How A Stray Shot Of A Girl By A Photographer Changed Both Their Lives

When the rains poured over parched Bhopal, Alex Masi, the photographer, saw a little girl run out to shake the heat, and lifted her eyes to the skies, in order to drink in the water as well as the beauty of the world around her, according to independent.

It was on 24 August 2009 that Alex Masi clicked her. He had come to shoot Sachin Jatev with "leg paralysis and skeletal deformity" due to the 1984 gas leak. "It began to rain very hard," recalls Masi, now 34. He is Italian, but a London-based photojournalist who shot the dingy, polluted Bhopal city 30 years ago.

"It hadn't rained for a while, so the children went a bit crazy. In that moment, I captured Sachin's younger sister Poonam refreshing in the rain. I was taking shelter under a plastic sheet and she was right in front of me. For a brief moment she took in the rain and then she realised I was taking photos and ran away."

Poonam was seven then, wet, thrilled with the rains and looking up at the heavens, though she was in the mud. Masi says that she radiated "a feeling of freedom and emancipation, despite the setting."

Masi won $5,000 in 2011 for the Photographers Giving Back Photo Award, which had been set up to help those who were subjects of photographs. Masi used his grant to give back to the family, building up a lifelong bond with them.

"When you photograph people, sometimes you feel you are taking something from them," says Masi. "I try to explain I am not there to help directly, but if they let me take a photograph, maybe somebody will help. I am the bridge between the readers and the subjects. That is my role. I don't want to give them the feeling that if I take their photograph it will change their life. But in this case, it did."

Instead of just handing over the money to them, Masi decided to help lift them out of poverty. He facilitated the construction of a brick house, bought a cart to help her father, Suresh become a vegetable seller, rather than a labourer, and decided to educate the youngest three out of five children---sisters Poonam and Jyoti and their brother Ravi (now 12, 14 and 15 years old, respectively).

"We put them in a small private school," says Masi. "Ravi has since decided that he wanted to work - we respected that choice and he no longer attends school - but his sisters are still in education. We hope to keep them at school and then college if possible."

After the grant was over, Masi is crowdfunding their education and also his visit to India, to check out on their progress. He wants to set up an NGO to educate more children there.

"After spending the $5,000, I saw the job was not complete," he says. "I could see the way the family's lives changed. I wanted to stay involved, to see them growing up."

Masi is careful with his moves. "We discuss everything," he explains. "We don't tell them what to do: we ask. We don't force them to do anything they don't want and we are not paying for something they could pay for themselves. We don't want them to become addicted to us. Something could happen to us, so they must create a system for themselves."

The sisters enjoy school. "At first, when one was off sick, the other would stay home too, but now they don't want to miss a lesson," says Masi. They want to become teachers.

Masi has built a good bond with the family. "They are pretty friendly with me," he says. "They are pleased to see me, but if I spend too many days in a row taking photographs, they get a little bored."

He feels that the relationship has helped him too. "I spend a lot of time seeing people suffering, in desperate situations, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Nigeria," he says. "This work allows me to see the opposite, how people can come back from a bad situation. It keeps me sane and shows me that my work can have real impact."

Read more about Alex Masi in his website.