AWARD-WINNING photographer Ella Dickinson, who grew up in Calne, has been winning international praise for her latest exhibition, Any Girl, a powerful and moving series of pictures which reflect the struggle facing teenage girls in Kenya.

Ella, 26 and 24-year-old Jeremy Tan travelled to Kenya this June with child development charity Compassion UK for a project which began as an exploration into the self-esteem and self-image of girls living in the vulnerability of poverty and formed a testament to their strength, courage and resilience.

“When Jeremy and I started the project we asked ourselves, ‘How can we portray the hardship of life without undermining their dignity? How can we let the girls direct these images themselves and produce a portrait they are proud of?” reflected Ella, who studied photojournalism at Westminster University and now works as a charity PR manager based in London.

Despite increasing development and rapid urbanisation in Kenya, almost half of secondary school age girls are still not enrolled in secondary education. It is estimated that 25% of these girls are married before their 18th birthday.

The ten girls who are part of the exhibition are residents of the Mathare and Gatina slum communities in Nairobi and rural Mashuru, 130 kilometres south-east of Nairobi in Kenya’s rift valley. The various effects of urban and rural poverty are a daily reality for these girls; long walks to fetch water, the pressure of Female Genital Mutilation, early marriage and the threat of sexual violence.

Ella, who specialises in humanitarian and documentary photography, explained: “Many children living in poverty are often depicted as powerless and victims. It was important for us to convey that, in one sense, these girls are just like any other girls, anywhere in the world, but they also display an astounding strength in the face of pressure from their communities or circumstances,”

“We wanted the girls to choose their poses and have some direction over the images. We asked where they would like to be photographed and we wanted their portraits to reveal something of their characters,” said Jeremy Tan.

Compassion is an international child development charity with more than 60 years’ experience working with some of the world’s poorest children. Francis Mbore, director of a Compassion project in Mathare Valley, Nairobi, explained: “There is actually a very big difference between girls in the project and the girls who are not…they have a high self-esteem because they are getting an education. They have been able to discover the potential inside them, despite what is outside the Compassion project walls and all around them.”

The full set of images was featured by the BBC on International Day of the Girl Child, a United Nations awareness day earlier this month. Marie Claire named it October’s must-see exhibition and ELLE magazine endorsed the exhibition as "Powerful, moving, unmissable!”

The exhibition is at the Salvation Army International HQ, next to the Millennium Bridge in London, until November 29, Monday-Friday from 8am-4.30pm. Entry is free.