Georgina Goodwin is a self-taught freelance Kenyan documentary photographer based in Nairobi.
With 11 years experience she specialises in social and environmental issues in Africa, her work on climate change in the Rift Valley and life in a Samburu women’s village emancipated from underage marriage and FGM winning category awards at the Kenya Photo Awards 2016. Most recently Georgina was one of 20 chosen speakers for TEDNairobi presenting on the strength of Africa’s women alongside powerful slideshow of women portraits.
These images are of people with Albinism taken on assignment for CNN during the world’s first Mr and Ms Albinism Pageant held in October 2016 in Nairobi, Kenya. In Africa, Albinism is associated with many negative misconceptions and superstitions. Seen as a punishment from God or bad luck, even a contagious ‘disease’, people living with albinism (PWA) in Africa often suffer stigma, alienation and physical abuse. According to the Albino Association of Kenya, 90% of people with albinism in Kenya come from broken homes, raised by single mothers. Albinism has the potential to affect young people both emotionally and psychologically with social attitudes often effecting how they perceive themselves. Evidence from research suggests that for a child to be socially competent he or she needs to have a positive self-concept and demonstrate socially acceptable behaviours. In October 2016, under the banner “Beauty Beyond The Skin”, the world’s first Mr and Ms Albanism Pageant was organized by the Albinism Society of Kenya (ASK) to fight the stigma associated with albinism and to build the confidence of albino youth in Kenya. Not only raising money for Albino’s cancer treatment, counseling and for the provision of sunscreen lotion which helps in prevention of skin cancer, the Pageant event championed for better medical services for the challenges that are characteristic of the condition and brings to light the need to address all violations of human rights.
Georgina is represented by Getty Images and MetaphorImages International Documentary Photographers Collective, and contributor to Agence France-Presse and Everyday Climate Change. Through her work Georgina has met and photographed Nelson Mandela, South African singer Yvonne ChakaChaka and Japanese football star Hidetoshi Nakata. Her personal projects which she carries out alongside her commissioned assignments include documenting FGM, climate change, mental disabilities in Nairobi teenagers, and Cancer in Africa, which was nominated for the prestigious Prix Pictet 2015 Award for Sustainability and Photography. Georgina was awarded Kenya News Photographer of the Year 2014 for her coverage of the Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi in September 2013 and her work on the Kenyan post-election violence in 2007/8 has been widely published and was shortlisted for the Prix-Bayeux War Photographer Award in 2008.
Georgina works with the Canon digital system and teaches photojournalism workshops to young Kenyan journalists as a consultant with the Aga Khan University and has an extensive archive of commissioned and personal images of Africa’s people, landscapes, wildlife and travel. Her work has been published by NY Times, Newsweek, Elle Mag, FT, Vogue Italia, BBC, CNN, AFP, Reuters, UN, World Bank and many others, and has been shown in Times Square NYC, The Louvre Paris, San Francisco Public Library, and by Magnum Foundation and #Dysturb at Look3 Festival’s #ReframeClimate exhibition in Charlottesville, USA. Georgina is recognized for her unique access to local subjects, maintains international ethics and photo-journalistic standards and has an avid following on her social media where she shares her powerful images. [Official Website]
