Through Primo's Eyes

"Come and see the school we are building!" Primo invites enthusiastically."

He is a French language and photography teacher at Dzaleka Refugee Camp. We follow him through the camp to the plot of land he has been allotted. Part of the first mud brick wall rises in the promise that someday an art school will open here. Primo currently teaches students in the small courtyard of his parents' mudbrick home.

A Different Lens

Primo teaches children and young people how to use his camera as a skill. He runs a business on the side, taking his own photographs. But more than a trade or skillset, he teaches these young people how to see life in camp through a different lens. For Primo, photographing life in Dzaleka is all about finding the light and beauty many people wouldn't think to look for.

Communal Camera

Primo's generous spirit extends to allowing his students to borrow his tool of the trade to practice this beauty-seeking art. His livelihood is an extension of his heart for community and his radical ability to see goodness breaking through, even in seemingly bleak spaces. This goodness defines the work he does and the community that forms around that gift.

Courageous creativity builds tangible hope.

I see such profound hope in Primo's way of seeing in Dzaleka. His photos are stunning, capturing the vitality of the human spirit, even amid great hardship. His ability to dream is significant, considering the odds he's endured. This ability to envision empowers Primo to look forward to what is not yet reality and creatively and courageously build tangible hope for others as he joyfully invests in the futures of the youth and families of Dzaleka.