From the photographer: Exhibiting the brave girls of South Sudan

In March 2018, Plan International UK contacted me asking if I would be interested in photographing a project about teenage girls caught up in the hunger crisis in South Sudan. I have a long-standing interest in South Sudan, having spent a year there in 2005 after the signing of the CPA and many subsequent trips with both The Guardian and UNICEF, so quickly accepted the offer.

A month later, I flew into Juba and travelled with a UN flight to Rumbek to meet with Dominka Kronsteiner from the Emergency Team of Plan International who introduced me to the first girls I would be working with. As I was to later remark in my speech at the launch of the resulting exhibition, while Juba had got bigger, little had changed for the families I was about to meet. Societal expectations, as well as the problems that plague the world’s youngest country, severely limit their choices and ability to control their path in life.

Helena, 14: “I wake up before six. After that I take the cattle to the field for grazing. Then I stay out all day with them grazing and I bring them back here in the evening for milking. I like playing with my friend, but I don’t often do this because I’m looking after the cows.” (Photo: Kate Holt / Plan International UK)

However, for such young people, they are incredibly brave. They carve out their lives, with passion and ambition, in one of the harshest environments possible, caught between the problems of hunger, war and the threat of forced marriage.

Of the nine girls I met, each had their own powerful and unique story to tell. Akujang was only 14 when she was married to her 18-year-old husband, and had given birth a year later. She struggled to find enough food for herself, meaning that she often didn’t produce enough milk to feed her baby.

“ Now I’m breastfeeding but sometimes I have no milk and it is hard because my baby cries. If I eat enough, I have milk for a day but if I don’t eat there isn’t enough.” (Photo: Kate Holt / Plan International UK)

Then there was Roseanna, who refused marriage to a neighbour, resulting in her cousin shooting her in the hip. Her aim is to finish school and become a doctor, to show her family that what they tried to do to her was wrong.

“When I leave school, I want to be a doctor. I want my family to regret what they have done to me.” (Photo: Kate Holt / Plan International UK)

One of the challenges of photographing a project like this is gaining the trust of the community and families. Plan International UK has done a huge amount of work to gain the trust of the communities we visited — through providing them with seeds and tools last year when the drought was at its worst. Many of the families we met would have struggled to survive had it not been for the support of Plan International UK and the DEC, who had done extensive fundraising for their projects.

On my return to the UK, there was a little more than a month to produce an exhibition for the OXO Gallery. But after five weeks, several versions of mock-ups and a slight panic about whether the courier would actually be able to get anywhere near to the gallery to deliver the photos, we found ourselves walking into the blank slate that was the OXO gallery with 33 photos to hang before the launch event that evening. By 4pm the same day, thanks to expert assistance by teams of picture hangers, vinyl applicators and Plan International UK employees, all that was left was to reveal the photographs.

Kate Holt and Alex Martin of Plan International UK reveal the photos

The launch night was a great success. The photographs were highly praised, and thoughtful speeches from Sarah West (Plan International UK’s Head of Communications), Saleh Saeed (CEO of the DEC), and Tim Morris (Foreign and Commonwealth Office), as well as myself set a conversational tone to the evening.

Saleh Saeed of the DEC speaks at the launch event of the exhibition (Photo: Ant Upton)

In the five days that followed, over 1500 people visited the exhibition, lingering to read the stories of the girls and the context of South Sudan. The descriptions that accompanied the photos were direct quotes from the girls themselves. Pairing photos with a powerful, direct quote is a technique that I’ve used time and time again, to great effect. A photograph may speak a thousand words, but when it is paired with a direct, authentic account of the person featured, it can speak endlessly.

People read the stories of the girls in the Gallery@OXO (Photo: Kate Holt)

All too soon, we arrived back at the gallery to take down the exhibition. Another exhibition is already being planned for the photographs, which will provide PLAN with outreach opportunities for years to come. If you didn’t manage to visit the gallery, you can view the photos, along with the girls’ stories, on the Guardian website, here:

Girls of South Sudan on gunshot wounds, hunger and hope — in pictures
Teenage girls in this war-torn country face immense challenges — child marriage, early pregnancy, lack of education and…www.theguardian.com

Kate Holt

Kate Holt, is an award-winning photographer and content expert with over twenty years of experience of gathering humanitarian and development stories and photographs for international NGOs, including UNICEF, Care International, Jhpiego, the International Red Cross, MSF and OXFAM.

Kate started her career as a journalist at the BBC and has since travelled extensively documenting refugees and the effects of war and poverty in conflicts in the Dem. Rep. of Congo, Somalia, Kenya, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti.

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