©Lee-Ann Olwage, from The Right to Play

The International Women in Photo Association (IWPA), a French non profit aiming to create global change and reach gender equality and women empowerment, awards prizes to visual storytellers from around the world. I was lucky enough to win the 2023 Emerging Laureate Award for my series on women incarcerated with life sentences, and I was even luckier to be introduced to the work of, and exhibited with, six other photographers whose work I can now introduce to you.

Today we share the work of Lee-Ann Olwage, from South Africa, whose series The Right to Play won the Professional Laureate Award. Working in collaboration with students at a non-profit boarding school for girls in Kenya, Lee-Ann Olwage’s series exudes pride and unadulterated joy, as the girls pose in ways they chose themselves, imagining themselves with unlimited opportunities and empowered to reach their fullest potential.

©Lee-Ann Olwage, Portrait of Michealle Naeku (12 years), a student at Kakenya’s Dream school in Enoosaen, Kenya. Naeku is an avid reader and dreams of becoming a nurse one day. The flowers are used to create a playful world where girls are shown exuding pride and joy and in this way the flowers are also used to reclaim their futures and dreams and to re-imagine the narrative of child marriage.

The Right To Play

What do girls dream of? And what happens when a supportive environment is created where girls are empowered and given the opportunity to learn and dream? The Right To Play creates a playful world where girls are shown in an empowered and affirming way. Every day, girls face barriers to education caused by poverty, cultural norms, and practices, poor infrastructure and violence.

For this project, I’m working with school girls from Kakenya’s Dream who have avoided FGM and child marriage to show what the world could look like when girls are given the opportunity to continue learning in an environment that supports them and their dreams.

Worldwide, 129 million girls are out of school and only 49 percent of countries have achieved gender parity in primary education with the gap widening at secondary school level. From a young age, many girls are told what their future will look like. The expectation is: you grow up, you get a husband and you have children. And that’s your life.

Kakenya’s Dream, is a nonprofit organization that leverages education to empower girls, end harmful traditional practices including female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage, and transform communities in rural Kenya. Their goal is to invest in girls from rural communities through educational, health, and leadership initiatives to create agents of change and to create a world where African women and girls are valued and respected as leaders and equal in every way. – Lee-Ann Olwage

©Lee-Ann Olwage, Portrait of Purity Ntetia Lopores (14 years), a student at Kakenya’s Dream school in Enoosaen, Kenya. « I love art and would love to pursue music in the future. » The flowers are used to create a playful world where girls are shown exuding pride and joy and in this way the flowers are also used to reclaim their futures and dreams and to re-imagine the narrative of child marriage.

Lee-Ann Olwage is a visual storyteller from South Africa who uses collaborative storytelling to explore themes relating to gender and identity. She is interested in using the medium of photography as a mode of co- creation and celebration. With her long term projects, she aims to create a space where people she collaborates with can play an active part in the creation of images they feel tells their stories in a way that is affirming and celebratory.

Notable awards include a World Press Photo Award, 2020 & 2023, Sony World Photography Awards, 2023, International Women in Photo Award
Laurette 2023, Winner of This Is Gender, 2021, Pride Photo Award, 2021, CAP Prize winner, 2022, Marilyn Stafford Fotoreportage Award shortlist,
2021+2022, International Photography Awards Honorable Mention, 2020 and selected for The New York Times Portfolio Review 2022.

Follow Lee-Ann on Instagram: @leeannolwage

©Lee-Ann Olwage, Portrait of Rahab Tumuka from the series The Right To Play. This project was created in collaboration with Kakenya’s Dream, a nonprofit organization that leverages education to empower girls, end harmful traditional practices including female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage, and transform communities in rural Kenya.

©Lee-Ann Olwage, Portrait of Michealle Naeku (12 years), a student at Kakenya’s Dream school in Enoosaen, Kenya. Naeku is an avid reader and dreams of becoming a nurse one day. The flowers are used to create a playful world where girls are shown exuding pride and joy and in this way the flowers are also used to reclaim their futures and dreams and to re-imagine the narrative of child marriage.

©Lee-Ann Olwage, Girls at Kakenya’s Dream school in Enoosaen, Kenya run and play in the classroom. Many children in rural Kenya don’t get the opportunity to continue their education beyond primary school level and instead of playing and learning young girls get married or help their families by getting a job. Alishers Paranai Sakasah Enoosaen · Kenya · 2021

©Lee-Ann Olwage, from The Right to Play

©Lee-Ann Olwage, from The RIght to Play

©Lee-Ann Olwage, Portrait of Alishers Paranai Sakasah (11 years), a student at Kakenya’s Dream school in Enoosaen, Kenya. Sakasah dreams of becoming a pilot one day. The flowers are used to create a playful world where girls are shown exuding pride and joy and in this way the flowers are also used to reclaim their futures and dreams and to re-imagine the narrative of child marriage.

©Lee-Ann Olwage, Portrait of Florence Wantiru Kenywa (11 years), a student at Kakenya’s Dream school in Enoosaen, Kenya. The flowers are used to create a playful world where girls are shown exuding pride and joy and in this way the flowers are also used to reclaim their futures and dreams and to re-imagine the narrative of child marriage.

International Women in Photo, IWPA, is a French non profit association that pursues two major MISSIONS on a global scale:

• work for equality through photography in the world.
• The promotion of women photographers and visual storytellers of all origins and nationalities.

The roots for IWPA’s goals lie in the under representation of women photographers. Unfortunately, women photographers still do not receive sufficient recognition nor assignments and only make up for a small percentage of all the photographs we see every day in the press, social media, museums or art fairs. IWPA fulfills a social role by drawing attention to social issues that are often ignored or simply not covered by the male dominated perspective of our world.

How do they fulfill these missions? IWPA wants to make women’s vision count by

• Increasing the visibility and diversity of women photographers in the field of photography
• Proposing actions around education and training in photography for women and students, enhancing their skills and reinforcing capacity buildin
• Promote photography as an empowerment tool for girls and women
• Using  photography as a tool to promote tolerant and non-sexist values

In order to give more visibility to women photographers, IWPA acts as a platform and organizes the annual IWPA Award, a photography competition that is followed by exhibitions in major cities and capitals across the Middle East, Asia and Europe showing the work of the laureate and finalists to a large and international audience.

Instagram @IWPA_photo/