Picture Perfect Poverty
Monday, August 27th, 2007Now that I’m on the topic of poverty, there is an issue I have to address. In doing so, I risk alienating some of you who read this blog. It’s all in buena onda… I promise.
Last night I got to looking at photos on Google. That’s when I decided I needed to write this entry. So many of the images of the poor in Mexico are romantic, folkloric images of elderly women wrapped in rebosos, indigenous women carrying their babies on their backs, musicians, or little old women selling things like watermelons and tortillas.
These make great photos- what with the bright colors and expressive faces and all. But people fail to realize that the subjects of these photos are poor. Shanty towns are not picturesque. Starving children running around barefoot with plastic bags for diapers is not an endearing image. Men without legs dragging themselves down the street are not folkloric. These are everyday images. But odds are, you won’t find them on Google and won’t pay $15 for a reprint or a poster sized version to hang up in your living room.
There is a reality behind these faces that most of us will never know. The elderly, the children, the ill and the handicapped all need to be seen for who they are. That is the only way we can hope to bring about change. Poverty is not picture perfect. It is not a tourist attraction. It should not be used to make painters and photographers rich and famous. It is a condition that reflects who we are as global citizens, just as our taste in art does.
Photo Source: K-12