I believe this is good work, and I feel honoured and excited
that I get to do it as part of my job (it’s not my whole job, which is why I
refer to myself a “semi-photojournalist” in the title of this post). Nonetheless, sometimes when I go out
with the camera I feel a sort of ethical discomfort. I come to the villages with a small delegation of foreign
and Nepali development workers from Kathmandu, with my fancy camera, and I take
pictures of poor people who have been the recipients of western
generosity. And then I leave, and
they remain. Our partner agencies,
of course, are all Nepali, and they are committed for the long-term to the
communities in which they work. I
have no criticisms to make about MCC’s approach to development – it’s admirably
sophisticated and sensitive to the huge web of difficulties inherent in western
humanitarian aid. But I wonder how
I as an individual appear to the people whose lives I’m photographing. And I’m always acutely aware that the
camera I’m using costs more than most of my subjects earn in a year.
We tend to think of photographs as magical windows into
other places, allowing us to see with our own eyes a village in Bolivia, a
school in Chad. But every
photograph has been taken by someone who has chosen to represent reality in a
certain way, consciously or unconsciously cropping out much that is essential
to full understanding. This is crucial to keep in mind when looking at photographs
of poverty and people who are poor. Far too often, photographs in the aid genre depict their
subjects as exotic tribespeople whose pitiful sufferings can be alleviated only
by the charity of westerners. We
as donors are distanced from the objects of our pity so that we have to reach
down to “help” them instead of walking and working together with them. Stripped of their humanity, they become
a means of serving our own self-satisfaction. Photographers can unconsciously perpetuate these harmful perceptions,
and I feel the weight of all these considerations every time I take a picture
in the field.
I’m thinking in particular of a visit I made recently with
colleagues to a family that had received a one-time gift of food support
earlier this year. Most of our
projects in Nepal involve working together with communities to develop food
security, offering support and training rather than straightforward gifts of
food, so this visit had a distinctly different feel than the others I’ve been
on. It was a chilly day up in the
hills south of Kathmandu, and we stood outside this family’s modest cottage,
shivering in the cold and the clouds that almost engulfed us. The father of the family patiently
answered all our questions about the aid he had received, about his children,
about how hard they all had to work to make ends meet. I pulled out my camera and took one
picture. Then I put the camera
away, unable even to contemplate taking more. I felt, frankly, foolish. It wasn’t that I was ashamed that my
organization had helped to alleviate this family’s hunger – not at all. But I was very keenly aware of the
enormous gulf of experience that lay between their lives and mine, and I felt
that it shouldn’t be so. It seemed
suddenly wrong to take pictures of them from across the gulf, and share those
pictures with people who were also on my side. Image 1: Poor family
grateful for food we gave them.
Good job, us.
I’m trying to express my discomfort as clearly as I can. I think it’s excellent and admirable to
donate to organizations like MCC and that more people should do it. And it’s excellent and admirable to try
to educate people in North America about the realities of life in other parts
of the world. Taking photographs
of development work helps to accomplish both these goals. It’s a good thing, but also a difficult
thing. I don’t want to be a
spectator, either of poverty or of its alleviation. I want to be a partner, and I think that most people who
support humanitarian aid and development work feel the same way. Yet photographs, while essential for
engaging people in this work, necessarily create both spectators and spectacles. And taking
photographs makes me – if only for a moment – a bystander who coolly observes
and documents human grief.
I don’t have a solution to this dilemma. I’m certainly not going to stop taking
photographs, except in the moments when conscience pricks me to put the camera
away. To those pricks of
conscience I’m going to try to become more sensitive, rather than less. And I’m going to try to be a more
repsonsible and ethical semi-photojournalist. Nonetheless, I think the feeling of foolishness won’t go
away – which is probably a good thing.
There is a sort of ridiculousness about what I do, if you think about
it.
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