Red Lights to Red Carpet

Zana's Choice

"It wasn't a place I planned to go," Briski says of Calcutta's poorest neighborhood, where the children rarely get schooling and often end up as prostitutes themselves. She first visited in 1997, when she was in India for a photography exhibition. She fell in love with the children immediately, and over the next few years, went back again and again to teach them to take pictures.

Picking up a digital video camera also wasn't something she planned on doing, but she thought she had an important story to tell. "It was always about helping the kids, not about making a film," she says.

next : Ross's Brood