A Developing Story» A Developing Story | Remembering…

Remembering…

John Bennett — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:23:27 +0000

Remembering…

24,000 children under the age of five will die today. Most of their deaths could have been prevented. But the reality is that not every child has an equal chance of survival. In Sierra Leone as many as 1 in 4 children dies before they reach their fifth birthday. In India, it’s 1 in 14. Pneumonia, measles, diarrhoea, malaria, HIV and AIDS and complications during pregnancy and during delivery cause more than 90% of deaths in children under five.

In these videos from Save the Children’s Everyone Campaign, mothers Mera, Ramatu and Marie Turay remember their children.

Kroo Bay

Benjamin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 22:21:02 +0000

Kroo Bay

This wonderful project was commissioned by Save The Children to document the lives of Kroo Bay in Sierra Leone.

The information below was taken from the Kroo Bay website.

Dying in childbirth

antonio — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:11:35 +0000

Dying in childbirth

In Sierra Leone, one in eight women die in childbirth. It’s a terrible, shocking story, but one that gets little attention from international donors more focused on global health threats such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.

The American photographer Carol Guzy traveled to Sierra Leone producing a series of audio sideshows about childbirth , a problem that urgently needs to be addressed.

Be warned this is a deeply shocking series of audio slideshows but one that deserves to be witnessed.

Just another set of limb chopped Africans by a famous photographer

Benjamin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:41:03 +0000

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.