1.3 Equity: power and perspective in pictures (1 min.)-2

"Take only photographs, leave only footprints."

Taking a photograph supposedly has no footprint. It's the right way to travel low impact. Snap a selfie with your phone; don't leave a trail of empty plastic water bottles.

But what happens when we share our photographs online?

What happens to the people whose pictures we take?

How does a photograph empower or disempower viewers and the subjects of the images we make?

What if instead of "taking" pictures, we used our cameras and phones to document experiences with new people in a more participatory and equitable manner?

[IMAGE: Service Without Borders students from Virginia Tech making concrete with local residents, Dhumba, Nepal. 2018. SWB Nepal group.]

Taking photographs in intercultural spaces was problematic long before photographs went digital and online. Sharing images online in the era of facial recognition raises serious questions about privacy, equity and power.

How do we balance inequalities of power between ourselves, our subjects, and viewers when we compose and share images of trips abroad? Fortunately we can draw on guidelines written for professional photographers in organizations like National Geographic and Photographers Without Borders. And we can learn from others' mistakes.

[IMAGE: Portrait of Sharbat Gula holding June 1985 National Geographic cover, both by Steve McCurry, 2012.]

An image taken of an unwilling or vulnerable subject can do real harm. Taking a photograph can take away a subject's dignity or respect. Only occasionally do we get to hear the story behind an image taken of an unwilling subject. And rarely do we hear that story in the subject's own words like this:

"She remembers the moment. The photographer took her picture. She remembers her anger. The man was a stranger. She had never been photographed before. Until they met again 17 years later, she had not been photographed since." --Cathy Newman, "The Afghan Girl: A Life Revealed," National Geographic 2002

Making a more collaborative, self-reflexive photograph can give power back to people we meet while abroad. Here is how photographer Steve McCurry worked with Sharbat Gula to produce a powerful portrait in 2002. The "frame image" comments on the earlier photograph on the cover of National Geographic, taken without her consent when she was a young girl in a refugee camp in Afghanistan during the brutal Afghan war.

Complete this activity by posting a response to the three discussion questions on equity.