The House is Small
but the Welcome is Big is a participant-produced, documentary
photography project that explores the intersection between HIV/AIDS
and poverty, as experienced through the eyes of women and children
in South Africa and Mozambique.
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| 'Hope' /photo
by Funeka Nceke |
It seeks to put real faces and real stories to the statistics
about women and children living with HIV/AIDS in the African
continent, to contribute to giving them a voice in the growing
international dialogue about public health and policy decisions
that directly affect their lives, while raising local and international
awareness.
The project was developed by Venice Arts, a youth arts organization
in southern California, United States, which has created and
implemented participant-produced documentary photo projects
for 14 years. The primary mission is to bring talented artists
together with low-income young people to nurture their creativity,
imagination and talent, by teaching the poor and otherwise marginalized
people the methodology of documentary photography so that they
may tell their own stories and raise awareness through the illustration
of their lives.
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'Sorrow'/photo by Thembisa Mdatyulw
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Women Living With HIV in South Africa:The first phase of the
project was completed in February 2006, in collaboration with
Cape Town-based Mothers2Mothers. A crew of Venice Arts
photographers taught 15 HIV-positive women, young mothers and
mothers-to-be how to photographically document their lives.
These courageous women, most of whom had chosen to fight the
HIV stigma by "coming out" about their status and
educating other pregnant women in the hope of preventing mother-to-child
transmission, created a powerful body of photography that gives
a human face to the continuing global AIDS crisis and, in particular,
its impact on women and children.
In addition to the healing nature of working creatively and
sharing their stories, these women benefited in a number of
ways from their involvement in this project: most received
funds from pictures sold in the
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Some project
photographers /photo by
Giselle Mcfarlane |
United States, allowing them, for example, to pay their children's
school tuition or add a room to their house. Funeka and Caroline,
two women identified by the Venice Arts photo team as being
extremely talented, attended a photography certificate programme
on completion of the project, with tuition fees paid by one
of the project's creators. Caroline has since been accepted
to the University of Stellenbosch and will continue her education,
with the intention of becoming an HIV counselor.
Children orphaned by AIDS in Mozambique: In August
2007, the Venice Arts team will travel to Maputo, Mozambique,
to address another aspect of how HIV/AIDS has affected a community.
In partnership with the African Millennium Foundation and
with the assistance of the Office of the First Lady of Mozambique,
Venice Arts will work with 15 children who have been orphaned
by AIDS and are now caring for their younger siblings. They
will work in collaboration with Reecontro, a non-governmental
agency providing supportive services to AIDS orphans. The
children's photographs will be used in local HIV/AIDS awareness
campaigns and will be taken to schools throughout Mozambique's
11 provinces. Once complete, the children's project will be
combined with the South African women's work, and the enlarged
exhibit will travel internationally.
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| Nolukholo's
House/photo by Phumza Brikwa |
An exhibit featuring the women's work has already been created
and featured in print and Internet media, including BBC Africa's
In Pictures. It has travelled to 11 sites, including: Track
16 Gallery (Santa Monica, May 2006); the Venice Arts Walk's
Focus on Photography (May 2006); the International AIDS Conference/Gallery
44 (Toronto, August 2006); the Clinton Global Aid Initiative
(New York, 2006); the Venice Arts Gallery (November 2006); Colorado
College (December 2006); University of California in Los Angeles,
Department of World Arts and Culture (December 2006-January
2007); Harvard University, Graduate School of Education (December
2006-January 2007) and School of Medicine (February 2007); Stanford
University (February-March 2007); and Plaza Theater, Orlando,
Florida (March-April 2007).
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Pumela's
Grandmother's Grave/ photo by
Danielle Gana |
The House is Small shows graphically that African women
and children affected by HIV/AIDS, while certainly suffering
from discrimination and a lack of access to health care and
facing a myriad of other issues that threaten their lives, are
also finding ways to "live positively", with support.
Their creative work,particularly when seen outside of Africa,
provides new and surprising images that expand people's notions
of what it means to be affected by HIV/AIDS.
Literally thousands of children and adults have and will continue
to be mpacted by this project through its varied components:
the travelling international exhibit, using both traditional
and non-traditional settings to reach a diverse audience (i.e.,
from galleries and universities to villages and classrooms);
presentations to youth, college students and faculty on the
exhibit and methodology; a video and a book, featuring work
from the project; web-based distribution, including images,
audio clips, biographies and blogs; and the use of images by
project partners in educational and promotional materials and
campaigns. It is also intended to make images available to others
concerned with HIV/AIDS, including policymakers and corporate
partners, to augment their own awareness and prevention efforts. |
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