My favorite Photograph- Birthday Girl by Hartmut Schwarzbach

A few years ago I stumbled upon this picture and saved it on my computer. I wanted to post it on the blog a while ago but couldn't find the source. Today I searched again and I finally found the information about the photographer. It is part of a series that German photographer Hartmut Schwarzbach took in Manila.

The picture, entitled "birtday girl" was a finalist for the 2009 Sony Photography Award. It shows a little girl in a charcoal burners camp on her 9th birthday. I love this picture because of the pure joy that seems to radiate from this little girl despite her horrible living situation. The juxtaposition of this girls laugh with the wet, smoking trash covered in charcoal surrounding her is just striking.
Sadly, those images are not staged but utter reality for hundreds of children living in a charcoal burners camp called Aroma Smokey Mountain in Manila. I know these pics are from 2 years ago but I want to post them anyways since I think that neither great photography nor the problems behind these pictures ever get old.

All images are property of Hartmut Schwarzbach. You can see the whole series on his website,  here .

In 2000 Schwarzbach started working on a documentary and long time project on children right’s, travelling to many Asian and African countries. He uses a medium format Hasselblad camera for portraits and the 35mm for reportages and street photography.
After taking the shots of Annalynn and her peers at Aroma Smokey Mountain he went back to document the life of kids working in gold mines in the Philippines.