Advocacy, activism and awareness-raising through photography
Shahidul Alam speaks alongside Claudia Hinterseer and Samuel Sidibe on 'The Photographer as an Advocate, Awareness-Raiser and Activist’ “I’m not a photographer,” Shahidul Alam told the 50 participants gathered in Parker Hall for the session ‘The Photographer as an Advocate, Awareness-Raiser and Activist’. Given his long photography career, this statement might have come as a surprise, if it were not for the other part of his statement: “I see myself as an activist who uses photography, not the other way around.” Photography has had a long history of being used for advocacy and activism, beyond just passive documentation. Moderator Emma Raynes of the Magnum Emergency Fund suggested that perhaps her grant-making body was an advocacy organization as it funds photographers to cover under-reported social issues. However, she was quick to point out that she doesn’t decide or promote the issues to be covered – that’s the job of the photographer. This issue Alam chose to cover in his “Crossfire” project was the extra-judicial killings carried out by Bangladesh’s notorious Rapid Action Battalion. Challenged with how to engage a viewer already desensitized to violence, instead of presenting the viewer with gory images of dead bodies or bloody locales, Alam’s “
constructed images use elements of real case studies to evoke stories that the government has denied.” The photographs were accompanied by dark lighting, Google maps of the killings and a video loop of Alam’s own arrest whilst covering the RAB. The controversial exhibition was shut down by the police; later iterations of the installation went meta, including videos and photos of the police’s actions against it. Thanks to the Open Society Foundation, 500 copies of the edition have now been made so that other activists can have “their own resistance” wherever they are. Extra-judicial killings by the RAB have decreased since Crossfire first showed, only to be replaced by an increase in the “more sinister” disappearances – the focus of Alam’s new, yet to be exhibited, project. Dealing with such controversial topics poses more than just censorship issues for photographers; first they have to get their projects off the ground with financing. As Claudia Hinterseer of the social justice-focused photo agency,
NOOR, explained, they have found it better not to apply for or accept funding from campaigning NGOs, and instead prefer the more politically neutral foundations such as Nikon. Set up as a collaborative of similarly minded photo activists, the agency has published in various newspapers and magazines, including a partnership with left-wing Danish newspaper Information. 50,000 copies of an entirely
image-driven Danish-English language edition were handed out (along with a morning coffee) to politicians arriving for the Copenhagen UN Climate Summit in 2009. NOOR’s photos showed the human consequences of climate change—much more effective than much-repeated images of melting icebergs. In a manner similar to Alam’s pop up exhibitions, NOOR has taken to displaying its climate change photos busy public spaces such as shopping streets, subway stations and public gardens to get public attention and raise awareness. Although the exhibition is now being supported by Greenpeace Mediterranean, the politically neutral funding has enabled NOOR to get their photos published in more places than if they had worked solely in collaboration with the NGO. Besides activists, awareness-raisers and advocates, it would seem photographers now must also be writers, not only of their own captions, but of their grant proposals. But, “letting funding determine what you do is a dangerous position to be in,” warned Alam. His advice to avoid losing editorial control of your images is to assume you will get no funding and work from there. Perhaps easier said than done, but as the old Bangla song goes: “If there is no one to walk along with you, walk alone.”