Between 2008 and 2012, together with my colleague and friend Gina Zacharias, we directed an interactive social photographic project for kids in the multiethnic area of Nørrebro, in the north of Copenhagen. Those were times when the drug gangs started to dispute their zones in the city, reaching to a level of violence in public space totally unknown for this city until then.

The news were shocking, with deads and shootings between gangs happening every week, and the media and public opinion were also fast to build a prejudice around this area and its youngsters as a generalisation. The goal of the project was to give photographic workshops to those young ones from this hood and introduce them to photography as an expressive language and motivate them to document and tell their own story in their daily lives. The kids received an analogical Point and Shoot camera and a film roll per week along the three months of the workshop.

The project got recognised with the KPH Award 2012 as the best social creative project that year. We should thank so many people that have been an important support in so many ways for the project, but of course a main thanks goes first to the kids for their trust and commitment and that wonderful human and artistic experience we lived together in those days, specially to Emir and Vallzim, who after being part of the first workshop, became also active assistants of the project. And thanks as well to the generous members of our consultancy board: Per Folkver, Jacob Holdt, Olav Hergel and Jacob Aue Sobol, who freely supported the project with their time and advice, plus special presentations and interaction with the kids.

“Point and Shoot made that we came to be seen just as anyone else and not as immigrants”, Vallzim Abduramani, at 18 years old

“I have never thought that I would enjoy to take pictures and to say something interesting with them”, Mohamed El-Saleh, when he was 18