Thursday, November 20th, 2008...4:45 am
Pentaxploitation: do photography and social change really go together?
In the 19th century, do-it-yourself x-ray kits became popular as people x-rayed their own boots, hands, and plants (not to mention weirder stuff) to find out what the invisible world really looked like. Wired’s Alexis Madrigal has a great post about this featuring links to San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art’s Brought To Light: Photography and the Invisible exhibit, which looks at the social consequences of x-rays and photography of the period.
Speaking about the exhibit, Madrigal asks ‘What are the social consequences when science allows us to see things that had previously been invisible?’ This gets at what I think is a key problem for social change oriented photography.
Original Photo by Flikr user Frishmilch (CC 2.0 Generic)
Collective Lens is a website that promotes photography for social change. Anyone can upload a photo, submit an essay, search for photos and organizations or follow up on causes they’ve discovered through the sites’ photos. Websites like this one are doing their best to address the perception that photography and social change don’t go hand in hand.
Why the perception? As Collective Lens contributor Andris Bjornson points out in his article on ‘Giving Back To Your Subjects‘, photography often involves taking a less-fortunate person’s picture and not giving anything back.
Case in point: in 1994 South African photographer Kevin Carter won a Pulitzer prize for his photo of a starving and collapsed Sudanese toddler being followed by vultures. He came under heavy criticism for taking the photo, instead of helping the child. I have to admit I think of this photo and am wary when I see exhibits or photo essays intended to raise awareness. Do I want to see the invisible world at so high a cost? What happens to the people in these pictures?
Collective Lens is a good step towards encouraging everyone to bring issues they care about into focus, and to act on these issues so that positive change comes out of the photos on the site. But mostly, their concrete followups are very much of the ‘donate!’ variety. Donations are great, but what I would love to see them do is more photography projects that empower their subjects by teaching them to make their own photographs. An example of a project like this is Canadian youth organization LOVE (Leave Out ViolencE). They teach youth who have been victims of violence to become reporters of violence through photography, journalism and broadcasting workshops. Collective Lens’ photos of kids in Africa are beautiful, but LOVE’S scratchy black and white online gallery hits home for me because with this kind of photography, the lens goes both ways.
But you do not have to wait for Collective Lens to do something about this. Since Collective Lens depends on viewer content it’s up to you to influence their subject matter: sign up and get out there! Take photos of the world around you and the change you want to see and upload it to their site. Promote respect for the world you photograph. Challenge photographers who promote complacency and ask yourself: where is the invisible world?
4 Comments
November 21st, 2008 at 11:04 am
Several recommendations. The case of Kevin Carter and his prize-winning photo is much more complex and ethically ambiguous than the Wikipedia entry on the topic implies. The following BBC report provides greater context and more insight: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A22083301 Carter, BTW, committed suicide a little more than a month after receiving the Pulitzer - he was a deeply troubled man, but perhaps not the predatory vulture that those who know relatively little about his life and times would have him.
Beyond Collective Lens: you *must* check out Photovoice, which sounds very much like the kind of website (and social movement) you have in mind.
http://www.photovoice.org/
From their mission statement:
“At PhotoVoice we encourage the use of documentary photography by enabling those that have traditionally been the subject of such work to become its creator - to have control over how they are perceived by the rest of the world, while simultaneously learning a new skill which can enhance their lives.”
November 25th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
There are other groups that doing social change and photography really well. One of them is Salaam Garage.
http://tinyurl.com/6549cn
December 1st, 2008 at 1:02 pm
First, thanks for mentioning us and the work we’ve been doing. Like you said, Collective Lens is trying to get as many people as possible to upload photos showcasing all different types of issues around the world. While we would love to engage an audience with our own special photography related project (and have plans to do so), an even more powerful way to engage the world is to ask everyone to participate and contribute. After all, we are but one small group trying to make a difference, but if we all combine our efforts the results will be compounded.
We feel that Kevin Carter should not have been criticized for taking his photo. If global attention is not brought to these important issues, then even more victims would have suffered. While one man can save one child, the power of the mass media can mobilize millions to save millions.
January 8th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Thanks for the neat entry. I always speak to my students about the ethics of social documentary, and the importance of deep and critical self-reflection for those of us interested in social justice work and social change. That critical self-reflection often goes unaddressed. As an aside, I wrote a short piece on photographing social protests and civic activism that touches a bit on this subject. It is here:
http://www.willamette.edu/~ncordova/protestphoto.pdf
Thanks again!
N
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