Making Change Happen.
The story of our year long collaboration with Leica and Ashoka.

The story began in late 2021 in a meeting with Karin Kaufmann, Art Director, Leica Galleries International. She mentioned that Leica were collaborating with Ashoka, (an organisation which supports the world's leading social entrepreneurs), in photographing their Changemaking projects across a range of countries. 

Karin suggested members of The Leica Meet might like to help out by shooting these socially worthwhile projects. The ‘invisible challenge’ was to capture the key element which differentiates Ashoka programmes, Changemaking. Ashoka projects partner with schools, universities, corporations, institutions, media, and other influencers to provide early stage financial support and enable transformative change across more than ninety countries.

It’s been a fascinating year long journey in which we’ve conducted photo shoots across nine countries before reaching our destination in Feb 2023. The project was co-managed by myself representing the photographer interests and the very excellent Daniela Herneth, managing the Ashoka teams in each country. 

It sounded like and indeed has been, a wonderful experience. However Covid, the busy lives we all lead, the weather and seasonality all intervened to test our stamina. In Belgium it took a while to assemble the right group of people to shoot a Beeodiversity project only to find out we couldn’t shoot anything as the bees had just gone into Winter hibernation!  

The photographic challenges were considerable. How to shoot the Edible Garden City in Singapore to show agriculture flourishing amongst densely packed skyscrapers.

How to shoot Calciosociale, a non profit amateur soccer club working with youths at high risk of deviance. This community lived in an unfinished 1km long apartment block outside Rome, Italy. They rewrote the rules of football to engage children of all ages and genders.

And lastly how would you photograph color blindness? This was the challenge we faced in Porto, Portugal where the Ashoka Fellow has developed a complete graphic system to educate all of us to the issues faced by the color blind in everything from choosing a sweater of the right color to recognising danger signs on a beach.

In these pressured and difficult times this project also reminded me of my humanity. Along the way, I’ve been privileged to have met a great group of people all working to give their citizens the confidence and the tools to bring about Changemaking. 

I should mention more about Leica cameras and lenses. But there’s nothing to say! All the photographers used Leica equipment in a variety of countries and conditions. Nothing went wrong and the gear performed faultlessly. They say endings contain new beginnings and hopefully the conclusion of this project will lead to further collaborations in Changemaking.

Our extra special congratulations and thanks to all The Leica Meet photographers engaged in this project plus those recommended by Leica who helped out when our members were either not available or the project took place in markets where we have little representation. 

TLM members:
Geert Verstrepen (Belgium)
Matt Kollasch (Germany)
Paolo Siviero (Italy)
Prodeepta Das (UK)
Nattapol Suphawong (Thailand)

Leica recommended:
Gonzalo Fonseca (Portugal)
Graciela Magnoni (Singapore)
Anita Pouchard Serra (Argentina)
Uilier Costa-Santos (Brazil)

Article by Olaf Willoughby, May 3rd 2023.

For more information & a selectiion of images see: The Leica Blog post