Photo contests are easlily accessible: every amateur can upload his/her favorite snapshot on numerous photo contests online. Picture contests are a great tool for companies and organizations to boost up, change or create their image: tire manufacturer Continental wants participants to picture “How eco they are”, the European Women’s lobby runs a competition on “21st Century Feminism”. I guess for one of those reasons, the UN started the competition “Picture This: We Can End Poverty”. Two similar competitions, running at the same time: EJC’s very own Cl!ckaboutit, and the Canadian ngo WACC’s contest “Communication and poverty”.
On the first hand, the WACC, UN and EJC competition seem to have the same theme in common: development. But all three contests take that from a different perspective: respectively the bad side (poverty), the neutral side (development) and the broad side (development as “change”, worldwide).
Two days ago, the photo below won WACC’s competition. It has the following caption:
"Volunteer teaches basic computer skills to tribal poor children in dhar(mp)india"
Even though I think the composition of the photo is beautiful, I felt a bit dissapointed. To explain poverty, the picture needs a more extended caption. What were the kids doing with the computer? How are the living standards in Dhar? How many laptops per child do they have??? :-s
In her book “On Photography” (written between 1973 and 1977, but still surprisingly up-to-date), Susan Sontag writes: “Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it. But this is the opposite of understanding, which starts form not accepting the world as it looks”
Journalism professor and writer Susan D. Moeller has written a book about “Compassion fatigue”. She argues that US media, to maintain the audiences’ attention, surpass themselves time after time in showing the most horrible images of war, starvation and violence, without properly explaining why these disasters happen. With the result that the public becomes too tired to care about all the misery, and decides to look inward and focus on national news. Even though Moeller especially blames the US media, I think this phenomenon is global.
Also, I think Sontag and Moeller are making the same point: To make a photo understandable and effective, you have to explain it. That can be done by a good caption, or the theme of a photo contest.
I would like to know, if you could organize a photo contest about development, what would the theme be? Or, in Sontag’s and Moeller's words: what theme would challenge your understanding of the world, without running the risk of compassion fatigue?
I like that this is the local volunteer not Western/North/European/ - what ever you call… The volunteer in this picture looks like is coming from the same tribe. That’s the clue for me. I don’t need any more. I admire communities which are successful with their own volunteers, to use their own human resources.
Difficult question Hieke. I think that compassion reflects on pictures for people to “like it”. It is like: when a picture is good enough, you can see and feel what the person in the picture is feeling by just looking at it. You feel empathy.
@Andrea, and what do you think about this particular picture?
I agree. Photography can be the great leveller among populations that speak different langugages, have different cultures etc. It’s the way to get your story told.
completely agree, as Clara said, a pic can go miles and miles away, crossing cultural and linguistic borders, and still bringing with her her story that everyone will be able to read…