#ShootForPeace giving kids a brighter picture
Weekly photo outings expose Regent Park youth to other focus
“I don’t know anybody who’s died from cancer,” says Yasin Osman, slowly pulling on the strands of his beard. “I only know people who have been killed by gun violence.”
Osman, 23, has lived in the east-end neighbourhood of Regent Park all his life. Since a young age, he saw friends get shot to death for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Most locals, he says, don’t understand the concept of growing up without someone they know being killed.
Today, Osman wears many hats. For the past few years, he’s worked as an early childhood educator — coaching and inspiring kids at a nearby community centre. In his spare time — and what he hopes to be his full-time career — Osman is a photographer who mainly focuses on humanitarian work, travelling to countries such as Ethiopia and Turkey to document stories of marginalization, culture and religion.
But the project that’s at his core is homebred — #ShootForPeace — the name for a weekly event where he takes Regent Park youth out with a bundle of cameras and teaches them to not only take great photos, but learn photo-editing and image technology.
And the name, he says, goes beyond just a catchy hashtag.
“I thought, ‘How can I turn that idea of (violence) around?’ When you take photos, people call it shooting — we’re shooters,” he said. “It’s a play on that idea of the streets being a place for crime, you know? It’s pushing these kids to think about what they can do differently. This is a peaceful act.”
#ShootForPeace’s photo walk, which happens every Sunday, is simple: The kids show up at a predeter- mined spot at 3 p.m. — usually a food joint, mosque or community centre. When they get there, everyone gets a simple point-and-shoot camera, which they’re expected to share with a friend. They then pick a place to explore for the day, and head out with Osman’s simple challenge: Try something new.
Ten-year-old Adam Elesar, for example, wanted to learn how to freeze a basketball in mid-air, right before it hit the net. He’s learned over time that he has to turn the shutter speed up higher if he wants to capture a moving object, but grabbing it in focus is a whole different story. Some day, he wants to be a photographer, but for now, he said he has a lot to learn.
“I like shooting everything,” he said. “I want to be good at it all.”
Regent Park itself is ground zero for a number of Toronto’s most popular and successful modern photographers. Jamal Burger, known as @jayscale on Instagram, is a world-renowned brand and cityscape photographer who grew up with Osman.
This year, Burger was one of the featured mentors at #ShootForPeace, accompanying the likes of other Toronto shooters such as @visionelie — who has shot frequently with The Weeknd — and @doncharleone — who takes pictures for the NBA. For Burger, his experience as a role model for the kids takes him back to a time when he had no one to look up to.
“Being able to be a positive role model and example was one of the main reasons I work hard and carry myself the way I do,” Burger said.
“I remember being their age and partici- pating in similar activities to stay out of trouble. It went a long way, and gave me a positive outlook on growing up and (let me) know I could make a change.”
Most of Osman’s work is solo. Managing a group of eight to 10 kids by himself is a tough job already, but Osman says it’s compounded by the fact that he funds the program wholly out of pocket. Most of his money goes toward pizza lunches or snacks for the kids, and the cameras that Osman has in possession are simple digital cameras that were donated a year prior. Often times, he’ll pass around his own professional gear for the kids to take turns with — most times, someone will hog it and try to get a new profile picture for Facebook.
Regardless of his limitations, Osman tries to teach the kids that good photos aren’t limited to those with professional equipment, often encouraging his trainees to go home and shoot with their phone before moving on to using a DSLR. It’s a practice he says has refreshed his own view on photography and helped him take progressively better pictures.
“The best photos usually aren’t when you have your camera ready,” he said. “They could be at any moment. I would have missed a lot of shots if I kept thinking in the mindset that (my equipment) allowed me to take the best pictures.”
Out of the nearly dozen that regularly attend #ShootForPeace, Ali Shali is one of the most experienced of the group. At 16, he’s had more time to play around with cameras than most of the kids. During a challenge by Osman to see the most creative shots the group could get in 10 minutes, Shali carefully crouched behind a chain-link fence and took a shot of another boy in midflight, inches from dunking on a basketball net. Moments later, the image appeared on his screen, and a smile peeled across his face.
In usual form for #ShootForPeace, when Shali turned the camera around to show the group the final product, they went wild. To Osman, times like that are his secret weapon, and speak to the core of what he’s trying to accomplish.
“That reaction is all I want,” Osman says, reflecting on his own excitement when he first started taking photography seriously. “Every picture back then was special. You get to a new location and you’re thinking, ‘Oh my god. This is it!’ We lose that over time, but seeing (the kids) go nuts like that reminds me to be thankful for what I have, and makes me want to be so much better at what I do.”