Haitian Girl by David Choe. A limited number of prints are for sale online, with all proceeds going to Yele Haiti, Wyclef Jean’s foundation.
I have a hard time writing in here about things that are truly important… or tragic and incomprehensible to me. I feel like unless my talk is backed up by substantive action, it trivializes the very cause it supposedly stands by. Hence the disproportionate amount of tongue-in-cheekery and not much of anything else.
So this is why I really appreciate writers who take the time to thoughtfully analyze difficult subjects and attempt to bridge that gap between theory and reality. Catherine Traywick of Hyphen has a great blog series called Idealize This!, which discusses practical issues encountered by people working for change. The latest is on photography and relief, specifically in Haiti — something that I’ve (less articulately) pondered.
She writes:
In the aftermath of the earthquake that decimated Port-au-Prince weeks ago, journalists have worked ’round the clock to keep the flickering screens and hungry eyes of their eager public perpetually engaged. And we, in turn, have consumed, without pause, photo essay upon photo essay of devastated Haitians climbing bloody out from under piles of debris, desperate Haitians knocking over little boys, and homeless Haitians sleeping without shelter, among many other startling images captured by news photographers with Pulitzer-sized dreams (after all, Haiti’s last disaster earned this guy one!).
And we are so moved by these terrible, suspended fragments of another’s life that it may not occur to us that the bloody woman we saw rising from beneath blocks of concrete probably saw a photographer’s lens before she saw the faces of her rescuers. Nor do we wonder whether she’ll get a dime if her photo wins him any awards.
But that’s nothing new. Photojournalism has always been an ethically shady enterprise. Whether Steve McCurry’s portrait of the reluctantly compliant “Afghan Girl” or Kevin Carter’s voyeuristic photo of a starving Sudanese baby, the trade has long borne a paradoxical reputation; while widely regarded as a public service, it nevertheless entails a level of detachment that is antithetical to most conventional conceptions of “service.” It’s a topic I’ve written about before, and one that I continually revisit, particularly as I get to know more photographers and especially as I strive to critique the ethical implications of my own journalistic projects.
She goes on to detail the work of orgs like PhotoPhilanthropy, which positions ethical photojournalism as a process rather than just an outcome.
And in the end, there’s no perfect formula for photographers or artists to both serve others and receive recognition for their work. It’s a personal, situational issue that requires, at the very least, a whole lot of self-reflection. Just finding out that the answer is that there is no answer is a struggle in itself.
As Eliza Gregory of PhotoPhilanthropy writes, “I think great art surprises us—it can come from anywhere, and be about anything. So I don’t think you have to be from a community to chronicle it with beauty and subtlety. But, it’s also very easy to become a hapless messiah, a benevolent imperialist, or simply someone who is not actually helping anyone. “
