BANGKOK - Nobody who sees the images fails to be amazed.
The 'insight out' project took 147 children between the ages of eight and 18 from the tsunami zones of Thailand's Phang Nga and Indonesia's Aceh, equipped them with simple point-and-shoot digital cameras and left them to record images of their own choosing.

The results, making the rounds of exhibitions in Bangkok, were stunning: pictures of lyrical beauty and poignance, often powerful in their stark simplicity, yet never depressing.

One picture even made it to the pages of the national geographic magazine.

The project - originally a small experiment by Japanese graphic designer Yumi Koto and her photographer husband Masaru - grew bigger when the couple saw what the children were producing.

It developed into a photography and writing workshop and exchange for youth in Aceh and Phang Nga of diverse backgrounds: Acehnese, Thai, Myanmarese, Moken, Buddhist, Muslim and Christian.

They were taught basic photography and writing skills by teams from local non-governmental organisations as well as international media and photography professionals.

Twelve-year-old Win Maw, a Myanmar girl, won first prize in a National Geographic Thailand photo contest.

Tik, 11, a Thai Moken boy, had his work published in the portfolio section of new arrivals magazine.

To many of the professional journalists and photographers who took part in the exercise, it was the children who ended up guiding the adults.

And even more powerful than the results on photographic paper, said photography director Suthep Kritsanavarin, was the way the children, who had all lost family members to the tsunami, went about the project.

He told The Straits Times: 'there were no boundaries between the Thai, Myanmarese and Acehnese children. And that is greater than the tsunami itself.'

the Straits Times/Asia News Network