Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Why No Pictures of Me With Black People?

I know I know I know I need to put up the typical travel photos: the group shots, pictures of the school where I am working, pictures of my friends, pictures of the beach, pictures of me with students blah blah blah. I will put a few up soon. I have to steal my pictures from friends' cameras right now because I can't find my camera dock. That's why all you see up on here are words.

But I'm also kind of dreading putting up pictures. After suffering through other people's boring slideshows, facebook albums, flickr ablums, ect...I just don't want to subject everyone to that same boredom. Pictures can offer a wonderful peek inside someone's life, but they can also be super repetitive (like seeing the same face in every single tagged facebook photo), and stale (I think scenery shots are totally stale).

I'm also dreading putting up pictures of myself with black people. Why? I'm not sure. I'm trying to interrogate myself because I can't figure out why. Is it because going to a "developing" country and taking pictures with locals has become cliche? I'm not sure. I don't think there are a whole heck of a lot of American students studying in developing countries. And why wouldn't I want to put them up? Wouldn't putting up pictures of me with smiling black people encourage other people to travel abroad, and meet interesting people?

I guess I'm concerned that the photographs I use will never be seen by the black people who are in them. Many of the students I've met do not have computers, so I cannot email them copies of the pictures I take with them, and they will probably never see the pictures online. It seems unfair for me to put them up, since they can't see them.

I also feel like the "white person surrounded by thankful black people picture" has been used by missionaries, development agencies, and the Peace Corps to advertise their services to the rest of the world, and I don't believe missionaries, and development agencies and the Peace Corps have done have done as good of a job helping poor people as they advertise. So when I see the "white person surrounded by thankful black people picture" being used in that context, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The picture seems to imply that the white person was really wanted in that community and what if he wasn't? What if he did a shit job? What if he imposed his own views on that culture? What if he's just taking the picture to build up his own cultural capital; look at me, look how multicultural I am...surrounded by all of these needy people.

All of this having been said, when I take out a camera in a township, the response is incredible. Within a few minutes, a crowd of children and parents surround me. They all pose for the camera. They all really seem to want me to take a picture of them. None of them ask me to email them the picture, none of them ask me to pay them for their picture. They all just want to see the photo on the LCD screen; to see, once again, the moment that just occurred. So I take the picture, knowing I can chose who I want to share it with later.

And I know I will want to share pictures of the people I've met and loved; like the principal I'm working with, my friends at the high school, and the preschool, and when the time comes, I will share these pictures with my closest friends. But probably not on a blog.

5 comments:

genmaichai said...

Dude.

You're great.

Callie said...

Yes, you are great. That made me cry.

Ricky said...

Don't worry so much! They are people first, not black people. It's only our segregated background, having grown up in Seattle, that makes the blackness so remarkable. You will get over it soon.

Steven Blum said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Steven Blum said...

It would be one thing if I took a picture with you, Ricky (my sister) and quite another thing if I went somewhere and took a random picture with a stranger. And there's such a history of white tourists coming into Cape Town and taking pictures with black people they do not know and then leaving.

It's not the remarkableness of their skin that makes me feel uncomfortable with posting pictures of me with them...it's the fact that I feel like posting pictures of me with disadvantaged people implies a lot about my role in South Africa.

I'm not afraid of taking pictures with black people because they're black, but I'm wary of posting pictures of me with black people I don't even know on a blog they don't have access to, especially when the picture embodies all sorts of cultural implications, like the implications I discussed in my post.

Posting pictures of me with black people I do not know (yet) on a blog they do not have access to reeks of poverty tourism.

And none of these thoughts have anything to do with growing up in Seattle and going to Roosevelt.