London is privileged to be hosting the first European show by the Colombian photography collective with the jazzy name Click por los barrios (“Click for the neighbourhoods”). I haven’t been this excited by a group of photographs since my own fledgeling professional output in the 1950s of photographic social essays of Portobello street scenes and Teddy girls.

A Trace of My Existence is the name of this exhibition of 16 stunning and sensitive black-and-white photographs by youngsters aged 5 to 26 from Colombia, all of whom have been trained and sponsored by Click por los barrios. Fifty more photographs are awaiting their turn on tour. The children themselves, alas, will not be able to join their photos, but the news of this show travelling to what is to them almost another planet will undoubtedly excite them.

You can catch this unusual and life-affirming exhibit now at the beginning of its summer run at that historic Victorian edifice Chats Palace Arts Centre, the community arts centre in the Homerton area of Hackney, East London.

The young people who took the photographs come from various neighbourhoods around the outskirts of Medellín, the second largest city in Colombia. The neighbourhoods have poetic names — La Iguana, El Pacifico, Bello Oriente, Altos de la Torre, Carpinelo, Moravia — that belie the tension and poverty that permeate these outskirts. Many of the youngsters originally lived in rural areas, but continual armed political conflict displaced them to these city barrios.

Some of the youngsters work selling things on buses or in the street. Their parents may pursue trades or keep modest shops, struggling to maintain an adequate living and to make peace with their pasts, caught up in the civil unrest between guerrillas and paramilitary groups that has historically plagued the country. One former President, Andrés Pastrana, even went so far as to label the violence between rival factions “a war against civilians”. After decades of disturbance, civilians are less influenced by the ideologies of either side than by a longing for safety.

With the help of the show’s curator, Peter Young, of the Chats Palace photography department, the London photographer Zoë Petersen spent two years making it possible for the exhibit to come here. I asked her about the children of Medellín whom she observed when visiting the Colombian photo classes. “One little boy who used to busk on buses on a Saturday swapped his work day to Sunday so he could take part in the Saturday workshops with Click,” she says.

“There’s no way of studying around here; there’s no money for equipment or school fees — nothing,” says the young Henry Albert Garcio, 18, in the text that accompanies the exhibition. “I liked the photo workshop because I learnt how to handle the camera and composition.”

And handle them they do — Henry, Jessica, Hugo, July, Julian, Juan, John and the others — 10-year-olds, 11-year-olds, 16-year-olds. The photographs in the exhibit show unexpected facility. Fresh eyes look at moments of confidence, abandon, clarity and playfulness. The subjects are full of charm, humour, pathos and a kind of triumphant dignity. Free of dogma or clichés, the pictures express the simplicity of childhood, the delights of friendship, the mysteries of environment, the possibilities for normal exuberance in a culture of displacement. One little girl tips upside-down in a handstand. A boy’s sober face confronts us like a luminous panther in a jungle of ferns. A sturdy young fellow poses with a shovel. A child sprawls on the ground beneath a clothesline of just-washed trousers. The angles, the light, are happy accidents or well chosen.

The children, Petersen tells me, would go on field trips supervised by Click, who donated cameras of all types. The teachers brought snacks for the kids whom they knew would not have eaten that day. Some of the surprises that came out of such excursions were meeting students from other barrios for the first time, learning a spirit of co-operation, and the first blush of pride in their own neighbourhoods.

And, of course, the cameras.

One of the young photographers, Carlos Santos, 26, describes a workshop he attended: “When I arrived, a small group of young boys and girls and a few teenagers were there, handling cameras and looking at negatives they’d taken.” Santiago Velez, 18, reports: “When I picked up the camera, I started to tremble and sweat, as though I was getting close to someone very special.”

The youngsters learnt to look and to share what they saw. Instruction, supplies and darkroom all free, provided by Click.

What is Click? How did it start such a project? Five years ago, four professional documentary photographers from Colombia who worked for Reuters and national and international publications, together with a Greek photographer in residence who worked for the UN, were becoming increasingly disgruntled with the insistent media demand for ever more gory and gruesome images. These five photojournalists formulated a plan to counter the relentless pressure of their assignments: they would each take a neighbourhood on the outskirts, distribute cameras and instruction, and let the kids choose images meaningful to them. Click’s intention is to provide sustained support to the youngsters who have taken their workshops, and they have helped several of them to get grants and further education. Proceeds from the sale of prints from A Trace of My Existence will go towards helping the students to support their visions of a future beyond the human rights conflicts that marred their beginnings.

Colombia, in the northwest of South America, has some of the most stunningly beautiful landscapes in the world. It is bordered by Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil, with the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Atlantic on the other. It sits in the middle of the world, right on the Equator. And one pound, incidentally, will get you 3,568 Colombian pesos.

The relatively well-heeled tourist can relax in Bogotá and Medellín. But to your average armchair traveller and movie-maker like me, Colombia is a mythic place of drug traffic, hitmen, car-bombing, assassinations, hostage-taking and paramilitary groups engaged in power struggles with the guerrillas — who no longer seem interested in representing “the people”. The people, it seems, are tired of fights that neither side can win or walk away from.

Except that in Medellín, rare blooms are bursting forth. And I don’t mean the orchids for which the city is famous. It is the kids who are opening up, grabbing a camera instead of a gun. As John Jairo Borjas, 16, says: “We make use of the opportunities and fly like birds.”

A Trace of My Existence is at Chats Palace Arts Centre, Hackney, London E9 (020-8533 0227; chatspalace.com)

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