Sometimes, a totally random event will draw us outside our preconceptions and help us see photography in a new light. I would never have thought of photos and captions in the context of adoption or how that application of photography could be anything special, but for a foreign adoption of a child who is already grown and speaks a different language, knows a different culture, and within the space of a few minutes is being launched into a new family, a simple photo album can be a treasure.
At first glace, this seems totally unrelated to photography, I know, but keep the title in mind. It has everything to do with photos and captions, and not only that, but applying our medium to the world around us in order to build others up instead of shooting just for some techy self-pleasure.
My brother and sister-in-law just adopted a nine-year-old girl from China. Before they left, my sister-in-law had the idea of using this cool little photo album they had been given to help their nine-year-old daughter acclimate to the her family. Each page in the photo album could record a ten second message to explain the photo. Then, when you just happen to have a brother that lives and works in China (enter ChinaCoop), that album can be narrated in Chinese.
Simply put, all I did was narrate captions (in Chinese) to a photo album.
Continue reading "Photo Albums and Chinese Adoption" »
