Looking Through Your Camera's Viewfinder Won't Help the Poor

It's no surprise that Kennedy Odede is tired of feeling like a zoo animal.

A resident of Kibera, Nairobi, a slum she describes as "perhaps the largest in Africa," Odede acknowledges that so-called "slum tourism," or the growing desire of affluent citizens of the developed world to see poverty firsthand, offers some short-term financial benefits to the community but is ultimately "not worth it." One common theme in this Wesleyan University student's New York Times analysis of slum tours in Kibera is the swarm of cameras snapping away at the area's residents, but the absence of actual, human-to-human conversations with them.

This trend is a loss for both resident and visitor. Odede makes the point that the observed don't end up any better after the cameras go away, but her article also made me ask myself if the passive camera-clicking observers benefit either.

Odede's words resonate with me particularly strongly because of an experience I had last week at the Oglala Nation Powwow on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. As an amateur photographer excited to get some new shots for an upcoming exhibition, I tossed my SLR into a tote bag and went to the powwow's opening night festivities. When I got there, however, the first thing I noticed were the non-Indians — not because they were white, but because every last one of them had a camera strapped to their torsos. They weren't talking to other people or participating in the event, but instead watched the whole thing through the glass of their lenses. All of a sudden, I recognized in them — and myself — the compulsive urge to document, even at the expense of actually talking to people.

The explosive combination of blogging, easy photo-sharing, and affordable digital SLR cameras that leave any average Joe feeling like a pro brings a new and sometimes-unsettling element to a fascination with poverty that Odede describes as a rebirth of the 19th century trend of wealthy New Yorkers touring slums to see "how the other half lives." Today, every person can be a journalist with the click of a button. Moments later, their thoughts can be instantly published online for all the world to see.

Here's the problem: "the other half" does not need to have your new telephoto lens poking into the most intimate details of their personal lives. The mere presence of the camera is a barrier unto itself — while professional photojournalists understand that inspiration for the most accurate depictions of life in an unfamiliar culture come from conversations with the people themselves, and are trained to interact in such a way, we more inexperienced snappers often unintentionally create the "tiger in a cage" atmosphere that Odede describes. Haphazard photo shooting without explanation understandably makes residents wary of your intentions. It provides a literal, superficial outsider's view of a place, but fails to go any deeper than that.

We've begun to normalize the characteristics of reality television and Facebook pages, feeling the need to lay out every detail of daily life for constant perusal and scrutiny. And through these new media, we have an increasingly bountiful supply of ways to publish our thoughts (and photos), but fewer and fewer receive the type of sensitivity and ethical training to go alongside. As a result, the quality of so-called "reporting" is skewed, quality control is next to nonexistent ... and impoverished communities are continuously subjected to wave after wave of curious tourists.

This is how stereotypes, not viable solutions or real understanding, are formed and perpetuated.

I credit the compulsion to put my camera away with the exhilaration of my first night at the powwow celebration that night. By forcing myself to suspend my constant search for the subject of the next iconic American photograph, I finished up my seventh and final week on the reservation with memories that are stored not with gigabytes or on glossy paper, but in my heart.

Photo credit: BigTallGuy