IF YOU HAD TO choose one thing that you treasured above all others, what would it be? Your new Mercedes? A necklace your grandmother gave you? Your family? Health? Wealth? Happiness?
Julie Andrews raised that question in The Sound Of Music but American poet and photographer Madeleine Marie Slavick repeated it in 1998, to villagers in Vietnam, Ethiopia and China, where she worked on projects for Oxfam.
'I didn't want to do straightforward documentation and the project started as a personal challenge to find my own entry point into these people's lives,' says Slavick. 'It's a question that seems simple and childlike, but it gets adults thinking too. And the reason why someone cherishes something is just as important as what that thing is.'
The answers Slavick received were published in the charity's in-house magazine - 'it was nothing major' - and she kept the idea at the back of her mind as a favourite thing she'd like to expand. After leaving full-time employment with Oxfam early last year to concentrate on writing and photography, Slavick applied to the Hong Kong Arts Development Council for a grant to continue the My Favourite Thing project and develop it into a creative educational exhibition. Funding came through several months later. The council is the main financial sponsor; Oxfam's contribution came mostly in the form of staff help.
Slavick enlisted the aid of 15 other interviewers/photographers, most of whom were working for Oxfam. She says she 'didn't seek out professional photojournalists because I work more closely with people I know and wanted to retain control of the project'. The locations - Brazil, Mozambique and 10 Asian countries including Hong Kong and the mainland - were dictated by where Oxfam had already established research projects.
'It wasn't as broad as I had hoped,' says Slavick. 'Friends and family went to places such as Afghanistan, Haiti and Peru but couldn't get stories. The language barrier was too hard to surmount and we found it was a hard question for a tourist to ask a local straight off. That's why it was easier getting Oxfam researchers who had been working in various areas and had established relationships with the locals to do the interviews.'