Another poignant post from Stephanie Finigan. Stephanie is a graduate student, frequent traveler, and a remarkably untalented photographer. You can follow her on Twitter at @StephFini.
We have just passed the six-month mark since the United Nations declared that Somalia has officially fallen into famine. The news media was flooded – as it was six months ago – with stories about the struggle aid groups are still having getting food into the country. Many of the accompanying photos were devastating shots of emaciated children, sitting on dirt floors, clinging to adults, clearly on the verge of death. The photos were dramatic and attention-getting, meant to raise awareness about the on-going crisis….and they also were meant to sell newspapers. It is here, at the point where consciousness-raising meets consumerism, that we find the daunting issue of “poverty porn”.
While there is no strict definition of the term, “poverty porn” usually refers to the use of graphic images of people (often children) living in poverty, and are meant to yield some sort of monetary gain for someone other than the subject of the image. In other words, the starving kids from Somalia you’ve seen on the pages of the New York Times don’t get paid for the use of their own images – someone else does. International aid groups have been accused of using “poverty porn” in their advertising and marketing campaign for years. Some organizations looking for donations use the most tug-at-your-heart-strings-to-open-your-purse-strings photographs possible in order to get the public’s attention and – ultimately – donations. Much in the same vain as the old motto in traditional business advertising, “sex sells”, in the world of international aid, “sadness sells,. These attention-getting tactics have been heavily criticized for lacking dignity, promoting stereotypical images of poverty, and for painting the poor as helpless victims rather than very capable human beings who simply lack opportunities.
I have wrestled with the notion of “poverty porn” myself in my travels as a tourist through some of the poorer countries in the world. During my travels, I do take pictures of some of the more difficult images I see, though I continue even now to feel conflicted when I do, and I have to ask myself some hard questions: is it wrong of me to do this? What are my intentions? These are people, not animals in a zoo, not sculptures in a park….is it OK to photograph them? Am I being insensitive? Or even (cringe) exploitative??
I am not looking to sell, frame, or even print them, but what I want to do with them is capture the reality of what is happening in the world around me – as ugly as it may. Though it may sound like I am riding on a moral high horse (I’m not – believe me, I’m more likely to be trampled by one), I admit that in some way I feel almost a sense of responsibility to take these pictures and share them with the people in my life who are curious and interested.
By not taking photos, by bearing witness to the poverty and sadness and suffering I see and then keeping it to myself, it is as if I am keeping a shameful secret hidden away. Poverty is ugly and difficult to witness, and it makes us all feel uncomfortable, helpless, and often guilty for what we do have….no one wants to feel those things, so its easier to turn a blind eye, look away, or plead ignorance. For me, photographing this poverty was – and is – important, as it acknowledges that there is a problem, and acknowledgement is the first step towards fixing any problem.
There are people who will argue that my taking these photos is wrong, and that no matter what my intentions I do exploit people by photographing them, using them to serve some inner-drive I have to make myself – a “rich” white Westerner – feel better about the randomness of life that allowed me to be born in a place with a healthy economy rather than a poor one. But I do not see my photos, nor the recent media photos from Somalia, as “poverty porn.”They are jarring. They are attention-getting. They are sending a dark message, and they force us all to think about things that none of us really want to think about. Yet I believe that the disservice to those who are suffering is not to show the world photographs of their plight, but to ignore it, to look away, or to pretend there is nothing to photograph in the first place.
