Would You Consider This Photograph Pornography?

Working for a non-profit NGO (non-governmental organization), a debate often arises about how we use photos - most notably photos that show extreme suffering. How far is too far? When do you reach a point where you're no longer calling attention to an issue, but rather exploiting an image or a person? Tough questions...or "hard work" as our President would say.

Here's an excellent article on the debate, that birthed a new phrase for me: "Development Pornography." Development pornography happens, according to this Reuters article, when organizations use shock tactics in their fundraising appeals, publications, or Web sites - with the intent of getting people to give money, visit a Web site, volunteer, etc. But is this a bad thing? I don't know.

The article points out that during the 1984 Ethiopian famine, shock tactics are what led the Western world to respond. But it also points out that shock tactics (i.e. photos of children with pencil-thin wrists, babies with flies crawling on them, etc.) exploit people, and reinforce negative stereotypes within the developing world. "Oh, look at these starving, poor, people of color in the developing world. Won't the white people come and help them out?"

I don't know the correct answer in this debate. But I appreciate the dialogue.

I do agree with the parts of this article that talk about photographing naked famine victims. To me that's inappropriate and hypocritical. We freak out about Janet Jackson's boob, but it's OK to show a Sudanese refugee walking around nude, or a Haitian child wearing a torn rag that hides nothing. I get that the images are striking, but where's the dignity in an image like that?

Maybe I'm a prude...