Zana Briski

Zana Briski (born 25 October 1966) is a British photographer and filmmaker, best known for ''Born into Brothels'', the 2004 Oscar winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, which she directed. She founded Kids with Cameras, a non-profit organization that teaches the art of photography to marginalized children in communities throughout the world. Her interest in photography began at age 10.

After earning a master's degree at the University of Cambridge, she studied documentary photography at International Center of Photography in New York. In 1995, she made her first trip to India, producing a story on female infanticide. In 1997, Briski returned to India and began her project on the prostitutes of Calcutta's red-light district, which led to her work with the children of prostitutes.

Her latest project [http://www.reverence.org ''Reverence''] is an experiential multimedia exhibit about transformation. Inspired by dreams of a praying mantis, she was led around the world to collaborate with living insects, capturing their portraits in photographs and film. "My work is a tribute to insects, to their intelligence, personality and elegant beauty," she says. The project raised initial funds through the crowdsourcing site [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1072396487/reverence-0 Kickstarter] in 2010.

Briski has won numerous awards and fellowships including the Open Society Institute Fellowship, the Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship in 2000 to research and photograph in the Brothels of India, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, the [http://smithfund.org/howard-chapnick-grant Howard Chapnick Grant] and 1st Prize in 1999 in the World Press Photo foundation competition in the category "Daily Life stories". Briski and co-director Ross Kauffman were awarded grants from the Sundance Institute, [http://www.jeromefdn.org the Jerome Foundation], and the New York State Council on the Arts for ''Born into Brothels''. Provided by Wikipedia