Posts Tagged ‘LSE’

Last week a colleague and I attended a lecture at LSE entitled ‘The Future of Picturing the World: filming and imaging in a global era’. Here at Ruder Finn, our work frequently entails representing the developing world through advocacy and media campaigns, and as such, we were very interested to hear the speakers’ views on ‘compassion fatigue’ and theoretic standpoints of the representation of poverty.
Whilst some interesting insights were offered, the audience debate was entirely dominated by discussion around an excerpt of a film shown by filmmaker and panellist Renzo Martens. ‘Enjoy Poverty’ seeks to expose the power relations contained in what Martens calls ‘Africa’s most lucrative export’- filmed poverty.
To make his point, Martens travels to the Democratic Republic of Congo and comes upon a couple of local photographers who make their living from photographing celebratory events such as weddings and christenings. That is until the filmmaker points out that they are missing a trick, and tells the enterprising duo that western journalists typically make $50 a photograph for images of the war, corpses, rape victims and starving children. Martens hopes to impart the locals with this knowledge to hopefully give locals a share in this lucrative business of the global photojournalism industry.  Shocking imagery ensues as the locals go off in search of the worst atrocities they can find to photograph. Unfortunately and somewhat predictably, the press agencies and large NGOs want no part in buying sub-standard photographs off local amateur photographers for reasons of ethics and quality.
However as Martens fielded question after question of the ethical conduct of this film making, Martens saw this outcome to further serve his point – why allow a rich westerner to fly in and capitalise on Africa’s poverty, when buying a photograph from a local is deemed exploitation?
All in all, this is a provocative film, which successfully exposes the hypocrisy and inequality of the global photojournalism industry, the values of which we rarely question. However, the way the film was executed left the citizens featured in the film looking used and vulnerable, putting the filmmaker himself on the same moral plane as those he sought to criticise.

I went to see Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Colombia University, speak last week at LSE ahead of the G20. Sachs spoke with conviction and emotion about the lack of representation of poorer nations at the G20, a total of 2.5bn of the world’s poorest with no voice at the meeting. I came away with a sadly pessimistic outlook for what could be achieved at the G20 for developing nations’ economies.

However, what actually transpired from the summit was far more positive. One outcome of the world’s rescue package was $250bn trade credit made available for the world’s poorest nations, which is a step in the right direction, and something I’m sure Professor Sachs will be pleased with, given his pragmatic approach to tackling global poverty. According to Professor Sachs we need greater investment in developing countries to avoid the flight of capital back to developed nations. Sachs also advocates investments in infrastructure and the millennium development goals as a priority. In an article in the Huffington Post Sachs praises the commitment, seriousness and efficiency of G20 leaders in what they accomplished at the summit for the poorest economies in the world.

It is clear that what resulted from the G20 was a far more sizeable package than could ever have been expected and will go some way to relieve the impact of the world crisis to those economies that will suffer the most. Gordon Brown has stated that a “new world order” is emerging. Hopefully in the next meeting of global decision making at this level, poorer nations will be represented at the top table.