Picturing Poverty

A friend sent me this link to a blog posting titled, 'Stuff White People Do: travel to exotic locations, meet adorable children, and shoot them'. Basically, the blog posting argues that white people travelling to exotic locations taking pictures of the other are engaged in exploitation and appropriation.

As she says:

Appropriation and exploitation -- As a white person living in the U.S., it is not only my privilege but my feel-good habit/hobby/vacation option to swoop into a country about which I know nothing, drop a few boxes of shoes, take pictures with children while their parents/aunts/cousins/grandparents watch, and to in the process somehow claim these children as my own. I vicariously experience their suffering, capture it in a still frame, and somehow feel more alive in my neoliberal, disconnected, consumerist living experience. I, the almighty white woman, have been to Africa and nursed her children out of the throes of malnutrition and disease. Her children are my children. Madonna, meet Malawi.In these photographs, children are exploited to build social capital. It is so last year, so K-mart middle America to take a vacation; real liberals wouldn’t do that. I can’t help but think of the commercials for Sasha Cohen’s new movie, Bruno, in which he adopts an African baby because Angelina and Madonna have one, and in which he also states, “I’m really into issues. Darfur’s a big one. So what’s next, what’s Dar-five?” Your “experience” in South America can become just another item to check off the bucket list, a line on your resume, fodder for a great graduate school application.

Further, she argues that these pictures assuage 'White Guilt':

Sometimes I think this phenomenon is another one of those things we white folks do to feel better about our privilege, a visual reminder that, though we might not be able to do much about the fact that we like our Nikes and we like them cheap, we can sleep in the only concrete room in a village for a week, drop a few boxes of malaria meds, and call it even. And even come home with invaluable souvenirs to remind us of just how much those sweet little children looked up to us! I have four cars while a billion people (most of whom don’t happen to be white) on the planet are starving, but I went on a missions trip, and look how happy I made this malnutritioned little boy'.

Alongside the movie, Enjoy Poverty, which I haven't seen yet, but which i've heard makes similar points, how are 'we', (white people in developed countries who travel to 'Other' countries, take pictures for whatever reason and care about the world, in particular those countries which have been systematically colonised and pillaged), to deal with these issues?

A number of initial comments i think can be made to her blog post. Firstly, not all pictures of 'Africans' are Others, are unknowns, just dark, poor bodies. Rather, they are friends, companions, people white people have lived with and known and care about deeply. Secondly, the idea that these photos build up a sense of 'self-worth' for white people, i think is mis-leading or not the full picture. For many people who travel to these countries, for whatever reason, these pictures are, or can be, reminders for how worthless we should feel about ourselves sometimes. They are reminders of that existential anger and frustration at having been born into such privilege and opportunity, while containing the knowledge that our privilege is not the result of natural progress, evolution, or ability - but largely of exploitation. Photos which remind us of our 2% position in the world, and then move us into action to redress that, is surely, not entirely bad? Though i'm probably wrong...

What i think is very interesting in her post is the reference to social capital building. I'd also add, cultural capital too. Not only do we gain access into certain classes with having experienced such a trip (our social capital, networks, people, we move within), but we also gain cultural capital, being able to talk and reference global poverty and our experience and narratives in our job interviews or with peers. This cultural capital, this coded language of global poverty and our experience affords us access into success in many spheres of life and within social elite classes.

One further thought. Perhaps this is all a hangover from the technology and travel revolutions of the 1950s and 1960s. More than ever before, people from developed nations can travel almost instantly into exotic and poor locations and witness it all, in all its brutality. Before, these places were distance, mystery, dangerous. Now we can go there, see it for ourselves, and the need to capture this, own this, remembers this is what drives our need for pictures of these exotic locations. Often what is photographed is poverty, not necessarily race or people. The same photographer who captures camps in Ghana, may be the same who captures street kids in Paris.

No conclusions though.