Through new lenses

by Matthew Ngai

I peered through the viewfinder with one eye. Suddenly, there was a little boy standing barefoot on a rock, leaning forward on the edge of a wet mill. A worker raked through the fermenting coffee cherries in the background on the right. I adjusted and readjusted the focus of my lenses, searching for the perfect framing and depth of field. Then, the boy’s father stepped into the frame on the left, towering above him on the stone ledge. The little boy glanced up. Snap!

It was the summer of 2019 in Papua New Guinea. I was volunteering at Bolaven Farms, a social enterprise that aims to improve the livelihoods of smallholding coffee farmers through better production methods. Not long before, I had been a lazy, unmotivated teenager. Every day, I would wake up late having snoozed my alarm four times, rush to school without eating breakfast or even brushing my teeth, sleep through most if not all of my classes, and, after school, sit on the couch all day playing FIFA on my PlayStation. One thing I had always been a little bit passionate about, though, was photography. Ever since my dad handed me his camera when I was nine, I had been the family paparazzo, constantly taking shots of my family, but it wasn’t until this trip that I truly understood the power of photography.

To the naked eye, that little boy was just another impoverished child living in an underdeveloped country. As I zoomed in with my camera and observed his every move, I started to understand his story. How his bare feet were swollen red from stepping through the waterlogged floors of the mill. How a layer of crusted mud coated his dark skin. How at the same age, I had been given a digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera on a family vacation while that little boy spent his days among labouring men and whirring machinery. But I

also saw how his face was filled with faith and his eyes with hope as he gazed up at his father’s silhouette. With this awakening, I started a two-year association with Bolaven Farms and its founder Sam, immersing myself in the economy of developing countries starting with Papua New Guinea. Inequality was no longer just a term in textbooks but a living image in photos and memory. For every photo, I sought out the next little boy. Each image was a unique story conveyed through an array of facial expressions – frozen in time, but very much alive. The impact was encouraging – Sam and I created content that attracted a coalition of impact loaners. They put up US$300,000 to finance Bolaven’s first plant in Papua New Guinea. Photography gave me the tools to tell visual stories of our disparate society. My camera has not only become my trusted assistant but has also taught me to see. Whenever I peek through the tiny rectangular box of the viewfinder, I try to discover a story to tell. As blurry images sharpen and focus, surroundings gradually become much clearer. After taking thousands of photos and unearthing thousands of stories, I can now observe little details. The marks and scratches on the body of my camera are a collection of past experiences. The scar across the glass face of the screen is from a low-hanging branch in the Rwandan mountains, encountered while trekking on a project that took electricity to village houses. The chip on the edge of the battery compartment is from the camera swinging into a boiler at a school’s heating plant when shooting portraitures of forgotten background employees. Through these new “lenses”, I aim to help others see beyond the statistics of economic inequality and empathize

with the real, personal stories behind the numbers. This past spring, I founded a non-profit, Stories Thru Our Lenses, based on the experience of working with different NGOs. With that, I finally decided to retire my old DSLR and make the transition to the new generation of mirrorless cameras. It marked the start of a new journey. One in which I no longer have to wait for the lenses to focus in order to see, but also one in which I hope to continue my mission of visual storytelling and make a bigger impact for all the little boys standing barefoot on a rock.

All photos by Matthew Ngai

Matthew Ngai studied at Diocesan Boys’ School and is now at Phillips Exeter Academy in the US. A passionate photography enthusiast, he has been involved with various NGOs during secondary scxhool and will soon be applying for a place at college.