Carr Lecture to feature Calcutta documentary filmmaker

Zana Briski, a photographer who founded the nonprofit Kids with Cameras in Calcutta's red-light district, will deliver Skidmore's second Carr Lecture. "Through an Artist's Eyes: An Evening with Photographer and Filmmaker Zana Briski" takes place Wednesday, October 12, in Gannett Auditorium: a screening of her Oscar-winning Born into Brothels starts at 7 p.m., followed by a moderated discussion from 8:30 to 9 p.m.; a book-signing reception follows.

A Briton, Briski began studying biology at the University of Cambridge but switched to theology and religious studies. After earning her master's, she came to the U.S. to study at New York City's International Center of Photography.

In 1995 she made her first trip to India, where she produced a story on female infanticide that earned a National Press Photographers Association picture-of-the-year award. In 1997 she returned to India and began a project on Calcutta's red-light district, which led to her involvement with the children of the prostitutes. In 2001 she picked up a video camera for the first time and began creating Born into Brothels, co-directed by Ross Kauffman. The film was the 2004 Los Angeles Film Critics' "best documentary of the year," won the 2005 Academy Award for "best documentary feature," and took numerous film-festival and other prizes.

Briski has won fellowships from George Soros's Open Society Institute, the Sundance Institute, the Alicia Patterson Foundation in journalism, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as a Howard Chapnick Grant for the Advancement of Photojournalism, a World Press Photo Foundation first prize in the category "Daily Life Stories," and more.

Briski founded the nonprofit Kids with Cameras to help marginalized children around the world learn the art of photography and improve their living situations. It recently merged with the Calcutta-based Kids with Destiny and raised funds to build Hope House, a health, education, and job-training center for sex workers and their children.

Returning to her love of nature, Briski has recently been making portraits of insects, especially praying mantises, for a sound and image project she calls Reverence, which is slated to open in 2012.

In addition to her film discussion at Skidmore, she'll spend two days meeting with students in courses on international affairs and social identity in the workplace, and also shooting photos with art students at the college's Van Lennep Stables.

Funded by Robert and Jill Carr, parents of Kelly '07, the Carr Residency was created to help students and alumni shape their post-baccalaureate transitions by engaging with influential individuals working on the cutting edge of social, public, and civic issues.