Every Little Thing #9

Their best shots
UK photographer to organize summer programme for inner-city youth
by Michael A Edwards Entertainment Editor
Sunday, March 05, 2006

Being exposed to the harsh realities of inner- city life in Jamaica, its easy to believe that the youth in
these communities have little to offer, and that their choices are limited to either a gun or a microphone.
But one British photographer, is aiming to get more inner city kids used to another object: a camera.

David Gill is a freelance photo-journalist, who has visited Jamaica several times, and has done assignemtns here
for the likes of Puma and VP Records. "I know it sounds horribly cliched, but I fell in love with the place,"
he recounts to Sunday Observer.

But its not the fairytales and moonbeams, idyllic country roads kind of love affair. Gill's previous assignments
include teaching tsunami-affected children the joys of photojournalism in Sri Lanka, chasing round the mountains
of Morroco hunting West African migrants on the run, and being "embedded" with the

Black Watch ops team and the Bomb Squad in Iraq.
And whether its football in Arnett Gardens, or a local dance in Spanish Town, Gill is every bit as fascinated by
Jamaican inner cities as he is with the other exotic locales.

So much so that, through an organization called Wee Fi' Life, based in London, Gill is aiming to do something about
the situation.
"What we envisage is an eight-week workshop, sometime in July, where we take some of the kids, teach them photography
, and then at the end of the period, rather than just have a static exhibition, which most of them won't relate to
anyway, we're going to give them the opportunity to become published photographers."
Photos by photo-journalist David Gill

To that end, Gill has secured the co-operation of UK-based style and imaging magazine Plastic Rhino (total readership,
as per its website: 50,000), which plans to run a special pictorial on the works of the young photogs. A similar document,
entitled No Place Like Home, was produced after the Sri Lanka tsunami experience.

Gill is working along with a number of vouluntary groups in putting the project together, including Children First,
Upliftment Jamaica and S-Corner. These organizations, he says, "are doing tremendous work, and it is good to have their
support. The whole welcome has been fantastic and its starting to come together really well."