Photographing poverty

dcsang said:
I honestly think if you're going to photograph poverty you should at least "live" with the poverty. Become part of the impoverished. Make friends with those in the situation. Shake hands with poverty itself.

What I mean is, I can easily walk around town, eating well, living well and shooting (as Ebino suggested) the impoverished from a distance (or even up close) but this does not help my truly understand their situation. If I want to really get the photos that can help me help them (and vice versa) then I honestly believe I would have to live with them in order to understand and truly empathize.

This is merely my opinion mind you.

Cheers,
Dave
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Dear Dave,

"Live with" in what sense? You can't live under their roof: it's already overcrowded. You can however share their food (preferably when you're paying, though it's hard to refuse hospitality), their celebrations, their work.

In other words, you treat them as equals as far as you can. Once I was photographing Transylvanian haystacks. They're odd conical things, built around a sort of sapling, which is a bugger to get planted in the ground. I passed an old lady, an old widder-woman by the look of it, who was trying to get one planted. She had no-one to help. Except me. So I did.

I had a Land Rover and was 20-30 years younger than she. I still had a living partner. Oh: and a Leica. We weren't material equals. But I could still help her, as one human being to another.

Still in Transylvania, there was the 3-mile lift we gave, in the drizzle, at the fall of evening, to a goat-herd. It saved him an hour's walk. I was honoured when he insisted on giving me a kilo of fresh goat-cheese as a thank-you. In other words, he treated me as an equal, not as a benefactor ex machina.

And Newspaperguy is spot on. Objectivity is a joke. Either wer'e openly partisan -- as I am for Tibet or the success of the European Union -- or we stick with the mealy-mouthed pretension that we're telling 'both sides of the story' -- which we never do, except in the unlikely event that we don't give a toss about which side is in the right, in which case, why are we reporting it? I want the Chinese out of Tibet (and Uighurstan, and 60% of the land area claimed by the Chinese Empire). I want the EU to succeed. not least because both my grandfathers were killed at sea in WW2, one off Crete, one on the Russian convoys. And I look with some contempt upon those who have no passion for anything.

Cheers,

R.
 


I don't share this guilt thing. I photograph "everyone" on the street. Always have. I'm supposed to feel guilty about that? Well sorry, I don't. Just because you take someone's photo doesn't mean you're exploiting them.

This idea that you have to live with them in order to be entitled to take their picture is also just plain silly.
However, that is something that I have done in the past. Not interested in doing that again. Those photos are as yet unpublished.

I'm not sure if photographing poverty can make a difference. But if they're on the street, they deserve respect like anyone else. To ignore them and only shoot the folks with money is clearly wrong.

If folks want to make a point that they "don't shoot the homeless," that's also fine. I just don't think you're taking the higher moral ground.

It's a good topic and I'm glad it's being discussed. If anyone want to do a project to help and wants/needs images/input, I'm more than happy to help.

The number of homeless on the Canadian streets has grown immeasurably in the last 20 years that I've been street shooting. Drug addiction, mental illness, lack of housing, lack of jobs, skill sets ... lack of caring.
 
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antiquark said:
Maybe the world progresses the way science does:

"Science advances one funeral at a time." -- Max Planck
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The People's Flag is deepest red
It's sheltered oft our martyred dead
And as their limbs grew stiff and cold
Their martyrs' blood stained every fold

Note to Americans: in my 'teens I was really puzzled about why Americans play The Red Flag every Christmas. Then I learned that they think it's a Christmas carol called "O Tannenbaum" or "O Christmas Tree". Without agreeing with communism for a moment, it's hard not to identify with the following:

The People's Flag is deepest red
Stained with blood our fathers shed

Yes. Politics proceeds via the dialectic. The Communist Party sure as hell ain't right, but nor is the Tea Party either. It is only via those who are willing to make a stand, on either side, that ANYTHING is changed.

Cheers,

R
 
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Photography of the poor can change the world. In the late 19th century a journalist in New York named Jacob Riis started a crusade against the slums of Manhattan. He wanted the city government to regulate the construction of apartment buildings and to force the demolition and replacement of thousands of buildings that featured tiny apartments crammed with huge numbers of poor immigrants whose crowded conditions spread disease and bred crime.

Riis, himself an immigrant who had suffered hunger and poverty after arriving in the USA, wrote articles for the newspapers he worked for. He eventually came to the conclusion that words alone could not portray the horrors of the slums, whose people he spent years working among. He took up photography and photographed the people in their homes, sweatshops, and saloons. He photographed young boys gambling in the streets, beggars, thieves, drug addicts, and hardworking people broken by poverty.

The pictures, when exhibited and published, scandalized the city and caused the middle class to demand that the city do something to help the previously invisible poor. Thousands of tenements were demolished and replaced with better housing and efforts were made to improve working conditions and get children into school.

Check out Riis' book, "How the Other Half Lives" He coined that phrase, which is often used in reference to the poor today. The link goes to the full text and the photos in the book. It was written with many of the prejudices of the time, so the text is often racist and antisemitic. As a Danish protestant, Riis looks down on Catholics and Jews while praising German immigrants. The pictures are the important thing though, they, not his writings, are what spurred reform.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
Photography of the poor can change the world. In the late 19th century a journalist in New York named Jacob Riis started a crusade against the slums of Manhattan. He wanted the city government to regulate the construction of apartment buildings and to force the demolition and replacement of thousands of buildings that featured tiny apartments crammed with huge numbers of poor immigrants whose crowded conditions spread disease and bred crime.

Riis, himself an immigrant who had suffered hunger and poverty after arriving in the USA, wrote articles for the newspapers he worked for. He eventually came to the conclusion that words alone could not portray the horrors of the slums, whose people he spent years working among. He took up photography and photographed the people in their homes, sweatshops, and saloons. He photographed young boys gambling in the streets, beggars, thieves, drug addicts, and hardworking people broken by poverty.

The pictures, when exhibited and published, scandalized the city and caused the middle class to demand that the city do something to help the previously invisible poor. Thousands of tenements were demolished and replaced with better housing and efforts were made to improve working conditions and get children into school.

Check out Riis' book, "How the Other Half Lives" He coined that phrase, which is often used in reference to the poor today. The link goes to the full text and the photos in the book. It was written with many of the prejudices of the time, so the text is often racist and antisemitic. As a Danish protestant, Riis looks down on Catholics and Jews while praising German immigrants. The pictures are the important thing though, they, not his writings, are what spurred reform.
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Dear Chris,

Funny, I'd say the exact opposite: that the writing had far more effect than the photography. But this may merely reflect that I am more of a writer, while you are more of a photographer.

Which of us is right does not affect the validity of your argument. SOMETHING changed the zeitgest, and even though Riis was only a tributary in a broad river, he was a major tributary. Anyone who denies that crusading jourmalism (written or photographed) can be important should, as you suggest, look at How The Other Half Lives.

Cheers,

R.
 
I have photographed homeless folks, most with drug and/or alcohol dependence. The encounter usually goes something like this ---- Person asking me for a handout as I'm walking or riding a bicycle. I stop and visit, telling them I don't take my wallet with me as I'm just out enjoying the beautiful day on my bicycle or walk. Then we talk briefly about the day and the nice weather. I ask them how their day goes, if anyone has given them any money, how much, etc.. Somewhere in the conversation they ask about the camera I am carrying. I usually have a digital and film camera in my posession. I show them both and tell them I like to shoot both digital and film but prefer black and white film. I then ask them if they would like to view some of my photography from the digital camera and then show them the photo's from the digital camera. I don't let the camera out of my posession. Once they see the photo's I tell them that I have enjoyed visiting with them and would like to take a photo of them. Nearly all of them appreciate the time I have taken to talk with them and oblige by letting me take a photo of them. I always let them see the photo I took of them before I leave so they are comfortable I am not trying to humiliate or embarass them. I enjoy the conversations with them and don't feel either of us are the worse off for it.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Have you ever done it? Why? <snip>
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First off: "poverty" is a very relative term. Have I photographed people who were in imminent danger of dying because of lack of calories in their dietary intake or other factors? The answer is no. Have I photographed people who were way down the economic scale on a comparative basis? The answer would be yes.

The "why" is a more complicated question. I do acknowledge that my primary motivation is not to effect some global social change to relieve some of their suffering. Honesty, I am just not that noble. It was to create interesting photos. Secondary motivation was to make the world community aware of their plight. I have reached that point where I do not try to B.S. myself.

I am always mindful that I have an economic safety net that I will eventually return to. I know that my personal financial resources are grossly insufficient to solve all their problems. At best I can provide temporary shelter for a very limited number. I am happy to do so.

I have great respect for those who have devoted their lives to social change at great personal sacrifice. I try to support them. But I am honest enough to admit that I am not one of them. I try to help to some extent. More importantly, I try to insure that I am not one of the contributing factors.
 
no one can ever really know exactly how anyone else feels (even among those closest to us). that doesn't mean that we should ever stop trying. after all, isn't that part of what being a member of humanity is all about? even living among those in poverty is not the same as being in poverty one's self if you still retain the option of walking away from it.

If I photograph something like poverty, any guilt I feel is more from my sense of shared responsibility for the world around because I'm human and almost never because I'm a photographer.

I feel no guilt over having made this image, but plenty of guilt about not being able to pick this guy up, dust him off and repair his broken life. That's the human in me, not the photographer.
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I guess one could stretch Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to say that the mere act of seeing this guy somehow altered something. (You can see that I'm no physicist.) Maybe that's true on a quantum mechanical level. I think showing others this image may have more impact that just casting my own gaze on him would by itself.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Then what does change the world? Apathy? Celebrity worship?

"Compassion fatigue" is (I suspect) a pernicious myth propagated by those in (undeserved) power who fear the loss of that power, and gratefully received by those who are looking for an excuse to do nothing.

Sure, we aren't all affected equally by all we see. We can look at as much as 90 per cent of it and think, "Yeah, well, nothing new there, the place was always a disaster area."

But then, there will be something we see, something we hear, something we understand, something that strikes a chord. Then we'll add our voices to the others crying in the wilderness. And the world does change. Otherwise there'd be no rule of law, no old age pensions, no concern for the weak, the sick, the infirm. And, come to think of it, the American colonies would still be colonies. Does ANYONE believe that if photography had existed in the 1770s, there'd not have been propaganda photographers on both sides?

And a pox on those who suggest that, perhaps, Americans have never been fit for self-government.

Cheers,

R.
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I think I largely agree with you Roger, that compassion faticgue is a convenient excuse. However, I opened my ol duniversity magazine the other night to find 6 or 7 appeal inserts with it. All of them for worthy causes that I am sympathetic to and I thought how sad that there is so much need that we can not even help each of those who ask for money. This thought was also tinged with some cynicism at the 'professional' approach to fund raising - perhaps at its worse in the charity muggers who patrol the streets of the UK.

I do fear that all of this can reduce people's belief in their own power to help those actually around them. How often do we give to charity but deny the beggar on the street?

Mike
 
jan normandale said:
"There but for good fortune go you or I."

I bag groceries at the local food bank and I contribute. I used to believe I wasn't my brother's keeper. Now I do.
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Well said, though we say, 'There but for the grace of God go we.' The thought is that without his active and undeserved kindness we all have no control over where we land.

Please don't draw me on this as to why some people are in poorer circumstances than others - I don't know (the rasons are often complex - the thought is around being humbly aware of our own vulnerability, which is an attitude I rarely see in my day to day working life in business.

I to think that we are our brother's keeper.

Mike
 
...I've worked with the homeless in shelters for 4 years and spent the majority of my days with with them during this time. I have yet to even start considering a body of work that would capture what I understand as "homeless" or "poverty" and do it justice. So, I actually don't have a straight answer for you Roger.

But, I think the overarching topic here is being GENUINE about what you're photographing. The homeless and poverty stricken have been poked and prodded for years by photographers, journalists and researchers who just "want the goods and get the hell out of there" as quick as they can to their own selfish benefit and fame, which just makes the poor feel like a subject and not a human being.

Disingenuous photographs of vulnerable people is transparently pathetic. Not only that, but anyone who knows anything about photography can see through the BS.
 
Photographing the poor -- for the purpose of allowing others to see their poverty -- is reportage. (Or documentary photography, but often the difference is only in the packaging.) As such, it is subject to all the familiar issues centering around fairness and accuracy that reporters contend with.

Criticism of someone for photographing the poor after enjoying a nice lunch is obviously intended to induce guilt. I think that's unmerited as long as the photographer's purpose is to share that bit of our reality with others. On the other hand, I would have a problem with someone who approached a shantytown or a slum as a mere tourist attraction. (Years ago, I knew people who were indifferent to the politics of apartheid South Africa, but relished an opportunity to visit a township much as they would a chance to visit a zoo.)
 
" "Compassion fatigue" is (I suspect) a pernicious myth propagated by those in (undeserved) power who fear the loss of that power, and gratefully received by those who are looking for an excuse to do nothing."

It’s real. Roger

Three types of pictures / stories that I will pass right over: Big bellied (starving) children, slumsscapes and anything to do with the holocaust.

It’s sensory overload pure and simple like looking at one more oiled beach or crying kid with an empty ice cream cone and ice cream at her feet. I have a feeling that a large part of it is that I have been looking at the same pictures for 55+ years now. All the photographers, writers, governments and NGO’s haven’t changed a damn thing.

“Then what does change the world? Apathy? Celebrity worship?”

I really don’t believe anything will other than a truly world wide catastrophe such as a mile diameter asteroid deciding to make earth it’s home.

I help my neighbors, homeless kids, stray animals and others withing my immediate reach and let the rest of the world take care of itself.

Rich L
 
Rich illustrates the reason behind the recent election results in the U.S.

Without ascribing this to him, many people lack the fortitude to actually care.
 
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