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Social Responsibility: socially motivated photography and real change
"For more than a century, photographers have been hovering about the oppressed, in attendance at scenes of violence - with a spectacularly good conscience. Social misery has inspired the comfortably-off with the urge to take pictures, the gentlest of predations, in order to document a hidden reality that is, a reality hidden from them." (Sontag, 1979:55)
Photographers are often motivated by the power of the image to evoke social change. As wars, famines, disease and natural disasters unfold around the globe so photographers record the events in order to produce a public reaction. In a world increasingly dominated by 24 hour TV news, the internet and publishing to a global audience, how can a photographer create change?
This research question discusses the issue of the aestheticisation of disaster challenging the simplistic notion that the act of taking an image can make a difference. It analyses the potential mismatch between motivation and realisation and asks if social change is the ultimate goal and if so are there more productive means of reaching this goal?
Aftermath of an Anti - America Demonstration Rally - Havana - Cuba., shot while investigating photography and social change.
Photograph: Julie Brown, UK (the student was given just one day to take the image)
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