Sharjah24: Leica Award-winning photographer Karen Zusman captivated the audience of the Xposure International Photography Festival (Xposure 2023) on the opening day of the 7th annual edition on Thursday (February 9), at a seminar titled "From Poetry to Protests to Super-Powered Youth: An Unconventional Journey", which chronicled her inspiring journey of making change through her thoughts, actions, and later, her photography.

The New York-based photographer narrated her journey, sifting through her body of work, spanning recording audio stories about child trafficking in South-East Asia to capturing the images of fragility and resilience in Cuba, and thereafter, her activism in the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. 

Her observation of and interactions with children in the black neighbourhoods in New York inspired her to start her “The Super Power of Me” project, an internationally acclaimed photo-poetry project that aims to empower children through creativity.  

The power of the image in memorable storytelling 
Zusman, originally a poet, explained how her photography career began when she realised journalists around the world needed photos to support the publishing of stories she collected about human trafficking in Malaysia, to drive the kind of impact that she desired. 

She elaborated, “I learned a very important lesson that to be a storyteller, you need to be a photographer or at least learn photography”. 

Her work was granted a Pulitzer Centre for Crisis Reporting Grant and featured on PBS and NPR. She later returned to Myanmar and co-founded a mobile education project for child labourers.

The birth of the “Super Power of Me” project 
During Zusman’s participation in a Black Lives Matter cycling protest in New York, she began wondering how the protests were going to impact the lives of young black children. These thoughts were inspired by a photo she took of children eating cheap junk food at a neighbourhood eatery. She started photographing these children more, in different environments, and one of these images of Ghanaian children at the beach became the starting point of the “Super Power of You” project. The children’s father sent her a ‘thank you’ email, which she quoted from: “He said, ‘thank you for giving my kids the proof they are the superpower they imagine themselves to be’. This sentence was the inspiration behind the project”. 

The project aims to celebrate and showcase the unique qualities of each child participating. Through a combination of portraits, free poetry writing workshops, and zoom sessions, Karen provides them a platform to voice their own superpower. The project is a testament to the strength and grace of these young people and serves as a reminder that they are a force to be reckoned with.

Zusman closed the session by providing a glimpse into her plans, as she will be taking the project to Zanzibar, Tanzania. “I wish to expand this project and bring it to different communities, not only in the US, because I believe there is a need for it and I think there is a role for this project to play.” 

This year, Xposure offers 41 inspiring seminars for visitors to gain knowledge, gain insights and learn from the expertise of a plethora of the world's top photographic masters, filmmakers, and industry experts. The festival runs from 9-15 February at Expo Centre Sharjah. To find out more, visit: https://xposure.ae/exhibitions-2023/.