Camila de Sousa| Temporary Occupations-Precarious Living The daughter of pioneering Mozambican filmmaker Camilo de Sousa, Camila is blazing just as maverick a trail as her father did. During the annual exhibition of Temporary Occupations,Camila created “Precarious Living” a series of startling photographs, videos and installation, featuring female inmates in Maputo’s women prison. This work from the first photographer allowed inside a jail, has stimulated much debate about the judicial system in Mozambique.

Camila recalls “I got access to the prison, since our justice minister is a woman and she sympathized with the aims of the project and gave enormous support. I didn’t take photographs for three months, for me to know more about the womenand their stories. Actually, I practically lived there for nine months and Iwas treated like an inmate by the guards. While in the prison, I encountered somany heartbreaking stories that one would have thought could only happen in afiction film. Imagine, a 15year old jailed for stealing a cellphone! What amother who had been in jail just for a minor fraud for over a year. Iencountered a very young wife that I discovered set fire on herself and herchildren, while she was suffering from post-natal depression, because herhusband had taken a new wife.”

In Mozambique,there are so many cases of women who have snapped after years of domestic violence in the country. A man gets eight years for killing his wife, but a woman gets 24years for killing her husband, regardless of whether she was abused- so she’s a victim twice. Camila maintains,” I am an artist not a documentary photographer, so I wanted each piece to be a collaboration between me and the artist.”

Part of the Precarious Living exhibition is about the representation of the black female body- bodies that have been brutalized and humiliated. “The women totally understood my project and eventually they came to me and wanted me to photograph. One girl had a scar where she had been shot by the police when she was aged 15. Another one’s father had cut off one of her breasts. Most acts of domestic violence were directed at the breasts. Disturbingly, someone described these images as pornography, but what sort of mind thinks of these images like this? When people ask how they can sponsor my project, I jokingly say, ‘you can pay for my therapy.’”

After Precarious Living, Camila de Sousa is working on the materials gathered for more creative missions. She has so much more documentations than she could ever have imagined. She believes her works should be able to stimulate conversation and change.

Photographs/Camila Sousa/Temporary Occupations: Precarious Living