Connecting through stories: Vasna Wilson is a documentary photographer who uses her camera to tell stories and enhance human connection
by Mark Lapin

Whether she’s documenting the plight of child scavengers in a Cambodian garbage dump, recording upscale weddings in California, or teaching photography classes in San Francisco, Vasna Wilson’s work is all about human connection.  ‘You go to places that most people don’t see for themselves,’ she says.  ‘You tell the story, explore the human condition, and let people decide.  But my hope is always that somewhere along the line, people will see an image that connects to their lives, that makes them feel better about themselves and less alone.’
 

© Vasna Wilson

Vasna Wilson is a social-documentary photographer dedicated to raising our awareness of problems afflicting women and children worldwide.  Her projects include photographing the work of international non-profit organizations such as Cambodia’s Hope and Operation Smile (which offers free facial surgery to impoverished children disfigured by cleft-palette conditions). 

Now freelancing from her home base in San Francisco, Vasna has worked as a full-time photojournalist for three award-winning newspapers -- The Virginia Pilot in Norfolk, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, and Sun Publications in Illinois where she got her start.  She also has contributed to top publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and the San Francisco Chronicle.  A graduate of the University of Missouri’s top-notch photojournalism program, Vasna is also passionate about teaching photography.  She lectures at California State University, offers seminars through the Digital Photo Academy, and plans to become a full-time professor.

© Vasna Wilson

Twist of fate
Vasna’s personal quest for connection was inspired by a difficult ‘twist of fate.’  She was born in Thailand at the height of the Vietnam War, the daughter of a Thai mother and an American father, who worked as a civilian contractor at the large Air Force base near her home town.  During that troubled era, Amerasian children were the objects of widespread ostracism and discriminatory laws, as if they were somehow responsible for the American bombs falling across the region.   Vasna was excluded from Thai citizenship (and the benefits thereof, including the right to own property or get a decent job) because of her father, who died when she was only five.  Luckily for her, he filed the necessary paperwork for her to obtain American citizenship before he passed away. 

 ‘It was difficult,’ Vasna admits.  ‘Not just for me, but for hundreds of thousands of Amerasian children born in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.  It was like you were an outcast, a third-class citizen.  The worst thing was to be half-and-half because people always want to put you in a grid, and when you don’t fit, they’re conflicted.’
 
One connection that helped Vasna cope was a particularly strong bond with her Thai grandmother.  ‘Back then, there was really no television in my hometown,’ she recalls, ‘so my grandmother would tell us stories.--  tall tales, stories from past generations, folklore, history.  And, of course, there’s always a moral when an elder tells a story to the younger generation.  I was really enthralled by her, fascinated.  I’d sit by her feet and listen for hours.  I couldn’t get enough.’ 

That early love of story-telling still shows in Vasna’s work as a photojournalist and documentary photographer.  ‘I think photojournalism is not a style or a fashion,’ she says.  ‘It's not just taking candid photos.  It's a method of telling a story about people, places and things.  To tell the story visually, you have to understand your subject and their condition at the moment.  You have to understand your equipment, anticipate peak moments, and know how to use light.’
 

© Vasna Wilson

Nobody wants to leave their homeland
Facing limited prospects in Thailand, Vasna’s family emigrated to the U.S. when she was 14.  They settled first in Hawaii, then moved to Las Vegas when hard times hit the islands.   Life in the States expanded opportunities for Vasna but did little to ease her alienation.  ‘Nobody wants to leave their homeland,’ she says, ‘but sometimes they have to for political or other unbearable reasons.  And once you leave, there is always this desire, this longing to connect back to the past.  If you don’t have a place that you can call home, a place where you really belong, you always yearn for something more.’

Vasna began to discover that ‘something more’ when she took a job at an art gallery in Las Vegas.  The gallery was in an unlikely location, The Forum Casino on the Vegas strip, but it proved to be an inspiring place for Vasna.  ‘I’d been searching for connection my whole life,’ she says, ‘and something about artists and the history of art really resonated with me.’
 

© Vasna Wilson

Breakthrough in Brazil
Eager to learn more, Vasna went back to college at UNLV, where she studied art history, anthropology and sociology.  She also took advantage of study-abroad opportunities, including a backpacking trip to the cultural monuments of Europe ((The Western European Cultural History Tour, offered by Eastern Michigan University)
and participated in the Semester at Sea program.  The real turning point came when she was taking a photography class in El Salvador, Brazil during her semester at sea.  One of her photography assignments was to stroll around taking pictures of locals.  Vasna was shy about poking her camera into strangers’ faces but she overcame her reservations and made a breakthrough.

‘I was in a coastal town in northern Brazil with my Canon AE1 and 50 mm lens,’ she recalls, ‘and I saw these three women at a bus-stop.  There was a young girl in the center and two older women on either side, and the composition was just incredible.  The moment I raised my camera, they all looked at me but didn’t say a word so I went ahead and took the picture.  I only got one frame of it but, at that moment, something happened.  I connected inside.  I knew I wanted to be a storyteller and that my medium was the camera.  I knew that I wanted to be a photographer and that I had the potential to be good at it.’

Vasna was talented enough to land a plum photojournalism job right out of school.  It was with Copley Chicago’s Sun Publications, which put out a group of 14 community newspapers around the Chicago area.  ‘The publisher was very committed to photography,’ says Vasna, ‘so they hired a lot of good writers, good designers and talented photographers.  For five years in a row, they won first place awards in photography and design.  I worked with a wonderful writer and super-talented editor.  It was the best job I ever had.’
 

© Vasna Wilson