‘I’ve avoided the temptation to say that, in the United States, poverty is white. It’s true, however, that there are twice as many poor whites as there are poor blacks. While a larger percentage of the African-American population lives in poverty, the sheer number of poor whites — 24.1 million — overwhelms the number of poor blacks — 12.1 million. (Interestingly, there are also more poor Hispanics than there are poor blacks — 14.5 million.)

Nevertheless, Americans insist on associating poverty with blackness. According to the influential study by Gilens that I mentioned above, the fact that blacks “dominate public images of poverty” is the result of “network TV news and weekly news magazines [that] portray the poor as substantially more black than is real the case.” This needs to change, and photography can play a role.’

Read the full article by John Edwin Mason here.

Related posts:

1. Rediscovering Poor Whites in South Africa: Deja Vu (All Over Again)
2. Perspectives of Poverty
3. Poverty Poem, by Fred Taban

We’ve all seen it: the photo of a teary-eyed African child, dressed in rags, smothered in flies, with a look of desperation that the caption all too readily points out. Some organization has made a poster that tells you about the realities of poverty, what they are doing about it, and how your donation will change things.

I reacted very strongly to these kinds of photos when I returned from Africa in 2008. I compared these photos to my own memories of Malawian friends and felt lied to. How had these photos failed so spectacularly to capture the intelligence, the laughter, the resilience, and the capabilities of so many incredible people?

Related posts:

1. Why is the color of poverty black?
2. Poverty Poem, by Fred Taban

There’s a wonderful interview and series of pictures on the blog Conscientious about Ugandan Skateboarders. Joerg has a good record of talent spotting this kind of work.

My pictures tell the story of the first Ugandan skateboarders, who built a skate park themselves in Kitintale, a working-class suburb of Kampala. Through skateboarding and without government help or support by any organisation, the teenagers of Kitintale have managed to ward off boredom and the negative effects caused by the poverty of their daily lives. When they are on their “Fantasy Island,” which is their skate park and their pride and joy, the skateboarders are not far from paradise: they feel freedom and a sense of community which allows them to dream and have prospects for the future.

No related posts.

Photographer John Edwin Mason’s inspiring new book One Love, Ghoema Beat: Inside the Cape Town Carnival takes you behind the scenes of one of the world’s least known and  yet most colorful carnivals.  The Cape Town Carnival is unique in its history, which is rooted in South Africa’s troubled past, and in its music, which is propelled by the mesmerizing ghoema beat.

Warning: the following audio slideshow has a reputation for making people smile.

One Love, Ghoema Beat: Inside the Cape Town Carnival from John Edwin Mason on Vimeo.

Related posts:

1. Incarcerated: from Guantánamo to Cape Town to San Quentin, what do we see when we look behind bars?
2. Live Hope Love
3. Through Positive Eyes

Many of us who work in Africa, but live in the West, spend a lot of time thinking about the ways in which the Western media represents the continent.  All too often reporting — whether in print or in images — reinforces tired old stereotypes of an Africa that hopelessly trails the West, economically and morally.  James Ferguson puts it like this:  “It is never just Africa, but always the crisis in Africa, the problems of Africa, the failure of Africa….”

Yes, we know, there are indeed crises, problems, and failures in Africa.  They need to be reported.  What we ask for, however, is balance – for the acknowledgment that most of Africa is not permanently in crisis, that most Africans are neither starving nor dying of Aids, that most are not dodging bullets, that most are not refugees.  If readers and viewers are to understand the problems of contemporary Africa, they must be able to see them in this wider perspective.

There’s an additional point to be made.  Even where there are crises, there are not only crises.  As the historian Lawrence Levine once wrote, in a different, but related context:

One of the more elusive and difficult historical truths is that even in the midst of disaster life goes on and human beings find ways not merely of adapting to the forces that buffet them but often of rising above their circumstances and participating actively in the shaping of their lives.  …human beings [cling] to life, to each other, to those creative acts that [make] it possible to preserve… their culture, their dignity, their sanity.

Enter the photographer Marcus Bleasdale.

Click here to see Bleasdale’s photos and hear the Kimbangist Symphony Orchestra.

Bleasdale has done his share of reporting on Africa’s tragedies, often brilliantly.  He’s well aware, however, that there is much more to Africa than suffering.  Just a few days ago, he produced a story on the Kimbangist Symphony Orchestra in Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo [DRC].  Few countries anywhere in the world have endured greater calamities more than the Congo.  As I tell my students, it’s been a rough 500 years.  Beginning with the arrival of the Portuguese and continuing through the slave trade, Belgian colonialism, the despotic rule of Mobutu Sese Seko, and the chaos that has followed him, things have not been easy.  And, yet…

And, yet, in the very heart of what we are prepared to see as darkness is light.  Bleasdale introduces us to 80 instrumentalists and 60 singers who are bringing the music Handel, Verdi, and Mozart to life in a way that very few of us in the West could ever have anticipated.  This piece is as important, in its way, as anything he has ever done.

The photos, not incidentally, are gorgeous.

* * *

By the way, the orchestra is part of a much larger and astonishingly creative local musical culture.   You can check out DRC popular music, here.

This article was first published on John Edwin Mason’s excellent blog.

No related posts.

Over the years it seems they’ve done exactly that, funding the kind of international journalism that often is without a sponsor in the USA.   But for journalism to retain any integrity it cannot simply rely on something as intangible as ‘a deep sense of responsibility’, it must be grounded in a solid set of ethical principles and it must be accountable.   Without these principles journalism doesn’t shine the light into dark places, it becomes the dark place.

Several weeks ago I came across  a set of pictures on Facebook and Photoshelter by the talented photographer Marco Vernaschi which focus on the subject of child sacrifice in Uganda. The work is both being funded and promoted by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

It’s a decent enough story, but not one that is in any way new.

The pictures are black and white, often blurred, without hope and even evoke a sense of nihilism.  Nothing however in my journalistic career could prepare me for the disturbing truth as to how a number of the photos were taken.

By his own account a grieving mother was persuaded by Vernaschi to exhume her child’s body so that he could take photographs of her mutilated daughter, after which payment was made money ($70) was given to the chief who facilitated the digging up of the body, and the picture published by the Pulitzer Center.

Vernaschi’s actions only became public when another journalist, Andre Liohn, traveled to Uganda to undertake his own investigation.  He raised the issue with the Pulitzer Center last week but received no response. Instead they forwarded his complaint to Vernaschi who has written his own account of events on the Pulitzer Center website. Here’s an extract:

Being there, out of the blue, in the darkness of this creepy night asking a broken-hearted mother to show me the mutilated corpse of her daughter …  then they consent to show me the body. I explain to them that this evidence will be crucial in several ways.  Three people start digging in the garden by the house, where the family had buried Babirye just a few hours before … I give the mother some money, making sure this amount will be enough to hire a lawyer. She’s a proud woman, and despite the amount being very modest, she says it’s enough. I hug her again, and at this point she grabs my hand, and say:  “Please, don’t let us down”.

On the 19h of April I emailed both Jon Saywer, (Executive Director of  The Pulitzer Centre on Crisis reporting), and Marco Vernaschi asking them if they could answer a number of critical questions regarding the work. My two main concerns are:

1. That one of the images published of a naked child with his penis cut off and a catheter protruding from the scar is indecent and if published in the UK could potentially be deemed illegal under the 1978 child protection act.

2.That by requesting parents dig up their murdered child and then by taking pictures of the corpse and subsequently making payment to the parents Marco Vernaschi had broken any reasonable understanding of ethical behavior by a journalist.

In the UK according to the Protection of Children Act 1978 ‘it is an offence to take, permit to be taken, make, possess, show, distribute or advertise indecent images of children in the United Kingdom.’  I am of the opinion that should the full frontal photograph showing a boy naked, with his penis cut off and a catheter in its place, be hosted on a British website there is a possibility that it would be deemed obscene by a jury and therefore illegal.

To me the picture is a further violation of the child’s dignity, made permanent by the unrestricted publication of the work on the internet. If a three year old American or British girl had been abducted, raped and her vagina mutilated it is inconceivable that the Pulitzer Center would support a photographer to take full frontal nude pictures of that girl. Why then is this an acceptable act if the child is Ugandan?

In his defense Marco Vernaschi wrote to me stating:

I can hardly argue whether this picture would have been done/published if the boy would have been American, or European. I can only say that to me this makes no difference, and that when I was taking this pictures I was there with Mukisa’s father and aunt, who were desperate and worried about the future of the child. I’m currently looking for some foundation that will be able to follow and support Mukisa through the next years …

The Declaration of The Rights of The child states:

The child shall enjoy special protection, and shall be given opportunities and facilities, by law and by other means, to enable him to develop physically, mentally, morally, spiritually and socially in a healthy and normal manner and in  conditions of freedom and dignity. In the enactment of laws for this purpose, the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration.

Rarely, if ever, should the rights of a child be considered less important than an individual journalists pursuit of a story.

The BBC’s editorial guidelines are a highly regarded benchmark for objective journalism. They put child protection above almost any other consideration. This is taken from those guidelines:

We must ensure that the physical and emotional welfare and the dignity of people under the age of eighteen, and in particular children under fifteen, are protected during the making and broadcast of programmes and online content, irrespective of any consent given by them or by a parent, guardian or other person in loco parentis.

We must ensure that children and young people are not caused unnecessary anxiety or distress by their involvement in programmes or by their broadcast.

If photography is dependent on showing naked pictures of grossly abused children to affect change than as a medium it is without merit.

Morally a parent cannot give a photographer permission to take a photograph that degrades their child.  The argument that the end justifies the means only holds weight if  you persuade me that there is no other way to help this child then to violate his right to dignity.  Clearly that is not true.

Photography is too powerful and important a medium to be reduced to the absurd notion that only the most graphic pictures will affect change.

This is not the first time a journalistic institution has published a picture of the boy whose name is Mukisa. The BBC conducted their own investigation which ran as a documentary on TV, Radio and on the BBC News channels.  The story was seen and heard by millions of people.  Here is the photograph the BBC chose to publish. Its quite different from Vernaschi’s (seen below in an edited form).  In accordance with the BBC Editorial guidelines a decision was taken to not show the boys face.

The role of the Pulitzer Center cannot be overlooked in the their institutional support of this work.  In his response to me Jon Sawyer Executive Director of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting wrote,

‘I can say that we work very closely with our journalist grantees, with the aim of adhering to the highest possible standards both of journalism and ethical practice.’

However there are a number of important questions I put to Sawyer in my email which he choose not to answer. These are:

1. Given the Center’s commitment to ethical practice do you believe this child’s dignity has been preserved firstly by the photographer taking this picture and secondly by the Pulitzer Centre funding and linking to this image?

2. Would you have published this photograph if it was an American child?  And if not why is it acceptable to do so in Uganda and not in America?

3. In what way does the Pulitzer Center’s editorial guidelines differ from that of say the BBC?

The stated aim of the Pulitzer Center is:

‘to fund independent reporting with the intent of raising the standard of media coverage of global affairs’.

It has over the years been successful in achieving that goal.  I am left puzzled though as to whether the Pulitzer Center actually has a set of editorial guidelines and if so how these were applied to Vernaschi’s work?

Another question that needs answering is how Vernaschi reached the point where he felt morally justified to ask a mother to have her daughter’s body exhumed so that he could take pictures; an act so far outside of my understanding of human decency that I find it hard to comprehend.

Furthermore what moral justification does the Pulitzer Center have for publishing the photos of the exhumed child?

In his response to me Jon Sawyer dodged the question:

In general my view is that the work should speak for itself, and that we should avoid injecting ourselves in side discussions on blogs, especially on a project like this that is both highly sensitive and in the very early stages of presentation.

I hope that you will permit Marco to present fully his reporting, and the reasons for the decisions he made, before reaching firm conclusions yourself. We will be weighing in ourselves, on the issues you raise and others, as the project proceeds.

By his own account Vernaschi persuaded the girl’s mother to commit a crime by exhuming the body, an extremely traumatic event for any parent.   This is taken from the Ugandan penal code:

121. Hindering burial of dead body, etc. Whoever unlawfully hinders the burial of the dead body of any person, or without lawful authority in that behalf or otherwise than in accordance with rules made by the Minister disinters, dissects or harms the dead body of any person or, being under a duty to cause the dead body of any person to be buried, fails to perform such duty, commits a misdemeanor.

Vernaschi’s main defense revolves around the notion that his photographs are in some way forensic records and that he is following in the footsteps of photographers like James Nachtwey:

These kind of critics have already been moved in several others occasions, for example when James Nachtwey photographed a church where hundreds of children had been slaughtered and killed in 1994  DRC genocide. These pictures that were strongly criticized by some at the time of publication, contributed to document what was going on and are now considered history of photojournalism as they concretely contributed to bring attention on the war in DRC. I could mention many other similar examples, but I think the concept is clear.

According to Vernaschi the authorities were already investigating the murder of the child.  By digging up the body vital evidence needed for a conviction may have been lost. Forensic pictures are taken in controlled conditions by professionals. In an attempt for a deeper understanding I re-wrote to Vernaschi:

Can you understand that if you asked the parents to exhume their child’s body and then photographed that body and then paid money people will find that extraordinary?   Put everything aside and please try and answer that question. That’s the crux of the issue and I believe that that’s what people will focus on whatever is produced from now.

This is Vernaschi’s edited reply:

Asking the family for permission to exhume the body is not something I decided lightly. It was hard to do — hard to ask and hard to see. The family asked for money only after the exhumation, and after my filmed interview.  This visit wasn’t planned, and I had very little money on me. When the family asked for help I gave them 150.000 Shillings — the equivalent of USD 70. That’s what was in my wallet.  I do not see anything wrong with offering that help, under those circumstances.  My hope is that the actions I took will be considered, and judged, in the context within which they occurred.

Vernaschi, who I respect for being so open with me, writes,

‘I can only give you my personal opinion, based on my moral guidelines and convictions as a photojournalist.’

For me that’s the crux of the problem.  His ethical boundaries are dictated by how he feels and a delusional sense of the importance of his work that allows him in this instance to work outside any recognizable limits of journalistic integrity.

I have some sympathy for Vernaschi who has dug himself deep into a story so extreme that it would damage the strongest of minds. But I am bewildered by the role of the Pulitzer Center who seem oblivious to the damage this work causes to the integrity of journalism, as well as their own reputation, and the appalling precedent it sets.

In America the National Press Photographers publishes a code of ethics which I’ve listed below.  You could read through the list and tick off which points of the code you think have been broken in the case outlined above, or you could save yourself a lot of pencil and just tick off the ones that haven’t.

Code of Ethics Visual journalists and those who manage visual news productions are accountable for upholding the following standards in their daily work:

1. Be accurate and comprehensive in the representation of subjects.
2. Resist being manipulated by staged photo opportunities.
3. Be complete and provide context when photographing or recording subjects. Avoid stereotyping individuals and groups. Recognize and work to avoid presenting one’s own biases in the work.
4. Treat all subjects with respect and dignity. Give special consideration to vulnerable subjects and compassion to victims of crime or tragedy. Intrude on private moments of grief only when the public has an overriding and justifiable need to see.
5. While photographing subjects do not intentionally contribute to, alter, or seek to alter or influence events.
6. Editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images’ content and context. Do not manipulate images or add or alter sound in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects.
7. Do not pay sources or subjects or reward them materially for information or participation.
8. Do not accept gifts, favors, or compensation from those who might seek to influence coverage.
9. Do not intentionally sabotage the efforts of other journalists.

UPDATE 1:

The photographer Jørn Stjerneklar has written a challenging analysis of another series of Vernaschi’s photos:

http://www.maydaypress.com/blog/page9_files/09f6d2fbd43e90615782e4e115d95b41-0.html

UPDATE 2:

The Travel Photographer has published a searing analysis of this story here.

Why can’t these photojournalists and publishers understand that they cannot continue to show pictures of mutilated children??
It’s immoral. It’s as simple and as complex as that.

UPDATE 3:

Joerg Colburg who writes the renowned blog Conciencious blog has also picked up on the story,

The idea that asking very crucial questions is just a side discussion that should be avoided because the project is “highly sensitive”? Oh really?

I am not so sure this is the kind of reaction I would have expected from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

UPDATE 4:

The Canadian writer, photographer and veteran A. J Somerset has just posted on his blog, Banjaxed. He is convinced that Vernaschi acted in good faith, but goes on to write:

Looking at Vernaschi’s slideshow, I find myself wondering if the publication of these pictures, and the photo of three-year-old Mukisa, whose penis was cut off, isn’t symptomatic of a problem with the work overall. These photos, for the most part, communicate little. We have many shots of kids in prisons or on the streets. We have photos of “healers” at work. And most of them tell us little; they’re high-contrast black-and-white pictures in which detail is lost to lighting and to various in-camera blur effects.

I feel that, without the three graphic pictures, Vernaschi’s story amounts to little. And I think that may well be why he felt they were necessary. But this doesn’t justify what he did to get them; instead, it suggests he should have found a different way to tell his story

UPDATE FIVE:

There is also a debate about the work on Lightstalkers here

UPDATE SIX

Miranda Gavin of Hot Shoe fame has written an excellent post on Hotshoeblog in which she asks an expert on the Convention of Human Rights to give an opinion,

Whether the British press, for example, would have published such graphic pictures of a British child is an interesting question. We may have become numb to reports of atrocities and mutilation in Africa, and it does appear as if there are two standards of decency, one for the sheltered Westerner, and another for the inhabitant of the ‘dark continent’.

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1. Showcase: Exiled by weather
2. TED – Ideas Worth Spreading
3. Waiting to be registered

This is powerful, important work with a great interface.

Spend a few minutes please listening to and looking at a few personal stories, it’s worth your while.

Gideon Mendel’s portraits are wonderful, as ever, but the real power comes from the work of the individuals. Here’s the blurb:

Through Positive Eyes is an attempt to address key themes of the AIDS epidemic: widespread stigma, extreme social inequality, and limited access to lifesaving medication. The project is based on the belief that challenging stigma against people living with HIV/AIDS is the most effective method for combating the epidemic—and that art is a powerful way to do this. Over the next two years HIV-positive people in six countries and on five continents will take part in this unique initiative, creating powerful personal photo essays. From these images, we will create local and international advocacy materials including exhibitions, short films, a book, and this website.

RAMON from Through Positive Eyes on Vimeo.

Related posts:

1. Access To Life (Magnum)
2. Live Hope Love
3. Close To My Heart

At A Developing Story it goes without saying that we rarely feature stories from the developed world, but I couldn’t let this one pass.  The idea that people go hungry in the USA, as so powerfully demonstrated by Michael Nye, will be shocking to many.

Many years ago I traveled to Argentina to make a documentary about genetically modified crops.  At the time Argentina was the third biggest exporter of food and yet people in the north of the country were starving.  Whilst hunger maybe the preserve of the poor, poverty is not the preserve of developing countries.

The following text is taken from Michael Nye’s website:

In Michael Nye’s exhibition About Hunger & Resilience, so much comes to light. The fifty portraits and audio stories reveal the courage and fragility of those individuals who have experienced hunger. In simple, eloquent detail, these voices and images draw you closer into their lives.

For the past 4 ½ years, Michael has been listening and asking questions about hunger. Why does it happen? What can we learn from them?

Stories have a way of illuminating issues with an elemental and engaging power. These diverse audio narratives take us underneath complicated issues where empathy and understanding begin.

Each face, each voice invites you to listen.

Related posts:

1. Access To Life (Magnum)
2. Showcase: Exiled by weather

Save The Children had just sent us this powerful audio slideshow about the way in which a harsh winter is affecting people in regions of Mongolia. This is how they describe the situation on their website:

A ‘dzud’, the name Mongolian herders use to describe a fierce winter that usually only comes around once in a generation, has left families struggling to get by.

As many as 300,000 pastoralists who rely on livestock to make a living and to feed their children are seeing their livelihoods and health ravaged by -45°C temperatures and thick snow, which has resulted in the deaths of millions of livestock.

It’s a shame that we don’t get to hear first hand from the children or the parents the hardships that they are facing but this is still a good way of breaking a story.

Related posts:

1. Audio slideshow: Kenya dhow captain fears new port
2. Showcase: Exiled by weather
3. Slideshow: The Forgotten

Every few years, the media rediscovers South Africa’s most exotic species – ”poor whites.”

Children walk through a squatter camp for poor white South Africans at Coronation Park in Krugersdorp, March 6, 2010. REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly

White people, after all, aren’t supposed to be poor, especially not in Africa.  The white South Africans of our imagination are privileged — each and every one of them — and spend most of their time braaing boerewors by the pool, while their maids do the dusting and gardeners trim the hedges.  When we discover that’s not always true, it comes as a real surprise.  It shouldn’t — we’ve learned this lesson more than once — but, in the western imagination, whiteness is so firmly associated with affluence (and blackness with poverty) that we have to relearn it time and again.

Last week, it was Reuter’s turn to explore the lives and habitat the South African “poor white.”  The catalyst was a visit by President Jacob Zuma to a whites-only squatter camp, during which he pledged to ensure that its residents received their fair share of government services.  Zuma first visited the camp in 2008, during his campaign for office, and said, at the time, that he was “shocked and surprised” by what he saw.  (For him, too, whiteness and poverty were an unlikely combination.)

A family smokes together during a quiet moment at a squatter camp for poor white South Africans at Coronation Park in Krugersdorp, March 13, 2010. REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly

Reuter’s photographer Finbarr O’Reilly made these photos in Coronation Park, a former holiday caravan [trailer] park west of Johannesburg, that has become a refuge for impoverished whites.  (This is not the site of Zuma’s visits.)

In a post on Reuter’s excellent photographers’ blog, “Hardship Deepens for South Africa’s Poor Whites,” O’Reilly writes that, while ”most white South Africans still enjoy lives of privilege and relative wealth, the number of poor whites has risen steadily over the past 15 years.”  He explains this increase by mentioning both “affirmative action laws that promote employment for blacks” and ”the fallout from the global financial crisis.”

That’s certainly true, as far as it goes, but it’s worth pointing out that poor whites, in South Africa, are nothing new.  They were part of the social landscape long before affirmative action and the recent economic meltdown.  White society in South Africa has always been stratified by class, no matter how strenuously those who promoted white supremacy and those who denounced it insisted otherwise.

Friends talk through the window of a one-room hut at a squatter camp for poor white South Africans at Coronation Park in Krugersdorp, March 6, 2010. REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly

During the first two centuries of colonialism in southern Africa, the poor white settlers who attracted the most notice were the trekboers, semi-nomadic farmers who raised cattle and other livestock for the market.  To many wealthier whites and European travelers, they were dirty, lazy, and racially degenerate, having adopted a mode of living that was indistinguishable from that of blacks.  (It’s a view that’s had a very long shelf life, in both print and images.)

By the beginning of the twentieth century, poor whites were both an embarrassment and a threat, at least as far as their social superiors were concerned.  The expansion of commercial farming in rapidly industrializing South Africa drove many whites off the land and into the cities, where they found work (or failed to find it) in mines, shops, and factories.  Elites feared that they would combine with black workers to threaten capitalist development.  A good deal of subsequent legislation was designed to make sure that would never happen, by offering whites access to jobs, education, housing, and political rights that were denied to blacks.

Family at lunch, 1962. David Goldblatt.

The policies of the segregationist governments, before World War II, and the apartheid government, after it, reduced white poverty, but didn’t end it.  Anomalies within a system of white supremacy, poor whites have been endlessly worried over, written about, and photographed, with various mixtures of curiosity, compassion, contempt, and concern.  He understood that it was perfectly possible to be both a beneficiary of racial injustice and the victim of class exploitation.

Ella, daughter of Freek and Martjie Marais, in the children’s bedroom, Gamkaskloof, Cape Province December, 1967. David Goldblatt.

By embracing complexity and respecting his subjects, Goldblatt found ways to get around and beyond conventional image-making.

If there’s a man-bites-dog quality to most reporting about poor whites — and there is — the same can be said about reporting on rich blacks, especially, again, in Africa.  Rich blacks fascinate us (western viewers and western media) for the same reason that “poor whites” do.  They contradict our expectations of the way the world is “supposed” to be.

Durban, South Africa.  July races, 2005. Martin Parr/Magnum.

Slate, the online magazine, recently published this photo from Martin Parr’s series Luxury. In introducing the series, the magazine said that ”Traditionally, the portrayal of poverty has been the domain of the ‘concerned’ photographer, but Martin Parr has photographed wealth in the same spirit, believing that when people of the emerging upper-middle classes around the world demand and receive the luxury goods that are taken for granted in the West, the pressure on the world’s resources will be considerable.”

It’s not entirely clear what Slate’s editors mean by “in the same spirit.”  The spirit of exoticism and wonder with which poverty, particularly African poverty, has been approached?  A spirit that sees “emerging upper-middle classes” as being as threatening as the poor, but in a different way (threatening to deprive us of the resources we need to sustain the western way of life)?  Who knows?  It’s a statement that’s illuminating partly because of its incoherence.

None of this, of course, is what Parr, elusive trickster and satirist that he is, would have had in mind.  But, like all photographers, he has little control over how people interpret his work.

Charles Kapié with his partner in the street close to their office.  At 30 years old he has created and runs a consulting firm in agronomy and a cyber café.  He used to be a civil servant and he invested his “rappel” (first year of salary paid at once) in his activity and resigned after one year.  He was paid $400/month. He situate himself in the middle of the Middle Classes. Joan Bardeletti.

Like Goldblatt’s photos of impoverished whites, Joan Bardeletti’s series Middle Classes in Africa is an antidote to the sort of nonsense that I’ve been talking about.  Bardeletti says that he wants to present “a new but realistic vision of Africa to the public of developed countries.”  He hopes that his photos will lead people to question their preconceived ideas about Africa, “rather than inspire… pity about the continent.”

This is some of the most original and challenging photography to come out of Africa in a very long time.  You can see more of it, here.

Related posts:

1. Why is the color of poverty black?
2. Middle classes in Africa
3. How To Take Photos Of Africa Or Where Intent And Ideas Collide