Melkadida

'For a brief moment, a group of Somali children in the Melkadida refugee camp on the Somalia/Ethiopia border have recorded and expressed their perceptions of their “refugee camp” as a “photo camp” – a place of conscious creative possibility. Lily Donaldson has combined poetry and photography with her work with International Medical Corps and National Geographic on their groundbreaking photographic and art therapy program aimed at giving voice to the stories of displaced children who have fled war and conflict.  The Photo Camp program immerses students in the essential art and skill of photography and as Donaldson soon realized, their photographs needed to reach a wider audience, taking them to New York to exhibit at the United Nations.  Each photograph is a testimony to resilience, determination, spontaneity and playfulness. Melkadida resists easy categorisations but insists on lush color, an infectious freshness, purity and defiance throughout.'