Backpacker Fiction: Poverty is Beautiful

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Poverty is Beautiful

Poverty is perhaps one of the world's most photographed tourist attractions. Travelers snap photographs of starving African children with both the hope of sharing the truth about destitute conditions - but also to end up with stunning photographs.

I've always been conflicted by photographs of poverty that are also so beautifully composed as to somehow undermine their subject matter.

When eyeing up a shot through

a camera lens, the experienced photographer is playing with shapes, lines, textures, shadows - in order to compose an image that ultimately "looks better". If the image is of a starving family in the Sudan, does beauty have any right to enter - literally - into the picture?

One reason composition and design in an image of extreme poverty is so important is that it makes the image more compelling. As largely visual creatures, the human eye is drawn to well-designed objects. Once that eye is upon your object, your object then has a chance to speak.

This is the philosophy of renowned Magnum photographer James Nachtwey. Usually shot in black and

white, Nachtwey's images are both testimonies to the extraordinary conditions in which humans live - but are also undeniably works of art.

In the case of Nachtwey and many other influential photographers whose work (like the one below) ends up featured in Time magazine, his brilliantly composed photographs end up penetrating the bubbles of millions of us in our Western cocoons.

But does the average non-Magnum backpacker have the same right to scurry around with their Nikon SLR through the slums of Delhi searching for striking compositions they can snap then take back to their iMac and Photoshop to the ooos and aahs of their Flickr friends?

Perhaps one could argue the same thing about Michaelangelo's Pieta - one of Western art's most stunning artistic executions of suffering. But is there always such a redemptive message?

In Madurai, India, some friends and I were walking around the temple's walls when we came across a bundle of fabric. Everyone's cameras were in hand including a professional-grade SLR that belonged to my friend, O. As we came closer to the bundle of fabric, it moved.

Everyone was silent as we passed the human skeleton; its every bone was visible beneath the paper-thin skin, a stream of urine trickled down into the gutter. I then looked to O to see what his photographer's reaction would be. It was a Nachtwey-worthy shot and O had the skills to pull it off. He raised his camera halfway, then lowered it - evidently coming to the conclusion that a photographer does not have the right to shoot some things.

My conflict might be that of "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Some people viewing these photographs might see the incredible human suffering and be moved to act. Some might see the artful composition, the contrast of shadows, the rhythm and movement of lines. Either way, where does that leave the backpacker - eager to share their experiences with people back home?