Monday, June 18, 2007

Development porn

If I weren't so insanely occupied with my impending (72 hours!) relocation to NY, I would be blogging about something lots of other people on the Interwebs have been commenting upon of late: the preponderance of white Western males as photographers of the developing world and the corresponding effect of this upon the way in which mainstream media depicts poverty, community building, etc.

Boing Boing has an excellent discussion of it here. I don't have much to add in theory, but I must say that the way in which people respond to me, a white woman trying to capture images of life in the subconty, vastly differs from the way in which they respond to my esteemed third-world photographer husband.

Perhaps a good project for him would be to chronicle New York as what people may assume to be a tourist. Somehow, though, I don't think it plays the effect back in the same way. Back to the drawing board.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi



Greetings!

My name is Nag , a television producer working from Singapore, i just happen to see your blog , . I'm currently working on an 8-part television series called Global expats for a local television channel. It aims to examine and track the lives and livelihood of expatriates who choose to work, live and play in Asia. I would like to feature you in our series. We would like you to share your Expat experience what kind of a cultural shock you had? How did you cope? What are the things you like about the new place? How is different is life away from home etc. what's the culture shock you had first moved in? What efforts you take to adapt to the culture? (For example learning language, music, art etc? how you socialize with local people etc.



If you are interested pls. drop me line @ cm_nag@yahoo.com



We will take it from there.



Regards

Nag