A world renowned Indian photographer who’s based himself in Hamilton is addressing child stress through creativity – and he’s set to roll out his initiative nationally.

Child stress is not something we often address, says Ashok Kochhar, but he’s using photography to crack down on the issue.

For past two years Kochhar has based himself in Hamilton while on a three-year working visa. He originally came here to take photos around New Zealand. Those will be turned into a series of six photography books, but his mission took a turn when a new friend he met here shared the story of how his nine-year-old son had committed suicide. 

Kochhar then learned New Zealand has one of the highest rates of teen suicide in the developed world.

Shocked, Kochhar decided he wanted to help the children of Aotearoa. He soon put in motion a programme called ‘My World - My Vision’ where he gave out 40 disposable cameras to 20 children.  

“We need to take them away from the material side of life and bring them towards the creative side of life,” Kochhar said.

The children, aged between 5 and 12, were given two months to fill up the disposable cameras and then one photo was chosen from each child and displayed in an exhibition.

Kochhar said it was such a “delightful” success he repeated it the following year, but gave one camera to each child – 40 cameras to 40 children.

“In my first year I was so excited when a seven-year-old boy got up to speak about his photo and he said it was the first time he had really seen the details of a flower!”

He said the photos the children produced were raw because they didn’t have the chance to delete them if they didn’t like them.

This year Kochar will give out 400 cameras to children throughout New Zealand.

He said the point was to understand the minds of our future generation and their exciting journey of observing surroundings they belong to.

“This results in some beautiful expressions through pure observation without any traditional learning/teaching of rotten rules of the creative world.”

He said the one rule for the children was that they shouldn’t listen to anyone else telling them what to take photos of, but simply do what they wanted.

Each of the printed pictures are gifted back to the children after the exhibition with a participation certificate. 

At this stage he has booked the Hamilton Gardens conference room for Friday 31 August for the Hamilton exhibition and is currently looking for similar spaces in other regions to showcase the children’s work.

The children will have the opportunity to speak about their photos at the exhibitions.

Kochhar said he would also be making a book containing the collection of the 400 photos the children take, this will be made before the exhibitions. Each child would be given their photograph and the photos will also be available for sale. Kochhar said the money raised from this programme would be used for similar initiatives as he would be starting a non-profit organisation to create and execute such initiatives.

“Children are our responsibility, we need to help them before they need help. This year is the most important year of my life. I’m getting the feeling that it was worth living to 62 years.”

Kochhar will give cameras to children in Hamilton, Christchurch, Auckland, and Wellington. If you would like your child to get involved you can contact Ashok Kochhar through his email address, kochhara55@gmail.com.

Kochar had primarily funded the first two years of the programme himself with a small amount of funding from local organisations. If he has to do the same this year he will, but he would be glad to hear from anyone interested in contributing.

So far Kochhar has gained the support of Indian Newslink, Creative Waikato, Fujifilm, Snapshot-Hamilton, and Photo and Video-Christchurch. The cameras will be given out in the first week of March and must be given back by May 30. They will be showcased in the respective regions in August.