Are development charities justified in utilizing dehumanizing images to raise funds for their causes? We’ve all seen it on TV screens, newspaper ads, and probably heard about it on radio talks.
As an African living in America it makes me cringe, just like Duncan McNicholl, every time I see a “photo of a teary-eyed African child, dressed in rags, smothered in flies, with a look of desperation”, especially when I know that these images are used as means to generate revenues.
Duncan McNicholl, an Engineers Without Borders Canada worker living in Malawi, decided in early 2010 to begin exploring these perceptions of poverty–how easily ‘assumptions’ can be manipulated from a carefully constructed image.
To test his hypothesis, Duncan took pictures of friends and neighbors in his community in Malawi and faked them as both poor and rich–two photos of the same person (one photo with the typical symbols of poverty, and another of this person looking their very best), and then posted them on his blog, Water Wellness. Below is Duncan Mcnicholl making his case.
The Case Against Pictures of Pity
By Duncan McNicholl
The issue of “poverty porn” – as it is often called – is not a new one, but the importance of humanizing those living in poverty remains essential. Several months ago I began a photo project called “Perspectives of Poverty” to highlight the way in which media images often provide a single, dehumanizing perspective of rural Africa. The project is a series that presents individuals from two different perspectives, demonstrating how an image can be carefully constructed to suggest very different things about a person.
I have received several comments on the project arguing in support of images of pity. There exists the belief that development charities ‘just trying to help’ are justified in the use of ‘sad’ images, especially if those images are raising funds that might not otherwise reach those in need.
I couldn’t disagree more.
How we portray those living in poverty is more important that what we give, precisely because this directly influences what we give. How we perceive precedes how we act. There are several things wrong with the argument supporting fundraising through pity. It presumes that money, or material flows, is the key element in poverty alleviation. Although money plays a role, the belief that “only $1 per day” solutions can create lasting change is a gross and even dangerous oversimplification. It leads us to believe we can throw money at problems that money alone might not be equipped to solve.
Dollars generated from pity to sustain hand-outs are not being directed at the root causes of poverty, and should not be confused with genuine efforts to change the status quo. Pity sustains the paternalistic relationship of ‘us’ giving to ‘them,’ which perpetuates a dependency on foreign aid. This undermines efforts to empower capable people and support them in achieving their own goals – the real focus of what development should be. If we see people as incapable through images portraying them as ‘needy,’ ‘pitiful,’ or ‘wretched,’ our efforts will continue to bypass, and even undermine, opportunities for driving systemic change.
Arop Lual Two is a Sudanese refugee from Darfur who I met last month at a camp in Malawi. His story of fleeing conflict is one that I will never fully understand; it is a reality so utterly distant from my own. Yet I was immediately struck by the similarities between Arop and myself, since Arop studied telecommunications engineering. I too studied engineering, and meeting Arop made me picture my own life in a completely different way. I envisioned what my life could have been had I been born in a different time or place. I saw a refugee as someone no different than myself.
But reflections of ourselves are not images often offered by the media when it presents us with portraits of refugees or of rural African poverty. Intelligence, humour, and capabilities are obscured beneath blankets of pity and oversimplifying slogans. Arop doesn’t need pity, he needs a job. He needs a future.
There is a tragedy here that needs rectifying. This must be done, not in the light of charity, but in a spirit of solidarity. Pity will not advance us towards this, and neither will images of perennial sadness used to solicit funding. How we see affects how we act, and change begins with seeing others as fully human.
