Wednesday 15 October 2008

Poverty: what can photographers do?

Siesta, India, August 2008

Having talked in my previous post about the notion of collective responsibility, what is it that we can do specifically as photographers about poverty issues? This is after all Blog Action Day: getting up and doing something. And here I'm talking about doing something other than the generalist charity support that seems to be the basis of so much "action" advice associated with today.

Well, it is very simple, and at the heart of documentary and reportage work: go out and photograph the World. One of the key aspects of photography is it brings the World Out There home here, wherever here may be. It is the ability of photography to record the World and transport those images that is what gives the medium power in journalism and documentary. Visual messages seem so much more visceral that those written.

And, in a wider sense I suppose, it is not just poverty as an issue but any subject that is remote in which photography has a role.

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