'Liza. I took the photograph in 1993 at a refugee camp in Malawi, which borders Mozambique; Mozambique was then in the midst of a civil war. She was six years old at the time; she immediately caught my attention—astonishingly large eyes, a beautiful face, a small Mozambican girl.
The photograph appears on the final page of an 'anonymous' booklet produced as part of First8's visual campaign against poverty. At the time, the booklet was sent to the 25,000 most influential people in the world and prompted many responses, including one from then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Because he felt a great deal of sympathy for the project, we met him, partly to offer one another encouragement.'
'Since the nineties, I have been making series about people who are struggling. I want my photographs to achieve more than just attractive publications. And if you have such a powerful tool as a camera in your hands and it is so easy to use it intensively, why wouldn't you?
Liza has become a kind of icon, an example of a photograph that can tell a life story in 1/60 of a second. You can also see the pain of her life in Liza's eyes. A former minister from that country said the photograph was the face of Mozambique's tragic history over the previous twenty years. He also urged us to find Liza and photograph her again, so that the new image could symbolize a new Mozambique, where the economy had begun to perform reasonably well and the political situation had become more stable.'
'At the time, I therefore invited viewers to watch my documentary That’s Life on December 20 (NED 2), which follows the search for three children featured in the booklet; Liza is one of them. Yes, we eventually managed to find her, but don't ask how…'
- Name: Sander Veeneman (1962)
- Place of residence: Amsterdam
- Portfolio: Stichting First8
- info: ...
