I’d provide the links here if I could re-find them… But about two weeks ago it seemed like I was repeatedly coming across blog posts and/or comments to posts complaining about relief and development colleagues (usually from HQ) coming out to the field and taking a bunch of pictures.
On some levels I can understand the sentiment. It can take great deal of awareness and willingness to listen to one’s local counterparts (a.k.a. “humility”) to figure out when and when not to take pictures in the field. In those situations where taking pictures is okay, knowing how many it’s permissible to take and of what and how to take them sensitively requires a level of intuition and an ability to pick up on often intangible cultural and interpersonal signals that can only be gained through experience. Knowing the language helps.
There have been many times out in the field when it was much easier to just tell visitors from my HQ to put their cameras away than to try to explain why taking pictures of kids splashing in the stream was okay, but taking pictures of an old woman hunched by the side of the road selling cigarettes was not. It’s harder when you’re in a place that is visually interesting, beautiful even. It’s also harder when you’re in a situation where pictures are actually needed to tell a story. Words are sometimes not enough.
I was a photographer in a previous life. My first tentative steps outside the comforts of my home country were as a photographer. I first encountered the color and texture of the developing world through high-density Nikkor glass. And it was as a photographer that I was first inducted into the world of humanitarian work, initially as an observer and document-or, but before long crossing the line and becoming a direct participant. Even after I’d fully made the transition, my photography degree lost in a box under the bed, regularly headed to the field with a laptop computer as the primary tool of my trade, it took several years before I stopped schlepping a backpack full of Tri-X film and Nikon lenses with me on every trip.
Pictures of aid work are important. They’re important because they convey the mental equivalent of soundbites (“mindbites”?) outside of the relief zone. Properly done, photographs can enable those not on the front lines to empathize at least enough to take action, whether that action is sending a particular important email or writing a check. Properly done, pictures can add a human dimension to reports that are otherwise lists of numbers. Pictures can introduce the world to what we do.
It’s immensely important to take pictures properly, sensitively. I never take a beneficiary’s picture without asking permission first. If they hesitate even a little, I put the camera away and assure them that I won’t. I refuse to shoot “development porn” – distended bellies, flies on kid’s mouths, squalor for the sake of showing squalor. There are times when pictures of extreme situations are needed in order to communicate the gravity of an extreme situation. But those situations are very rare.
As much as it pains me, there are situations where taking pictures is just not possible, at least for outsiders like myself. Some Muslim contexts or very high security areas, for example. Although I cannot totally turn off my photography-oriented brain in those situations, I have learned to just keep my camera safely turned off and tucked away, out of sight. I’ve resigned myself to the reality that even in places where photography is perfectly acceptable, the very best pictures flash by at 70 km/h outside the car or bus window.
I love the beauty and color and diversity of the people that I am privileged to meet in the course of my work. And, I like to believe that in a way I also love those people themselves. Or I would if I had the chance to know them better. But either way, I would never intentionally take a picture that would portray them in a negative light.
To my many aid-worker/photographer friends out there: keep shooting respectfully and sensitively. Keep telling the stories that only you can tell. See you on Flickr!
Tags: It's not about us, Photography
