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A PHOTOGRAPH IS WORTH MORE THAN A THOUSAND WORDS: THE IMPACT OF PHOTOJOURNALISM ON CHARITABLE GIVING Abstract Photojournalism plays a vital role in charity advertising. Set within a historical framework of constructing others in photographs, the aim of this paper is to analyse the image dilemma in charity emergency appeals. The analysis is facilitated by a detailed investigation of two past and two most recent photographs depicting famine scenes in UK charity emergency appeals for Sudan. The examples demonstrate how the value of a powerful photograph is sometimes abducted for fundraising purposes. While trying to help disaster victims, charities tend to lose sight of humanity and victimise the victims even further. As photographers win prizes by portraying human misery, charities use images of human suffering to increase funding. As we do not know the fate of the miserable characters in the pictures that are sometimes exploited to make money, are we bound to develop a syndrome called compassion fatigue? A discussion of the current image dilemma would be incomplete without the provision of at least one possible solution. It is contended that any successful reform of our image culture must include the voices of the people in the developing world. The young fair-trade project kijiji*Vision has a real potential to provide for this by helping indigenous photographers to get a share of the image economy. To download a PDF of the full paper CLICK HERE |
