The headline on the BBC website reads:
In Pictures: Rebuilding Wrecked Lives After Sierra Leone’s civil war
Sounds interesting?
Then I flicked to the set and found another story to the one sold to me in the headline.
There’s nothing technically wrong with Nick Danzinger’s black and white pictures of people from Sierra Leone except that it feels like we’ve seen them a million times before.
The whole process of NGO’s sending big name photographers to Africa to capture the misery so that the NGO, in this case the International Organisation for Migration, can get their pictures onto news websites feels very tired. The results are often, though by no means always, predictable and the whole process is starting to feel very two dimensional.
My main problem here is that the photos do not really show a country in recovery. The headline feels misleading. My alternative one at the top of this post is probably more accurate. What do the pictures really achieve? What are they meant to achieve? Do they educate or inform or even entertain or just reaffirm stereotypes?
I think it’s a myth that you need a big name photographer to get your pictures on the BBC website. They seem very open to high quality work.
Finally, I would say I don’t get a sense of anyone’s story through these photos. Certainly not in any depth. Why can’t we hear the voices of these people? Why are we always asked to feel sorry for them?
I do feel sorry for them. Sorry that they’ve not been given a voice. Sorry that IOM hasn’t yet realised that by giving these people a voice they could have a real and lasting impact on the way I and others feel about the people living in this part of the world.
related posts
My thoughts exactly, when I viewed the images I struggled to see the positive side of how this country has changed and is trying to grow (god i sound like a bloody stuck record these days, apologies)
Nick is a damn good photographer, not having a go at his skills or ability, but I just feel like you could do a sweeping substitution between Sierra Leone and any other African country and I’d hedge a bet most wouldn’t even know what country they are looking at.
The one image showing the school kids and mentions a micropayment scheme, I’m a little confused, did they not receive the payment yet or have they? Where are the images showing ANYONE smiling?
There is one positive image, possibly showing how Sierra Leone is changing and that is of Ibrahim and a book inside what could be a classroom.
Yeah. Maybe its just the way its presented on the BBC, maybe Nick actually recorded audio whilst he was out there. He’s a talented documentary producer afterall. Or maybe IOM could only afford to pay for photos, which would be a shame.