All proceeds from the sale of the coffee-table book, which was first launched in Manila in April, will go to the ANAK-TnK Foundation, a Filipino non-profit organisation that has helped more than 2,800 street kids since it started in 1998. Sunil targets to raise $35,000 through sales of Mysterious Happiness at Leica Galerie and the company’s online store for the foundation’s rehabilitation programmes, which reaches out to children with special needs, those living in the streets and the slums, as well as those scavenging for a living by providing them with an education and improving their living conditions.

This is the third fundraiser Leica has done for the foundation, after two previous photo exhibitions, with the company covering the costs of items such as the logistics and the printing of photographs, as well as the travel expenses and equipment for local photojournalist Mathias Heng and Manila-based Swedish-born photographer Anna Bärlund, to capture life in Manila’s slum communities. From stark black-and-white portraits to the beaming faces of playing children, the result is a powerful visual narrative coupled with real-life tatler_tatler_stories from Father Matthieu Dauchez, the executive director of ANAK-TnK Foundation, on how happiness can be found even in the hardest of circumstances.

“The beautiful pictures function as a bridge in connecting people to the situation here,” says Father Matthieu, who has worked with the foundation since the very beginning.

“We are thankful for Leica’s contribution not only materially, but also sending people such as Mathias and Anna to the field to meet the people in order to make an impact.” 

Mathias, who has covered poverty and conflictinflicted regions for international publications such as The Washington Post and Oxfam America, and is also a photography instructor at Leica Akademie, says, “I want people to be aware that even though those in the slums may suffer from poor living conditions, there’s so much to learn from their open and friendly nature. Even though they have less, they complain less and can be as happy as any of us.”

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Sunil first came to know of the ANAK-TnK Foundation in 2013 through his good friend, Alexis de Laporte, who was then Jaeger-LeCoultre’s regional managing director for Southeast Asia and Australia. During a personal visit to the slum communities at his own expense—something he still does at least once a year—Sunil saw children living in squalid slum conditions, at risk not only from substance abuse and prostitution, but also disease and malnutrition. 

Deeply moved, he set the camera gears in motion and the first fundraising photo exhibition, Left Behind, was organised in February 2014 by Leica and Jaeger-LeCoultre, followed by a second one, Left Behind II, by Leica last March. Both exhibitions sold prints taken by Mathias of Manila’s abandoned street children.