameras on subjects that one takes for granted every day and reflect on how best to capture it, given the possibilities learned in class. These young people clearly appeared already to have gained a better understanding of their own strengths and capabilities and a sense of possibility. They were in the process of rediscovering and placing value on their surroundings (Figs. 6-7). Sharing it with the community was the next step.

In each village, after our days of shooting ended, we sent the rolls of film to Bamako to be developed and quickly returned for classroom review (Fig. 8). Apprehension melted into excitement, as the students flipped through their stacks of photos and chose their favorites to include in the village exhibit. "Look, it's my grandfather," said Kuihan, pointing to a snapshot of an old man with a knife in one hand and a tall bundle of dried millet stalks in the other. "He's going to weave a mat," she explained.

"This is Mama Kone who sells groundnuts on market day," said Chantal, clearly pleased with her photo of two older women sitting next to each other in the market, laughing. I congratulated her and moved on. "Wait!" she said, sliding a picture across her desk to me. It was a tender image of two teenage boys, teetering on the edge between boyhood and manhood, their arms slung around each others shoulders. "This is my older brother Salif and his friend Sebastian. When they heard I was taking pictures they went and changed into their best clothes for me!"

Each student brought a mat to serve as an individual display panel and taped their selections to it. We reminded the village elders of Damy and Kouara of the date that the students would exhibit their work, and to invite all who wanted to see their work (Fig. 9). The only activities that we planned were a couple of speeches and the presentation of certificates. The village council relayed one request to us through the schoolmaster: Could the eldest men of the village hand out the certificates at the ceremony? We were honored to oblige.

After a festive exhibit in Damy, we arrived in Kouara the following day and found a huge crowd gathered under a baobob tree next to the school. The village griot was singing and musicians were playing the balafon and drumming, in anticipation of unveiling the photographs. Our work was done. We would leave Bwa country the next day to begin our journey home. I stood back as the crowd moved in on the pictures. You could not mistake the scene for anything but a celebration. They were celebrating images of themselves and their community, created by their own youth.

The Sixth African Encounters of Photography

In March 2005, we submitted an official entry to the jury of the sixth African Encounters of Photography biennial in Bamako on behalf of the children. Soon after, I was informed that "Visual Griots" had been selected as one of the officially sanctioned parallel exhibits. When planning the Bamako exhibit, the "Visual Griots" team agreed that all twenty-two students from the workshop would have at least one image in the show. All five instructors helped make the final selections. None of the images were cropped, thus retaining the true vision of the young photographers. In consultation with the school administration, we chose a boy and girl from each school to represent the group. The decisions were based on artistic merit and academic achievement. The four children would maintain ownership of the project, by helping to mount the show and by attending the exhibit opening. This was their work.

That November, Nestor and I boarded the Air France flight to Bamako via Paris. I tucked my camera bag under the seat in front of me and pulled out the in flight magazine. The cover read, "Bamako: Crossroads of the Arts." Yet another affirmation that we were headed in the right direction. Literally. We arrived exactly one week prior to the opening of the biennial with fifty matted prints ready to frame, glossy text panels, press kits, photo CDs of the images, and a cell phone. These were the ingredients we considered essential to effectively amplify the voice of African youth at the "Encounters."

Based at the Seydou Keita Association, our command central, Nestor, Ba, and I paused for a final tea break and counted the pictures we had framed (Fig. 11). Only twelve remained. We would wait for our students to complete the work.

[FIGURE 11 OMITTED]

The next afternoon, I walked into the Association courtyard and saw the kids sprawled out on a red-and-blue striped mat in the shade of a neem tree. They were exhausted from their long trip down from Bwa country and from the culture shock of their first time in the big city. Young David was the first to spot us and the other three quickly jumped up to greet us. David flashed us his pearly white smile and to our surprise greeted us in English, which he had begun to study as a seventh grader only two months prior. "Hello! How are you?" he said, and began giggling, happy with himself and amused at the strange sound of English to his ears. Michel, Chantal, and Kuihan echoed his laughter, as we all sat down on the mat and looked over pictures of the workshop together and reminisced.

We first passed out point-and-shoot cameras that they quickly loaded with film and batteries. They hadn't forgotten a thing. The film would be developed in Bamako so that, with these pictures, they would bring the experience home to their fellow student photographers.

We then quickly got to work. "That's my photo," said David, as we walked into the main gallery room. A number of photographs were spread across the floor, waiting to be framed. He walked to the image of his grandmother, seated on a mat, and picked it up, holding it to the light and inspecting the white mat board that neatly framed the photograph. Michel picked up an image of a woman grinding shea nuts, the woman's neat cornrows of braids echoed in the ripples of butter, which spilled from the grindstone to the ground: "I took this one." Their recollection was perfect. The children each claimed their pile of images and sat down on the floor, awaiting our instruction. Nestor and I were amazed. Each child had taken between 150 and 200 photographs during the course of the workshop and yet without hesitation they reached out to claim their own images.

We broke into small groups and outlined the steps of framing the pictures (Fig. 12). Within an hour the work was complete, the framed images ready for us to curate and hang on the walls. I watched the children inspecting the final product. "You know everyone in the village was surprised that we could take pictures as good as this," said David, with a glint in his eye. Seated on the tile floor, he held the framed image of his friend Bruno in the village church at arms length and said, "There isn't a picture I take that isn't important." As if to contradict him, an fat mosquito landed on the photograph. David instinctively squashed it, leaving a bloody smear on the glass and a frown on his face. I suppressed a laugh and gave him the Windex, another paper towel, and a pat on the back.

[FIGURE 12 OMITTED]

The Exhibit Opens in Bamako

The nervous energy of opening day was palpable. Nestor and I stayed at the Seydou Keita Association to hammer the last few nails into the wall, while Ba and Jude took the children to the "Encounters" inauguration. The event was held at the National Museum--one of several venues where the work of 110 photographers from 21 African countries were exhibited. After listening to opening remarks by Cheick Oumar Sissoko, the renowned filmmaker and current Malian Minister of Culture, the kids raced back to ready themselves for their own opening reception.

"Why isn't my name under my picture?" Michel wanted to know. I was on my cell phone with the reporter from Malian National Radio and Television, reconfirming that their Bomu-speaking reporter was on his way. A group of hunter-musicians, cloaked in mud-cloth and cowry shells, began beating the drums and playing the balafon. Above them, strung across the street, hung a huge banner announcing: "Visual Griots Exhibit: Photographs by Young Malians." The caterer poured glasses of red hibiscus, baobab fruit, and ginger-lime juice and set them next to gourds full of popcorn and peanuts in the courtyard. The arrival of the first guests was imminent. I snapped my phone shut and led Michel into the office to find the missing label.

Soon the courtyard and exhibit hall filled with visitors. I looked for our young photographers and found them each stationed, like guards, in front of their photographs. Locals from the neighborhood and other Bamakois mixed with Encounters delegates, nonprofit staff, and US government officials. Chantal and Kuihan watched in awe as the wives of six Malian government ministers arrived in flowing, brightly colored robes and high heels to inspect their pictures (Fig. 13). Young David boldly stopped Alex Newton, the newly arrived USAID country director, to direct him and his wife's attention to his photograph. Michel stood, grinning from ear to ear, with his aunt at his side. She had moved to Bamako years ago and today had surprised Michel by coming to the opening. The TV cameras and news reporter arrived and encircled the students. They promised a three-part story which would air over the following three weeks. Then, suddenly, I saw all four young photographers grab the cameras we had provided and race across the room. An American family had arrived with their children--the first white children our students had ever met.

[FIGURE 13 OMITTED]

Hours later, when the limelight had finally dimmed and our last guests had departed, four very satisfied but tired students stuffed their backpacks with leftover popcorn (a newfound favorite snack) and headed to their Bamako host's for a good night sleep.

The next day we read through comments in the exhibit guest book, including one from Seydou Dembele, mayor of Sanekuy, a neighboring village to Damy and Kouara. "The child authors of these photographs deserve to be congratulated," he began. "They have succeeded where adults would have failed. These photos bear witness to the reality that is lived by the population of our villages."

And printed on the front page of L'Essor, Mali's largest newspaper, was our student Germaine's photograph of her brother Blaise, his arm slung around his favorite donkey. "Rural artists are capable of surprising talent," the paper reported. "The exhibit shows the daily environment of the students, their families, their daily lives, their humanity, and their universality ... The images are full of freshness and are occasionally shocking in maturity."

Reading African Photography

In an effort to help the students understand their place in the larger context of the Encounters biennial, we spent the following morning at the National Museum viewing the work of their fellow African photographers (Fig. 14). The visit proved to be a great exercise in "reading" photographs that led to new lessons in photography.

[FIGURE 14 OMITTED]

David was particularly drawn to a color photo of two severed cow heads burning--smoke and flames billowing to the upper reaches of the image. The work was from a series on a slaughterhouse, which earned Nigerian photographer Uche James Iroha a biennial prize. "This image is beautiful," David said, "and it makes me happy." Taken aback, I asked him why, wondering if here was another teenage boy attracted to violence. "Because everyone is about to eat meat!" he replied, smiling. His three fellow students nodded in unison. What a humbling example of the subjective nature of photography. Each interpreter of an image brings his/her own unique set of cultural trappings that informs the "reading." Whereas I considered the image graphic and sensed death and violence, David had associated meanings of celebration and wealth. While the image made me sick to my stomach, it had made him feel hungry!

When we came across a 16" x 20" (40cm x 50cm) print of a person's thumb touching a cob of millet--two things familiar to the students--it was challenging for them to interpret. When I told them that the image was a cob of millet, they refused to believe me and said that millet doesn't grow that big. I asked Chantal, "In your picture of your brother and his friend--are they really that short?" Their understanding of the possibilities of photographic perspective and their way of seeing was expanding.

We left the museum and headed to the photo lab to pick up the film that the students had shot in Bamako. That evening, we shared our last meal together at Jude's house, where the kids were staying. Our time together had once again come to an end. I knocked on their bedroom door when it was time for Nestor and me to leave. They were busy arranging their prints in new photo albums to take home the next day.

After leaving the kids, and as my taxi bumped along the side streets of Bamako, I imagined the students back in their villages. The sun has just set in Damy and Kouara. The millet was recently harvested and the women spent the day carrying huge baskets of dried millet on their heads from the fields into the villages to store for the coming year. The lingering smell of wood smoke from cooking fires wafts through the village. It is a dark, moonless night, making the stars shine brighter than usual. Villagers begin to make their way along the network of well-beaten paths toward Chantal's house. As they grow nearer they are greeted by the blue glow of the black-and-white television--her father's prized possession and the village's main attraction. It is perched on a makeshift table in the family courtyard and powered by a car battery. It is time for the weekly news digest in Bomu--the language of the Bwa. The newscaster announces the recent visit of French president Jacques Chirac to Bamako for the France-Africa summit. And then, suddenly, there they are: Chantal, Kuihan, Michel, and David. Chantal's mother, Cecile, stops spinning her cotton and listens, as they are interviewed about their photography exhibit in Bamako. Everyone hears the names of the two villages pronounced and a cheer goes up. They stare at the photographs on the screen and recognize themselves, their families, and their villages.

The Future of "Visual Griots"

Although one could argue that our students from Damy and Kouara are isolated geographically and linguistically from the rest of the world, they are succeeding in breaching these bounds through their photography. After the success of the Encounters biennial in Bamako, the US State Department announced that it would include a number of the images in the permanent art collection of the new US embassy in Bamako. The Academy for Educational Development is now seeking funding to replicate the "Visual Griots" workshops in other countries. But first, the young Malian photographers will teach something to Americans: The "Visual Griots" exhibit will open in October 2006 at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and run through March 2007. Then the exhibit will travel to a number of other venues throughout the United States.

Plans are also proceeding to bring the images into US schools. In the Fall of 2005, Nestor and I made our first school presentation to a group of sixty seventh graders in Washington, DC. "Can you tell me what images of Africa you have seen?" I asked, before starting the projection. The responses flew at us like bullets: sick people with AIDS, guns and war, children being vaccinated, wild animals. I told them that they were about to see other pictures of Africa--of Mali, specifically--that were taken by children their own age. After viewing and discussing the photos, one young student raised his hand and said, "Mr. Davis, it looks like Mali's not a very rich country. But all the people in the pictures look like they think it is."

For more information on how to support "Visual Griots" or how to bring the exhibit to your institution, please contact Shawn Davis at the AED Center for International Exchanges: [phone]; [e-mail], or visit www.aed.org/visualgriots.