Prometheus 6

Development Porn: NGO Imagery
by Catherine Laine
May 25th, 2007

This recent post from the THD Blog [Fair Trade Photography Battles ‘Development Pornography’] really stuck in my gut. I do most of the design/marketing work for AIDG and the issue of how to present the organization and people we work with through photography is something I struggle with all the time....

Another interesting thing that this brings up is the relationship of the photo’s subject to the photographer. In the post, they mention the following fact: “Upwards of 90% of the images of the majority world that are seen in the western media are produced by white photographers from the USA or Europe.”

When I was in Cap-Haitien, Haiti last summer, I took various pictures of people who were involved in the charcoal training workshop, as well as folks who were on site. I took a few shots of these 2 sisters. Here is the pic they posed for me [a Haitian-American female.]

Here is how the posed for Dan, an engineer who was also on the trip [a white American male] a few minutes later.