Development porn: white, 1st-world photogs take most 3rd-world pics

A cluster of blog posts have popped up recently around the ethics of "development pornography," and the fact that most images we see of the developing world were shot by photographers (and presumably, video cameramen) who are not from the countries, classes, or ethnic groups they're photographing.

"Recognizing everybody's communication rights in the information society is not mere slogan or campaign; it's an integral part of social justice," say members of fair trade photography group Kijiji Vision, whose "mission is to reveal, support, develop and promote indigenous photographers from the majority world" while "making it easier for image buyers and the general public worldwide to access their work."

Here's a snip from one post on the "Technology, Health, and Development" blog:

In the past month there has been a slate of news from Reuters, MSF and others, surrounding imagery and how western media portrays the world. Imaging Famine is about media representations and was mentioned this week by a Reuters blog. This is nothing new, but the debate is good, and as the Reuters piece points out, they have covered the issues surrounding 'development pornography' previously.

Another Reuters writer also picked up on this entire theme: Viewing the poor through Western eyes, I recommend the short read below and checking out the Kijiji/Majority World websites-

"Part of the reason for this kind of post-colonial choreography by INGOs is because they are still required to be the visual mediators of the poor world to the rich world. In Western society, our INGOs are inter-cultural gatekeepers. And you would often have for example, the young white INGO nurse talking passionately on television beside starving children…" Full story.

(…) Two other bits of related content from this week. First, Buffett (son of Warren) donated $730,000 to the journalism school at Nebraska to help student photojournalists record the wants of the world. And finally Together TV (yet another video outlet) has launched more video "in their own words".

Cat Laine from the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG) has a thoughtful post on the topic here, which ends with the following:

Another interesting thing that this brings up is the relationship of the photo's subject to the photographer. In the post, they mention the following fact: "Upwards of 90% of the images of the majority world that are seen in the western media are produced by white photographers from the USA or Europe."

When I was in Cap-Haitien, Haiti last summer, I took various pictures of people who were involved in the charcoal training workshop, as well as folks who were on site. I took a few shots of these 2 sisters. [At Left] is the pic they posed for me, a Haitian-American female.

[At right] is how the posed for Dan, an engineer who was also on the trip [a white American male] a few minutes later.

Via Africa Unchained.