In January 2019 I went on a mission to gift family portrait, printed photographs to the people residing in India's slums. The idea of Making Memories Project was exactly that, to create a life long memory for people who are not able to access the luxury of photos of their loved ones.

This is a video of my photo gifting project 'Making Memories' in which I shoot family portraits for people who don't have any printed memories to cherish due to living in impoverished conditions. I started this project by myself, this year with my Canon range. My goals and my motives for the project are listed below and on my website www.rachelnoel.com/page/making-memories-project

Having photographs of our family is something the western world possibly takes for granted. We have hundreds or thousands of photos of our children, friends and families, either digitally or physically printed. But to have a family portrait is considered a luxury cost to some and not one they could afford to indulge in.

Approximately one billion people in the world live in slums, the highest concentration of them are in Asia. In the Philippines alone 20 million people live in slums and in India approx. 64 million people. A slum, as defined by United Nations Habitat, is a dwelling that suffers one or more of the following conditions: lack of access to water that is safe from outside contamination, lack of access to sanitation facilities that separate human waste from human contact and lack of adequate living area.

I aim to take this project to some of the largest slums in Asia and gift, family printed portrait photos. I will attempt to visit as many of these slums in Asia as I can. It has been a self-funded project which I hope to sustain in the future, through fundraising and sponsorship.

The last Making Memories project I did, I went into a slum in Rishikesh, India. There was a small team of us which consisted of a translator and a community officer. The story was documented on the video (shown here). Together, we coordinated family portrait photographs for everyone who wanted them. We received an overwhelmingly warm response and I was able to shoot over 50 families in this one area. We returned on Christmas day to hand out the printed photographs and wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Through my translator I was told that they were very grateful and there were several mentions of putting the photo on the wall in their hut.

I want to provide these photographs to these people to make them smile, whilst making a memory for them, of those they cherish most.

свернуть