Albino – In the Shadow of the Sun by Johan Bävman (August 8, 2010) 
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Introduction by Sophia Greiff
From June 16th to June 20th 2010 the second Lumix Festival for Young Photojournalism took place in the city of Hannover. Along with lectures of renowned photographers, panel discussions and portfolio reviews, more than 1400 images were presented in 60 exhibitions. The majority of the displayed work impressed with its high photographic and narrative quality – and opened the eyes for individual tragedies and stories that would have been left unseen without the curiosity and sensitivity of these emerging photojournalists. One of the most touching and affecting stories was the work Albino – In the Shadow of the Sun by Swedish photographer Johan Bävman. By portraying people with a pigmentary abnormality who are being discriminated against and even killed due to the widespread superstition that their body parts hold magical powers, Bävman calls attention to a group of outcasts in Tanzanian society. He shows the traces and wounds that the sun has left on the skin of the portrayed but refrains from displaying images of suffering and misery. Amongst the hardship there’s also laughter and hope, there are friendships and intimacy. For his powerful and emotional work, Johan Bävman received an Honorable Mention from the festival jury.
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Two armed men broke in to nine-year-old Josef Emanuel’s bedroom. They cut off his younger sister’s legs and left her to bleed to death. She became one of nearly fifty albinos in Tanzania who’ve been killed since January 2008 in a spate of targeted killings. Already, before the recent wave of murders, they were an exposed and vulnerable group in one of the world’s poorest countries. In addition to discrimination, and now murder, the albino population faces unique medical issues. Serious eye problems often lead to a lack of education among albino people. They then are frequently forced to take low-wage jobs under the equatorial sun and a lack of knowledge about skin cancer kills many of them. In the midst of tragedy there are also found laughter and a spirit of hope. The albino people in Tanzania are organizing and refusing to let the murderers continue unnoticed. They are demanding action from the government and the government has begun to take notice.
The Albino project started when I began thinking about exclusion in its many different forms: About deviating from society’s norms, being displaced in a society that wants you to be someone different from who you are. My thoughts crystallized when I was told about a Somalian refugee camp in Svappavarra in northern Sweden, a community where the population is almost entirely white. I started thinking about what it must feel like to be constantly pointed at and stared at, never to blend in, always to be different, regardless of how much you are trying to become part of the local community. Having read an article about the albino situation in Tanzania, I became aware of a completely new dimension to the concept of exclusion, and it was through this that my idea for the project came about. How does it feel to be born in a country where your siblings are the norm, and where you get excluded from your own community and society because of your lack of skin pigment? How does it feel to be unable to live and play like your brothers and sisters because you always have to protect yourself from the rays of the African sun? A sun that’s deadly to albinos.
I travelled to Tanzania to document the exposed situation in which many of the country’s albinos live. I wanted to tell the story of their differences and their similarities, as well as of the community support, and care people gave them, despite the color of their skin. This project has been important for my understanding of the world around me and I hope I have been able to open many other people’s eyes. At the same time, it wasn’t easy to arrive in Tanzania as a white Westerner, trying to document something which I’ve never been a part of and trying to explain how my work could help those who were the subject of my photographs. I have tried to tell this story in a compelling way, wanting it not simply to arouse compassion in the Western world, but also to be the starting point for some concrete actions in Tanzania. All of the pictures are taken in Tanzania from October to November 2008.
Johan Bävman (1982) lives and works in Malmö, Sweden.
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