Award-winning photographer and cartoonist Yasin Osman harnesses education with art to make change in his community. In 2015, kids from his Toronto neighborhood asked him about the technical aspects of photography. This inspired Osman to launch a project to teach at-risk kids about photography and visual arts. The project’s name, Shoot for Peace, aptly represents their collective mission of swapping out gunshots with camera shots in their neighborhood and beyond.
This photography mentorship program Osman aims to counter violence in Toronto and offer options for youth wanting to pursue art. First launched in his Regent Park neighborhood, it has since grown to other communities and areas.
Though Osman’s work as a photographer for entities like Nike, Redbull, Toronto Raptors and VICE magazine and his regular contributions to The New Yorker magazine as a cartoonist may keep his hands full at times, this special communal project is the most important thing to him.
Osman wants to demonstrate how art can build relationships and connect people. As such, Shoot for Peace strives to empower local youth on a path to become leaders of their communities. Since its foundation, the project has provided over a hundred youngsters with new resources. This includes cameras, jobs and new skills that they can use in various avenues.
Capturing emotion, happiness and humanity through a camera lens
Osman vividly recalls the early days of Shoot for Peace. Then, the project got its potential not from its means, but from shared passions and creative ideas. “We’re all here because we love photography,” he told incoming mentees back in November 2015.
“I don’t have cameras for everyone but I promise one day we will. For now, all I can guarantee is that I will help you bring to life all those ideas in your head. Whether if that’s through my own camera, your cellphone or your iPod, we are going to take photos and we won’t stop.”
Almost six years later, Osman and the Toronto youth haven’t stopped. In fact, their shared experiences have helped Osman himself grow and learn in different ways. “We tend to forget that just as much as we are able to teach children, we learn so much from children as well,” he says. “Being brave, being creative—these are things that I learn from kids.”
Bravery and creativity are not the only things his work has given back to Osman, though. In 2017, he came across Love Army for Somalia, an initiative intended to provide support for people suffering from drought and famine. This prompted Osman to go back to the place he had not seen since he was a kid. Photographing the resilience of Somali communities and traveling back to Africa have given him “a new perspective on happiness,” he wrote.
A return to Africa has given Yasin Osman a new meaning of happiness
Osman has lived in Toronto’s east-end neighborhood of Regent Park all his life. “I don’t know anybody who’s died from cancer,” he says. “I only know people who have been killed by gun violence.” It was this consciousness that led him to start Shoot for Peace in his home community. He hoped this effort could give local youth a chance to evade what the circumstances offer.
During the time he spent in Africa, Osman felt that being in the motherland gave him a new consciousness. “I was reminded of my importance as a representative for my people,” he notes. “Being in the motherland speaking my mother tongue was an experience that is truly unparalleled, a feeling of home I’ll remember forever.”
Osman was reminded of something he asked himself when he was getting into photography: what he loved about it. He “always gravitated towards people, talking to people, and capturing emotion and happiness.”
Upon his return to Africa after so many years, Osman “captured the moments that led [him] to reevaluate my idea of happiness.” “If we let her, Africa can teach us happiness in its purest form,” he writes.
“Dear Ayeeyo” by Yasin Osman, set to tour internationally
Though still busy juggling outreach and various projects, Osman’s most recent exhibition, Dear Ayeeyo, will tour internationally this year. “The reason I called it Dear Ayeeyo,” he says, “is literally just in tribute to my grandmother, me showing her the Somalia she hadn’t seen for 30 years plus… [it’s] like a tribute to her.”
Readers can see more of Yasin Osman’s work here, and his self-published comic book Grandpa Ali & Friends here.
