“Just the act of walking together is an amazing and powerful and very old way to connect with each other.”
– Paul Salopek, during a Skype call with National Geographic Photo Camp in Baltimore, October 20, 2016
Last week in a lodge at the edge of the Appalachian Trail, a young Congolese teenager named Sartre told of his experiences growing up in a camp as a refugee in his own country. He and his partner, Reema, showed us portraits they’d made while learning of each other’s journeys. Journeys that had brought them ultimately to Baltimore, where they were now part of a National Geographic Photo Camp being held in partnership with the Out of Eden Walk. “Reema’s father was kidnapped, she grew up in refugee camps and has been kicked out of three countries—Syria, Iraq, and Jordan,” Sartre told us. “Reema has been a refugee in her own country. Just like me.”
On this Photo Camp, our students, all part of the Refugee Youth Project in Baltimore, weren’t split into tribes or sects or religious groups. There were no divisions at all as these young people learned to use cameras, photographed each other, and explored the Appalachian Trail together. Hiking through rain, looking for compositions and beautiful light, we were there to use photography to allow young people to tell their own stories. We hoped to use the power of their individual journeys to help us find common ground amid the global issues we’re all grappling with today, as tens of millions around the world are displaced from their homes.
National Geographic photographer Amy Toensing works with a student to review the images he captured during Photo Camp Shenandoah National Park.
Ronan Donovan / National Geographic
How can the act of photographing, of making a portrait and then describing another person’s journey, help us to connect and learn? Paul Salopek discussed this idea during a Skype call from Uzbekistan with our group in a Baltimore classroom on our first morning together. Students asked him questions about his views on human origins, racism, and conflict. Paul set the tone for our workshop by speaking to them about the value of their individual stories and journeys and about his hope for humanity despite the challenges we face. He inspired each student and set us out on a path of possibility.
Lun, who grew up in a refugee camp in Burma and loves to sing, photographed Abigail, who escaped violence in the Congo, only to find herself ridiculed at school for being an orphan. Lun and Abigail connected through photography and empathy and learned that they both shared feelings of loss that their parents wouldn’t be attending their upcoming high school graduations. Amrita photographed the map her partner, Sai, drew as he told the story of his escape through the jungles of Malaysia without food or water at age 12. “I think Sai is very brave,” she said.
Each time we gathered on a wooded patch on the trail and talked about our project, I could feel an undercurrent of respect and shared purpose running through the students. They listened closely as National Geographic photographers John Stanmeyer and Amy Toensing encouraged them and critiqued their work.
A group of Photo Camp participants from the Baltimore City Community College Refugee Youth Project learned to tell their stories through photography and writing.
Ronan Donovan / National Geographic
A student asked Paul, “What is the biggest problem in the world that makes us separate from each other, for refugees, for anyone? Is it race, or religion…?” Paul told her that although fear seemed to him to be the cause of these divisions, he still has hope despite all the troubles he’s seen. He talked about the fact that, “If we walk together in this way, spend time with each other, that breaks down these fears that divide us. That is the true gift of this project. Have hope.”
Through our shared experience in this workshop, we used the power of photography and storytelling to explore our journeys—and to walk together.
Kirsten Elstner is the Director of National Geographic Photo Camp