chain of poverty - griffith university · to the best of my knowledge ... 7.2.1 three on-location...

Chain of Poverty:An Immersive Approach

A K M Shehab Uddin

Queensland College of ArtGriffith University

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of

Doctor of Visual Art

Supervisors: David Lloyd

Dr George Petelin

May 2016

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This work has not previously been submitted for a degree

or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge

and belief, the thesis contains no material previously

published or written by another person except where due

reference is made in the thesis itself.

(Signed)_____________________________

A K M Shehab Uddin

Statement of OriginalityThis project received ethical clearance (QCA 27/12/HREC)

from the Office for Research at Griffith University. The

Griffith University Human Research Ethics Committee

operates under the National Statement on Ethical Conduct

in Human Research issued by the National Health and

Medical Research Council (NHMRC) in accordance with

the NHMRC Act.

Ethical Clearance

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Abstract:

This research project, Chain of Poverty, is generated from

the lived experience of three families in Bangladesh

whose life chances are significantly reduced through

the impoverishment they endure. The exegesis argues

that a more considered and immersive approach to

photojournalism and documentary practice needs to be

taken when telling stories of impoverishment, especially

of those in the Majority World. To do otherwise is to

perpetuate stereotypes of the Majority World as victims

worthy only of pity. Both the exegesis and the visual

outcomes of my research (presented as a photobook)

acknowledge and celebrate the reflexivity in the processes

I have undertaken, which has attempted to narrow the gap

between the researched and researcher. I argue that these

processes are necessary to acknowledge the people who

are vulnerable and in impoverishment as multidimensional

humans beings (rather than victims) and generate

compassion (rather than pity) for those who endure great

deprivation. Therefore, this research offers a collaborative

and immersive process that aims to contribute to the realm

of documentary practice and to help people in the Minority

World to understand people with impoverishment beyond

being merely a statistical cohort.

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Statement of Originality

Ethical Clearance

Abstract

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Project

1.1 Poverty as a Global Phenomenon

1.2 Project Description

1.3 Documentary Photography and Photojournalism: A Clarification of My Practice

1.4 A Turning Point: Challenging the Cultural Status of the Photograph

1.5 Project Rationale

1.6 Project Aims

1.7 Background to the Project

1.7.1 Career Experience: A Cross-Examination of My Work

1.7.2 A Legacy from My Family

1.8 Thesis Outline

Chapter 2: Challenging Stereotypes

2.1 Evidentiary Images, Icons of Pity, and Otherness

2.2 Social Issue vs Personal Story: Generalisation and Objectification

Chapter 3: Crossing the Line

3.1 Collaborations between Researched and Researcher

3.2 Documenting the Impact of a Social Fact

Contents

Chapter 4: In-Field Experiences with Three Bangladeshi Families

4.1 Power Relationship and Authority

4.2 Personal Perspective

4.3 Sleeping on the Street

4.4 Compassion and Understanding: Converting Outrage to Compassion

4.5 New Extended Family

4.6 Looked Down Upon: Social Outcast

4.7 Child Marriage: A New Kind of Slavery Perpetuating the Poverty Cycle

Chapter 5: Methodology

5.1 Documentary Practice: Blending Ethnography and Participatory Action Research

5.2 Participatory Action Research and My Documentary Practice

5.3 A Distinctive Eye: Local vs. Foreign

5.4 Day-to-Day Experience of Poverty

5.5 Immersive Approach: Some Recommendations

Chapter 6: Discoveries

6.1 Individually Centred: Living for the Present

6.2 Family Matters: Looking Towards the Future

6.3 Community Defined/Oriented: Looking at the Horizon

Chapter 7 Publication of Outcomes

7.1 Outcome Goals

7.1.1 Seek to Know the Participants and Become a Conduit through which Their Stories Can be Told

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7.1.2 Seek to Construct a Collaborative Representation of the Worthiness of the Participants

7.1.3 Seek to Create Compassion in the Reader and Solidarity with the Participants

7.2 Outcomes Towards Achieving the Goals

7.2.1 Three On-Location Exhibitions

7.2.1.1 Born Into a Poor Family

7.2.1.2 No Life on the Street

7.2.1.3 This Is the Life

7.2.2 Sharing Stories with a Global Audience

Chapter 8: Conclusion

References

Bibliography

Appendices

Appendix 1 Biographical Details of the Participants of This Project

Appendix 2 The Consent and Information Package for Participants, Government and Non-Government Organisations

Appendix 3 The Extended Family

Appendix 4 On-Location Exhibition: Born Into a Poor Family

Appendix 4.1 Visual Documentation of the Exhibition: Born Into a Poor Family

Appendix 4.2 Response Sample from the Exhibition: Born Into a Poor Family

Appendix 5 On-Location Exhibition: No Life on the Street

Appendix 5.1 Visual Documentation of the Exhibition: No Life on the Street

Appendix 5.2 Response Sample from the Exhibition: No Life on the Street

Appendix 6. On-Location Exhibition: This Is the Life

Appendix 6.1 Visual Documentation of the Exhibition: This Is the Life

Appendix 6.2 Response Sample from the Exhibition: This Is the Life

Appendix 7 Other Outcomes from On-Location Exhibitions

Appendix 8 Off-Location Exhibitions and Other Publications: Sharing Stories through Different Channels

Appendix 8.1 Visual Documentation of Sharing Stories through Different Channels

Appendix 8.2 Responses Sample from Off-Location Exhibitions, Publications and Internet

Appendix 8.2.1 Comments on article in the Lens blog, The New York Times

Appendix 8.2.2 Sample Comments through Social Media (Twitter, Facebook), Email, and Other Internet Portals

Appendix 8.2.3 Transcription of the Radio Program Refresh (Radio2 - Italy), Transcribed and Translated from Episode on 15 March 2015

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Acknowledgements

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Since the start of this project in 2012, many people have

greatly contributed towards it and helped me to tell the

stories in this book. With deepest gratitude, I want to

thank the participants of this project: Jarina Khala, Mali,

Nurjahan Khala, Ali Hossain Khalu, Afsana, Rokhsana,

Shabuddin, Alo, and Akhi, Bellal Bhai, Nururnahar Bhabi,

Bilkis, and Shamima. They opened their homes and

hearts, allowing me to enter their lives and share their

experiences. Without them, this work would not be

possible, and through them, I have been transformed. I

salute them.

Thanks also to Muslim Bhai and his family who

likewise allowed me to document them, although they

unfortunately did not wish to continue with the project.

Thank you to the neighbours of the participant families

who similarly shared their life experiences and helped

me conduct the research and install the exhibitions:

in Kamlapur Railway Station—Shumi Apa, Jakir Bhai,

Sondaesh Bhai, Shumir Jamai, Kala Miya, Nodi, and many

others; in Kalabogi village—Aman Ullah, the villagers,

and Ansar Bhai and Morium Bhabi who gave me food and

shelter during my stay; in Kamrangirchar—Kolom Bhai,

Shahin, Nasiruddin, and other families living in the slums.

Thank you to Runa (Mustary Khan) and Ahona (Ahona

Rahman), my beloved wife and daughter. Without their

support and tolerance, I would not have been able to finish

this work.

Thanks are also extended to the following people and

institutions.

David Lloyd and Dr George Petelin, my supervisors, who

constantly guided and supported me both academically and

mentally. David has been like a guardian to me throughout

my time in Australia.

Angela Blakely, who was often the first person with whom

I shared my new images and conceptual ideas. Angela and

David also gave me help in editing the photobook and

developing the subsequent exhibitions.

Alan Hill, my dear mate, who helps me like a brother

and who was instrumental in my being able to move to

Australia to undertake my postgraduate study.

All my colleagues in the Photography Department at the

Queensland College of Art (QCA), Griffith University,

who gave me invaluable feedback: Kelly Hussey-Smith, Dr

Ray Cook, Earle Bridger, Dr Jay Younger, Martin Smith,

Bruce Reynolds, Marian Drew, and Renata Buziak.

Alam Bhai (Dr Shahidul Alam), who spoke at the opening

of my exhibition at Kamlapur Railway Station and who has

encouraged me since the beginning of my career. You are

an inspiration as a Majority World photographer.

Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, Drik, and the Chobi

Mela team in Bangladesh; especially, Abir Abdullah, Munem

Wasif, Tanzim Wahab, Md. Main Uddin, Tanvir Murad Tapu,

and Debasish Shom.

The NGOs and local contacts who helped me gain access

to the participants and who shared their knowledge

and understanding in support of this project: Concern

Worldwide and team, Musa Bhia (A. K. M. Musa, Country

Director), Izaz Bhai (Izaz Rasul), Suvashish Karmakar,

Shakil Bhai (Shakil Ahmed). Sajida Foundation and team,

Ershad Bhai, Shohag, Shumon, Santa, Faruque Bhai, Salam

Bhai and Razzak Bhai from Jagrata Juba Shangha.

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Md. Kamal Hossain, Mahfuj Khan and the team at Sarup

Art, who created affordable prints on PVC for my outdoor

exhibitions in Bangladesh.

Munir Bhai (Arifur Rahman), Rubayet Bhai and the team

at Progressive Printers (Pvt.) Ltd., who printed invitation

cards and the exhibition catalogue.

Milon Bhai and Nupur Bhabi, who helped me proofread

and edit my Bangla text, and to Kheya Mezba who created

the typography and design for the exhibition catalogue.

Shaikh Mohir Uddin, Saikat Mojumder, and A Jay Ghani,

who assisted me during my in-field work. Their input

with printing, organising, installing, and promoting the

exhibitions was invaluable.

Lindsay Varvari, who helped me edit my English text and

managed the social media and PR of the project while in

Bangladesh, and who travelled the distance to Kalabogi to

assist me with the exhibition there. I also want to thank

Evie Franzidis for helping me edit the English copy of this

text.

Louis Lim, who helped me design this exegesis and the

photobook and offered advice with regards to printing.

Thanks to James Estrin, Lens (blog) co-editor and senior

staff photographer, The New York Times, who went to my

shows, met with the participants, and shared the stories

in The New York Times. Thank you also to James for kindly

agreeing to reprint his article published in the Lens Blog ,

The New York Times as a foreword to the photobook.

Thanks to the Kamlapur Railway Authority, the

Kamrangirchar slum owner, Hazi Saheb, and the villagers

at Kalabogi, who gave me permission to install my shows

on their sites. Without their permission, it would have

been impossible for me to bring back ‘galleries’ to the

participants of this project.

While I cannot adequately convey my gratitude and debt

to everyone who has helped or influenced me over the

course of making this work, I would like to also give

thanks to Pathshala students, Norman Leslie, Per-Anders

Rosenkvist, Ruth Eichhorn (Director, Geo magazine),

Shahidul Bhai (Shahidul Haque Khan), Rita Apa (Rita Alam),

Nasim Bhai, Shoshanna Williams, Craig Honey, Monjurul

Ahsan Bulbul, Zaheed Reza Noor, Palash Mahbub, Prito

Reza, Latif Hossain, Mahbub Alam Pallab, Jacek Rybinski,

and all the visitors to the exhibitions, especially those who

took part in the discussions by sharing their thoughts and

feedback.

Finally, I thank Griffith University for giving me the

opportunity to undertake my research and for granting me

a scholarship that provided the financial support that has

led to this work.

Chapter 1Introduction to the Project

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1.1 Poverty as a Global Phenomenon

1 Michael Haralambos and Martin Holborn, Sociology Themes and Perspectives, 7th ed. (UK: Harper Collins, 2008), 218–24.

2 Angela Blakely and David Lloyd, “Am I OK: Journalism and Documentary Practice, Why It Matters,” unpublished paper.

3 The Borgen Project, “Top 10 International Poverty Statistics,” The Blog (blog), 1 August 2013, accessed 4 September 2015, http://borgenproject.org/top-10-international-poverty-statistics, and The World Bank, Poverty Overview, last updated 6 April 2015, accessed 4 September 2015, http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview.

4 James Randerson, “World’s Richest 1% Own 40% of All Wealth, UN Report Discovers,” The Guardian, 7 December 2006, http://www.theguardian.com/money/2006/dec/06/business.internationalnews.

5 David Gordon, “Featured Graphic: Global Inequality, Death, and Disease,” Townsend

This research takes as its initial position that the

phenomenon of poverty exists irrespective of the

meanings applied to it by individuals. Poverty has a physical

and a virtual presence. It not only relates to the economic

position or the material possessions of an individual or

a group of people but also depends on the constructed

meaning applied it.1 As a physical phenomenon, it can be

understood as a social fact whereby indisputably different

people have different access to the scarce and valuable

resources of a society. As a virtual phenomenon, the

media has created a common sense understanding of the

impact that poverty will have on the individual. That is,

that those people living in impoverished circumstances

are deprived of the necessities of life, live in squalor, are

disorganised, uneducated, and marginalised. In the images

produced for the media, those who are impoverished are

often depicted from high viewpoints, seen from a distance,

viewed among visual clutter, and have sullen expressions.2

Thus, poverty is seen to share a ‘constructed’ global truth:

it is bad, it is undesired, and people in impoverishment are

less fortunate, less able, less likeable, etc.

In 2011, the World Bank stated that more than 2.2 billion

people were living on less than US $2 a day and that 1.3

billion people were situated below the extreme poverty

line, which is US $1.25 a day.3 While there has been some

improvement in the gross figures on poverty during the

last few years, there are still around 1 billion people

living in extreme poverty, who are therefore extremely

vulnerable to the most basic changes in circumstances—

sickness, death of a family member, increases in the cost of

rent and food, etc.

We live in a world where the richest 20% of the total

population owns 83% of the world’s income, while the

poorest 20% own less than 2% of it. The richest 1% own

40% of the world’s assets.4 By comparison, the poorest

3 billion people own barely 1% of the world’s wealth.5

Duncan Green, Head of Research at Oxfam UK, describes

this level of inequality as grotesque and the Minority

World’s6 level of wealth as impossible to justify when 800

million people go to bed hungry every night. He believes

that redistributing a very small portion of the world’s

wealth could change the lives of millions.7

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture

Organisation (FAO), “about 795 million people of the 7.3

Centre for International Poverty Research, University of Bristol, Environment and Planning A 41 (2009): 1271–72.

6 For the purpose of this exegesis, the term ‘Minority World’ refers to what is commonly known as the ‘Western’ or ‘First’ world.

7 Randerson, “World’s Richest 1%.”

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billion people in the world, or one in nine, were suffering

from chronic undernourishment in 2014–2015. Almost all

the hungry people, 780 million, live in developing countries,

representing 12.9 percent, or one in eight, of the population

of developing countries”,8 which includes Bangladesh.

Akhter Ahmed, Chief of the Bangladesh Policy Research

and Strategy Support Program for the International

Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), reports that even

though Bangladesh has presented a strong commitment

to eradicating hunger and malnutrition, and has achieved

its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on poverty

reduction, it still has 28 million people living on less than the

daily minimum diet requirement of 1,800 calories per day.9

These figures are conservative and can only be achieved

statistically. The people living in impoverished circumstances

are often not registered on any data bank that would allow

for this information to be derived realistically. Therefore,

obtaining accurate data depends on governments declaring

what most of them would attempt to hide. The Hunger

Notes estimate that each year approximately 3.1 million

children die from hunger.10 One source notes that, unlike in

the developed world, where most people who die are aged

over seventy-five,

in the developing world (where 80% of people live), the age at which there is the greatest chance of dying is not when you are old but when you are a baby or young child. Fifty-five million young children are estimated to have died between 1990 and 1995, one child every three seconds... It is estimated that two thirds of these children could easily have been saved

by low cost medical treatments (such as penicillin).11

Despite its claims that poverty has declined overall,

the World Bank maintains that the absolute number of

people below the poverty line remains significant and that

many could fall back into impoverishment.12 In July 2015,

Bangladesh moved from being a low-income country to

lower middle-income country (LMIC),13 one step towards

becoming a middle-income country by 2021. However, many

leading economists, including Dr Hossain Zillur Rahman,

former Adviser to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh

and Executive Chairman at the Power and Participation

Research Centre, argues that this milestone is not a

breakthrough. Hossain fears that a side effect of this is a rise

in inequality, as still more than 40 million people live with

poverty in Bangladesh.14 In the Dhaka metropolitan area,

there are 4.2 million people living in slums or as ‘floating

residents’, and an average of 1400 new residents migrate

8 Hunger Notes, 2015 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics, World Hunger Education Service (WHES), last updated 24 March 2015, http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm.

9 Reaz Ahmed, “Global Initiative to Fight Hunger: Bangladesh Chosen as a Focal Country,” The Daily Star, last updated 17 August 2015, http://www.thedailystar.net/backpage/bangladesh-picked-focal-country-128113.

10 Hunger Notes, World Child Hunger Facts, WHES, last updated July 2015, http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/child_hunger_facts.htm.

11 Gordon, “Featured Graphic.”

12 The World Bank, Bangladesh Overview, accessed 12 September 2015, http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/bangladesh/overview.

13 Rejaul Karim Byron and Md. Fazlur Rahman, “Bangladesh Goes One Step Forward”, The Daily Star, last updated 2 July 2015, http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/bangladesh-goes-one-step-forward-106231.

14 Wafiur Rahman, “Economists Cautious about Lower Middle Income Status”, The Daily Star, last updated 4 July 2015, http://www.thedailystar.net/country/economists-cautious-about-wb-declaration-107356.

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from the countryside to the capital daily.15

While some statistics for Bangladesh may show

achievements in the fight for poverty reduction, the

amount of impoverished people in the country remains

unacceptably high, especially in rural areas. As S. R.

Osmani notes:

The headcount index does not provide a comprehensive picture of what happened to the consumption level of the poor people as it only indicates how many of them managed to cross the poverty line without saying anything about those who were left behind. It is conceivable that a decline in head count index represents only the good fortune of those who were just below the poverty line and have been able to improve their conditions marginally—just enough to cross the line, while the condition of the majority of the people might have remained unchanged or may even have worsened.16

Within this context, poverty is accepted as a social

institution that results from the unequal distribution of

wealth in the global society, making it difficult for people

to break the cycle of their impoverishment. This then

limits their “life chances”—that is, the chance to know the

world, to be educated, to get better if ill, to enjoy one’s

culture, and to aspire to and enjoy one’s potential.17 As

Maggie Walter and Sherry Saggers observe,

When we think about poverty, we tend to think within the parameters of the common poverty indicators such as low income, socioeconomic status or indices of absolute or relative poverty. But these indicators in themselves are not accurate or concrete measures of poverty. Rather, they are proxies—statistically amenable ways of operationalising some of the more measurable aspects of poverty. Poverty itself is a much more complex phenomenon than these proxy measures sometimes indicate. Poverty encompasses a multitude of deprivations that are related, but not restricted, to low income or income inequality.18

This project begins with the understanding that people

living with impoverishment are individualistic and their

responses to the phenomenon are idiosyncratic; therefore,

our understanding of impoverishment should not be

limited by statistical parameters of economic status.

Chain of Poverty interrogates lived experiences in order to

portray the personal stories of each participant whose life

is impacted by their impoverished status.

15 “BBS Census of Slum Dwellers under Fire from NGOs,” The Daily Observer, last updated 9 July 2015, http://www.eobserverbd.com/share.php?q=2015%2F07%2F09%2F16%2Fdetails%2F16_r2_c1.jpg&d=2015%2F07%2F09%2F.

16 S. R. Osmani, Poverty and Vulnerability in Rural Bangladesh (Dhaka: The University Press Limited, 2015), 11.

17 Alastair Greig, Frank Lewins, and Kevin White discuss ‘life chances’ in Inequality in Australia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 92–93, making special reference to Hans Heinrich Gerth and Charles Mills’s 1953 research on the topic. I discuss their research further in Chapter 6.

18 Maggie Walter and Sherry Saggers, “Poverty and Social Class,” in Social Determinants of Indigenous Health ed. Bronwyn Carson, Terry Dunbar, Richard D. Chenhall, and Ross Bailie (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2007), 97.

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1.2 Project Description

While the poverty rates in Bangladesh have decreased

since 1992, the total number of people living below the

poverty line remains significant: around 47 million.19 It

is impossible to know each of these people individually;

however, this research project attempts to look inside

the lives of three Bangladeshi families who share some, if

not all, of the structural disadvantages of this statistical

cohort.

This project, titled Chain of Poverty, is concerned with the

lives and stories of the participants who are involved in the

stories being told. From 2012 to 2015, I explored the lived

experience of three families who live in impoverishment

in Bangladesh. I chose the three families as each of them

experiences a different form of poverty, either as city

street dwellers in the capital Dhaka ( Jarina Khala and her

daughter Mali); slum dwellers in a slum at Dhaka (Nurjahan

Khala, Ali Hossain Khalu, and their three children and

two grandchildren); or rural villagers in Khulna (Bellal

Bhai, Nururnahar Bhabi and their two daughters, Bilkis

and Shamima).20 I know all of these families through my

personal connections and my affiliation with the non-

government organisation (NGO), Concern Worldwide.21 In

seeking to find the aspects of their lives that qualify their lived

experience, I have immersed myself into their situations by

living with them on the street, in the slum, and in the village,

and engaged with them in their daily life through fishing,

eating, sleeping, and other everyday interactions. Through

this process, I became a stakeholder in their lives, and this

collaboration allowed me to simultaneously focus on creating

visual stories and developing a methodology and visual

approach that gives some form to what, for many, is little

more than a regrettable statistic.

The project and photobook Chain of Poverty are divided into

three sections that are titled No Life on the Street, This Is the

Life, and Born Into a Poor Family, which represent the lives

of Jarina Khala and Mali, Nurjahan Khala’s family, and Bellal

Bhai’s family, respectively. These titles were drawn from the

participants’ own statements and were used as the respective

exhibition titles. The project acknowledges that the structural

disadvantages these families experience affect most of those

who are impoverished in Bangladesh. And while the meanings

that each individual attributes to this disadvantage may vary,

the physical reality of this burden often seems to present a

common face of deprivation and hopelessness.

19 The World Bank, Bangladesh Overview, accessed 12 September 2015, http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/bangladesh/overview.

20 ‘Khala’ is Bangla for ‘aunty’, ‘Bhai’ is Bangla for ‘brother’, ‘Bhabi’ is Bangla for ‘sister-in-law’ and ‘Khalu’ is Bangla for ‘uncle’. In Bangladeshi culture, we do not use people’s surnames if the person is older than us and we know them personally or are related to them by blood (whether close or distant). Since I have established relationships with Jarina Khala (‘Aunty Jarina’) and Nurjahan Khala (‘Aunty Nurjahan’), it is customary and respectful for me to refer to them in this way rather than use their proper full names ( Jarina Begum and Nurjahan Begum, respectively). Similarly, I refer to Md. Bellal Gazi as Bellal Bhai (‘Brother Bellal’); Mosammad Nururnahar Begum as Nururnahar Bhabi (Sister-in-law Nururnahar) and Md. Ali Hossain as Ali Hossain Khalu (‘Uncle Ali Hossain) because I have an established relationship with them too. Readers are advised that I have used such terms throughout in my exegesis indicate my relationship to the person in question.

The full names of all participants are included in Appendix 1: Biographical Details of the Participants in This Project.

21 See Concern Worldwide’s website, https://www.concern.net/where-we-work/asia/bangladesh.

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The Questions:

The following questions have guided this research:

What is the affective dimension of the lived experiences of three Bangladeshi families whose life choices are limited by extreme poverty that can be examined and conveyed through the agency of documentary photography?

And

Can the process of this investigation, to some extent, empower its subjects and create a bridge of human understanding among its participants?

Using documentary photography, I have collected the

participants’ stories by blending traditional ethnographic

approaches, open interviews, conversations, and

observations to capture and disseminate some of the lived

experiences of the three families. The new knowledge

sought in this project is to give a form to the tacitly

understood aspects of poverty and, in doing so, to

challenge the stereotypical representations of poverty.

Working with people living in poverty in Bangladesh has

also raised several key issues that have shaped the research

questions, the methodology, and the in-field approaches

towards documenting some of their lived experiences.

This research attempts to identify the metaphoric,

political, and social gaps that separate the participants

from the researcher and the audience. Additionally, a

major consideration is to ascertain whether a bridge can

be created that develops an empathetic and informative

understanding of the participants to narrow this gap.

As the research project took form, the distribution of the

stories broadened to include: publishing across various

platforms, including three photographic exhibitions installed

on-site where each of the families live, exhibitions in

academic and commercial galleries located in the Minority

World, and the publication of a photobook.22 At the time of

writing this exegesis, these stories have also been published

in the locales of the participants and distributed globally

through mainstream media, such as The New York Times23

and other online platforms, including social media, which

will be discussed later in the exegesis. Combined, these

stories portray not only the physical facts that are shared

by these three families but also give the reader/viewer some

insight into meanings that are attributed by each family to

this impoverishment.

David B. Morris argues that our understanding of suffering

is associated with “specific cultural narratives”,24 and that

22 Shehab Uddin, Chain of Poverty (Brisbane, Qld: self-published, 2016).

23 James Estrin, “An Embedded Photographer Empowers the Poor”, Lens (blog), The New York Times, 24 February 2015, http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/an-embedded-photographer-empowers-the-poor/?r=0.; “Empowering the Poor”, The International New York Times, 27 February 2015, 2.

24 David B. Morris, Illness and Culture in the Postmodern Age (University of California Press, 2000), 216.

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even if suffering could be captured via traditional modes

of communication, these modes can no longer disseminate

the depth of that suffering to a broader audience because

people have developed resistance to the literary tropes

worn out through centuries of repetition. Arguably, today,

the visual is a language to which audiences have little

resistance. Photographic images are embedded with a

verisimilitude that ensures the distance between the viewer

and the participants all but disappears. It is the ability to

bring the viewer into the world of another that makes

photo-documentary practice a potent force through which

to tell stories that seek change.

1.3 Documentary Photography and Photojournalism: A Clarification of My Practice

Within the professional world of the visual, non-fictional

storytelling is often argued as either photojournalism or

documentary practice. The characteristics most often

attributed to these appear to overlap or be interchangeable.

In attempting to explain the processes I employed for Chain

of Poverty and why I refer to my practice as documentary

photography and not photojournalism, I will clarify what I

see as the similarities and differences between these two

practices.

What defines the disciplines and positions the lines of

demarcation has become blurred through the blending of

common sense definitions with the conventions of practice.

Today, the term ‘photojournalist’ can be applied to anyone

with a camera at a newsworthy event, while documentary

practice is associated with the phrase ‘I documented…’.

Practitioners themselves interchange or conflate the terms,

and market trends often determine the forms of publication

their work appears in; someone who considers theirself

to be a documentary practitioner may find their work

published in features stories in newspapers and magazines,

while the photojournalist may see their work published

in books and galleries as well as in traditional venues of

photojournalism such as newspapers and magazines. This

blurring of boundaries is further exacerbated by time.

Exhibitions and publications of photojournalistic works

taken over a sustained period of time bring together

newsworthy events that may have happened decades

apart. In doing this, new meanings are constructed and

8

new understandings of human practice are developed

and presents a different commentary than the original

newsworthy event for which the story was made.

Howard S. Becker argues that these practices are

“whatever they have come to mean, or been made to

mean, in their daily use in worlds of photographic work”.25

Therefore, any attempt to clarify these disciplines should

address the world in which they find meaning and purpose.

Both photojournalism and documentary photography

share some fundamental commonalities. They both lay

claim to ‘truth telling’ as a central principle. While this

claim is problematic and challenged within academe, for

the purpose of this exegesis, it is how this claim has been

mediated in the respective working worlds that will allow

the distinctions to become obvious. In addition, in both

practices, the claim of ‘truth telling’ is predicated on the

use of the camera and the “cultural status that photographs

have in society as evidence”.26

It is this evidentiary component of the photographic image

gifted to it by the use of a camera that should be the

starting point in any discussion of these disciplines. To a

public that may rarely think deeply about it, the camera

appears to be a mechanical or digital device that records

light from an object to make an image. It is the physical

property of this light that both connects and continues to

connect the object to the image and in doing so provides

proof that the object existed.27 This connection links the

object and the image innately and gives “rise to (notions

of) objectivity stronger than any other medium”.28 Today,

the camera together with a 3D printer strengthens

this connection further. Combined, they are capable of

reproducing the object as another object.29 For example,

if a pen were photographed and printed, it would appear

identical to the original. When viewed, it would look

the same; when touched, it would feel the same. The

difference may only become obvious, if at all, when the

reproduced pen was used for writing. Undoubtedly, the

camera connects the object and the image in ways no other

medium does.30 That is, the image evidences the object in

some form and the guiding hand of the author is rendered

all but invisible. So ingrained is this connection that while

many are becoming aware of the subjective hand of the

photographer in journalism, documentary practice and

creative advertising, few question this hand when shown

photographs taken from the Hubble Space Telescope or

25 See Howard S. Becker, “Visual Sociology, Documentary Photography, and Photojournalism: It’s (Almost) All a Matter of Context,” in Image-Based Research: A Sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers, ed. Jon Prosser (London and New York: Routledge Fallmer, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005), 74, PDF e-book.

26 Jenni Mäenpää, “Photojournalism and the Notion of Objectivity – The Particularity of Photography and Its Relationship with Truthfulness,” in Past, Future and Change: Contemporary Analysis of Evolving Media Scapes, ed. Ilija Tomanić Trivundža et al. (Ljubljana: Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana Press, 2013), 128.

27 Ibid., 124.

28 Ibid., 125.

29 Susanne Klein, Michael Avery, Guy Adams, Stephen Pollard, and Steven Simske, “From Scan to Print: 3D Printing as a Means for Replication,” HP Laboratories, 24 September 2014,

http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2014/HPL-2014-30.pdf; and Chee Kai Chua and Kah Fai Leong, 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing: Principles and Applications (with Companion Media Pack) Fourth Edition of Rapid Prototyping (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co. Inc, 2014).

30 Mäenpää, “Photojournalism and the Notion of Objectivity,” 124–25.

9

through photomicrography, or simply when viewing sports

images in the newspaper.

Becker argued that the distinction and boundaries between

photojournalism and documentary practice depended on

the intended purpose of the work and those factors that

govern that work—methods of inquiry, ethics, markets, etc.

Therefore, any understanding of these practices can only be

derived from an interrogation of the worlds in which they

function and the limitations and expectations placed on

their practitioners.31

Photojournalism seeks the newsworthy event—the who,

what, where, when and why—and is produced mostly

over a short period of time due to the urgency of feeding

the media cycle. This is especially crucial in today’s

media environment, with the rise of online news portals,

which can be updated as frequently as every minute. This

constant supply of journalistic feed affects the behaviours

of media consumers who expect instantly understandable

information from the visual content they ingest without

the need for deeper thinking (this is further discussed in

sections 2.1 and 5.1 in this exegesis),32 and the practitioners

who must cater for this expectation. To this end, the codes

31 Becker, “Visual Sociology.”

32 Ibid.

33 The New York Times, Ethical Journalism: A Handbook of Values and Practices for the News and Editorial Departments, September 2004, http://www.nytco.com/wp-content/uploads/NYT_Ethical_ Journalism_0904-1.pdf.

of ethics of corporate media strongly guide photojournalists

and their method of capturing (news) photographs by

restricting any intervention with their subject/s.

While codes of ethics are as numerous as newspapers and

media outlets, they share a consensus as to what is seen

as appropriate to photojournalism. Borrowing from Becker

therefore, a clearer understanding of this practice can be

gained by looking at these codes. The New York Times, an

exemplary periodical that has been printed for over 166

years, and has won more Pulitzer Prizes than any other

publication, has a code that states:

In print and online, we tell our readers the

complete, unvarnished truth as best we can learn it.

...Relationships with sources require the utmost in

sound judgement and self discipline to prevent the fact

or appearance of partiality. ...personal relationships

with news sources can erode into favoritism, in fact

or appearance. ...it is essential that we preserve a

professional detachment, free of any whiff of bias.33

Similarly, the Australian Media Entertainment and Arts

Alliance (MEAA) Code of Ethics states, “Do not allow

personal interest, or any belief, commitment, payment,

10

gift or benefit, to undermine your accuracy, fairness or

independence. ...Present pictures and sound which are true

and accurate.”34

These codes, published and promoted to the public, assist

in the construction of meanings around photojournalistic

imagery “...of reconstructing the reality …[that] is closely

linked to the objectivity norm operating within Western

(European and North American) journalism”.35 As such,

within the confines of this exegesis, photojournalism is argued

as belonging to a world of photographic work that reflects

the corporate world of journalism, and that it is a practice

with claims to truth telling, objectivity, impartiality, and the

need for immediacy.36

In contrast, documentary photography does not have any

professional bodies or corporations through which its

practice is governed. Its beginnings lie in the social reforms of

the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (discussed

more in section 5.1).37 Like photojournalism, this practice

also uses a camera and heavily relies on the cultural status

of photographs as evidence.38 Its output is often through

exhibitions, books, locally focused slide presentations,

websites, blogs, etc. Although shackled by other restraints—

economics, curatorial direction, publishers and editors—

documentary practice has been freed from the stresses of

an immediate news cycle and therefore its practitioners

have made long-term investments to the stories they have

sought to tell. This willingness to invest long-term is one of

the defining characteristics of my practice.

Throughout, documentary practice has been defined as

much by other disciplines that also make claims to truth

telling—economics, sociology, anthropology—as it has

been by practitioners, curators and historians. Although

the backgrounds of practitioners are varied, a substantial

number have emerged from the social sciences. For

example, Roy Emerson Stryker39 who headed the seminal

work completed by the Farm Security Administration was

educated as an economist, as was Sebastião Salgado40. Lewis

Hine41 trained as a sociologist, Gilles Peress studies at the

Institute d’Etudes Politiques in Paris. In addition, the camera

became a data-collecting tool used by Margaret Mead,

Gregory Bateson, John and Malcolm Collier.42 Such was the

faith in the veracity of the camera that author, explorer and

botanist Everard Ferdinand im Thurn urged the ‘educated

traveller’ to document their observations using a camera as

34 The MEAA Journalist Code of Ethics, https://www.meaa.org/meaa-media/code-of-ethics/.

35 Mäenpää, “Photojournalism and the Notion of Objectivity,” 123.


37 Ibid.

38 Mäenpää, “Photojournalism and the Notion of Objectivity.”

39 “Roy Stryker,” Wikipedia, last modified 18 November 2016, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Stryker.

40 “Sebastião Salgado,” Wikipedia, last modified 8 January 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebasti%C3%A3o_Salgado.

41 “Lewis Hine,” Wikipedia, last modified 19 January 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Hine.

42 Anne Marie Kanstrup, “Picture the Practice—Using Photography to Explore Use of Technology within Teachers’ Work Practices,” Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research 3, no 2, (2002): Art. 17, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0202177.

11

a means of sharing knowledge of other cultures.43 Thus, the

documentary world of photographic work came to mirror

the conventions established across time and social sciences,

through practice and scholarly critique.44

My documentary practice can be described as a blend of

“investigative journalism and ethnography within a culture

of aesthetics”.45 It encompasses the use of various media,

including film, still photography, and audio and written

accounts. It seeks not only to capture ‘hard evidence’ but

also to interrogate the nuanced, the overlooked, and the

ignored in order to construct an empathetic understanding

of the ‘other’.46 In general, documentary practice borrows

heavily from the social sciences, yet, historically, it has had

a vexed relationship with these disciplines.47 While both

documentary practice and social science interrogate similar

types of subject matter and often employ similar methods

of inquiry, the acknowledged subjectivity often celebrated

by most documentary practitioners has seen it dismissed by

many social scientist as unscientific and thus untrustworthy.48

However, as will be discussed in Chapters 3 and 5 of

this exegesis, it is these traits that not only define this

discipline but have also become fundamental tenets of ‘new

43 E. F. im Thurn, “Anthropological Uses of the Camera,” The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 22 (1893): 184–203, https://archive.org/details/journalroyalant02irelgoog.


45 Blakely and Lloyd, “Am I OK.”

46 Ibid.


48 Sarah Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography, 2nd ed. (London: SAGE Publications Ltd., 2007).

49 Ibid.

ethnography’.49

Contemporary practice that can be categorised as

documentary frequently employs deep immersion into the

lives of the participants involved. In doing so, the perceptions

of the documentary practitioner blend with those of the

participants and form a collaborative narrative of the

phenomenon experienced. Though documentary practice is

can be criticised by proponents of the objective school of

photojournalism for the embracing of this subjectivity, the

tendency among practitioners to become closely involved

with the events and participants documented allows viewers

to develop a confidence in the perceptions developed by the

author, knowing that these were developed collaboratively

with the participants, and in the situations in which they

occurred. Effectively, the documentary practitioner often

becomes more than an eyewitness to the events researched;

rather, for a short period, the documentary practitioner

becomes a participant in those events.

Historically, practitioners that can be categorised as

documentist have often sought to change the events in

which they have become involved through their work

because of the close relationship that usually develops

12

50 Darcy Padilla, The Julie Project, 1993–2010, http://www.agencevu.com/focus/medias.php?tab=photographes&id_video=522.

51 Kanstrup, “Picture the Practice”; James Estrin, “A Desperate Lifetime, a Caring Photographer,” Lens (blog), The New York Times, 20 October 2010, http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/a-desperate-lifetime-a-caring-photographer/?_r=0; Sean Black, “Photographer Darcy Padilla Addresses the Complexities of Poverty and the Difficult Task of Documenting Pain,” A&U Magazine, 20 June 2012, http://www.aumag.org/2012/06/20/darcy-padilla/; Sean O’Hagan, “Darcy Padilla’s Julie Project: When Photography Becomes Humanitarian,” The Guardian, 26 January 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jan/25/photography-humanitarian-darcy-padilla-julie-baird; and Olivier Laurent, “Why Photographers Commit to Long-Term Storytelling,” Huck Magazine, 18 December 2016, http://www.huckmagazine.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/photographers-longform-storytelling-nancy-borowick/.

between them and their participants. An example of this

is the work of Darcy Padilla and her documentary The Julie

Project.50 For this in-depth, investigative and participatory

long-term project, Padilla documented Julie Baird over

eighteen years. She immersed herself into Julie’s life and

not only felt compassion, but also responsibility, which

led her to take action to make changes for Julie and

her children helping them emotionally and financially.

Because of the project and just prior to her death Julie

was reunited with one of her children who had been in

foster care. Today, Padilla is aiding in the search for Julie’s

other four children who were given up for adoption and

she continues to raise money for their education.51 From

Alice Seeley Harris, whose work (1898-1901) exposed the

brutality of King Leopold II rule in the Congo, the history

of this discipline is replete with documentists that sought

to change the phenomena in which they were immersed.

While too numerous to name, some of the seminal

practitioners whose work informs my documentary

practice include: Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Margaret Bourke

White, W. Eugene Smith, Dorothea Lange, Allan Sekula,

Martha Rosler, Jim Goldberg, Mary Ellen Mark, Fazal

Sheikh, Darcy Padilla, Lauren Greenfield, Daniel Meadows,


53 Alice McIntyre, Participatory Action Research (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2008), xii.

Raghu Rai, Shahidul Alam, Chris Jordan, Gerhard Joren,

Dana Popa, to name but a few.

It is not the intention of this section to imply that either

photojurnalism or documentary practice possess an

unchanging essence that has defined them for all time.

Many of the exemplaries named above worked for

corporate media (Eugene Smith, Padilla, Greenfield, etc.)

and yet today, are recognised for their documentaries.

Becker argues that each discipline had typical norms

and values but these are, and have always been, in a

constant state of flux.52 And of course this only adds to

the difficulty in defining my practice and clarifying why it

is that I thought it necessary to sleep in the streets with

Jarina Khala, experience life with Nurjahan Khala in the

slums of Dhaka and fish in with the fishermen, Bellal Bhai

in the village. In many ways, my documentary photography

is a practice of storytelling that is a collaboration with

participants rather than for participants.53 The methods

employed in this project acknowledge this rich history

and seek to develop a collaborative form of storytelling

about the actuality in which the participants live. The

understandings sought lie within the aspects of human

existence.

13

‘us’, when in fact they were intimately connected. The war,

after all, was being fought in the name of those at home.”55

Vietnam was as much in the living rooms of the Minority

World as it was in the battlefields of this country. The

politics of the author and the evidentiary nature of the

camera had combined to conflate space.

Rosler, sceptical of any communicative medium to motivate

change—a claim made by many disciplines that purport to

be truth telling—challenged photography, journalism, and

traditional modes of communication in her seminal work The

Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems.56 By focusing

on the hybridity of text and image, Rosler critiqued the

claims that any system of communication could capture the

nuanced and the multilayered nature of the human condition.

She described documentary as being “a little like horror

movies, putting a face on fear and transforming threat into

fantasy, into imagery. One can handle imagery by leaving

it behind. (It is them, not us.)”57 Bringing the War Home58

critiqued the notion of truth in the journalistic imagery

that was saturating television screens and newspapers in

American homes during the Vietnam War. Her constructed

photomontages showcase the massive self-interest inherent

in the American public’s view of their country’s involvement

1.4 A Turning Point: Challenging the Cultural Status of the Photograph

For its first one hundred years, photography enjoyed a

special status as a truth telling discipline and/or a fine

art practice. The commonly held assumption during this

period was that reality existed in some form separate from

perception. That is, there was a truth, it could be found,

and photography could hold that truth once found.

By the middle of the twentieth century, the Minority

World enjoyed unprecedented prosperity. Along with this

prosperity was a desire for social justice; the 1960s became

a time of civil rights, social upheaval, and deep questioning.

But it was also a time when much of the Western World

was consumed with: consuming; the Vietnam War, a war

in which journalists were given freedom to interpret and

present it as they saw fit; and the threat of complete

annihilation through nuclear holocaust. Artists of the time,

such as Martha Rosler, created works that both questioned

the Vietnam War and the role of photography in controlling

public reaction to the War. Her series, House Beautiful:

Bringing the War Home54 challenged the visual and political

boundaries that “separated ‘here’ from ‘there’, ‘them’ from

54 Martha Rosler, House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home, http://martharosler.net/photo/war1/index.html.

55 Kitty Hauser, “Martha Rosler Photomontage Brings Death to the Living Room at AGNSW,” The Australian, 10 October 2015, accessed 5 November 2016, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/martha-rosler-photomontage-brings-death-to-the-living-room-at-agnsw/news-story/72b89b79f6cdc69e9fbd813c98faed20.

56 Martha Rosler, The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems, http://martharosler.net/photo/bowery.html; Martha Rosler, “Martha Rosler. The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems. 1974–75,” MoMA multimedia, audio file, 2:52, https://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/295/3324; and Stephen Edwards, Martha Rosler: The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems (London: Afterall, 2012).

57 Martha Rosler, “In, Around, and Afterthoughts (on Documentary Photography),” in Decoys and Disruptions: Selected Writings, 1975-2001 (New York: The MIT Press, 2004), 179.

58 Rosler, House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home.

14

59 Susan Sontag. On Photography (New York: RosettaBooks LLC, 2005).

60 Ibid.

61 Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Picador, 2003), 21–22.

62 Ibid., 22.

63 John Tagg, The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).

worlds) as benign. For so prolific was its use—in journalism,

documentary, politics—that the world seemed smaller

and appeared knowable, and we became educated through

photographs. Paradoxically, at the same time, our education

became limited by those photographs. History became seen,

and we in turn developed ways of seeing and understanding

that mirrored the dominant ideologies of the state.

The adoption of photography by almost everyone, in every

sector of society, was concurrent with the growth of

scientific and social methodologies—other truth telling

practices in which structures, forms and meanings also

appeared to exist independent of the viewer. As John

Tagg argues in The Burden of Representation: Essays on

Photographies and Histories, photography became a means of

conveying the presiding ideology of the time. While Sontag

raised questions as to photography’s ‘sleight of hand’, Tagg

saw the relationship between the user and the camera, the

state and the camera, and the corporate world and the

camera as being embedded with the dominant ideologies of

that time, such as capitalism, consumerism, surveillance and

governance.63

Like the state, the camera is never neutral. The representations it produces are highly coded, and

in the war as being heroic, and pretending to find truth.

In 1977 Susan Sontag also argued in her seminal essay,

On Photography, that there is no truth, there is only one’s

interpretation of the phenomena at hand.59 Photography is

a language that produces meanings that feel like knowledge

and truth but that are neither.60 She maintained that

photographs purport to be evidence while at the same

time are imbued with the ideologies, culture, education,

morals, and the perceptions/worldview of photographer.

These factors consciously and unconsciously direct

photographers’ technical and aesthetic choices. As Sontag

states in a later publication,

Photographs had the advantage of uniting two contradictory features. Their credentials of objectivity were inbuilt. Yet they always had, necessarily, a point of view. They were a record of the real—incontrovertible, as no verbal account, however impartial, could be—since a machine was doing the recording. And they bore witness to the real—since a person had been there to take them. ...This sleight of hand allows photographs to be both objective record and personal testimony.61

It was this “sleight of hand”62 that became problematic.

Photography was no longer viewed (at least in scholarly

15

the power it wields is never its own. As a means of record, it arrives on the scene vested with a particular authority to arrest, picture and transform daily life... This is not the power of the camera but the power of the apparatuses of the local state which deploy it and guarantee the authority of the images it constructs to stand as evidence or register a truth.64

Moreover, John Taylor argued that photography’s ‘sleight

of hand’ was not benign or innocent but intentional and an

insidious form of social control in that “...the objectivity

of photographs is notional: the photographs are intricately

sewn into the web of rhetoric. They are never outside it,

and always lend it the authority of witness. ...the bias of

commentary is inescapable.”65

But the political dimension of photography was not only

embedded in its relationship to notions of truth. It could

also be found in the photographer’s desire to create images

that referenced the Minority World mainstream media. The

implication is that the actuality of an event is converted

to a representation that fits the reader’s sensibility and,

in doing so, the representation no longer bears witness

to that which, in some form, occurred. In addressing the

concerning use of overt aesthetics in documenting horror,

Ingrid Sischy made the following comment on Sebastião

Salgado’s images of poverty and famine:

Beauty is a call to admiration, not to action. ...the people in his pictures remain strangers. ...Salgado’s strategies consistently add[ed] up to aestheticization, not reportage. ...Such a romanticizing of this multilayered subject is almost breathtaking in its narrowness—particularly in the light of Salgado’s supposed attunement to the lives of the powerless.66

When combined with notions of objectivity, the aesthetic

distance between the victims of famines, drought, poverty

and/or social injustice and the viewer grows even greater,

but at the same time it makes transparent the myth of

objectivity. As Rosler argues,

An analysis which reveals social institutions as serving one class by legitimating and enforcing its domination while hiding behind the false mantle of even-handed universality necessitates an attack on the monolithic cultural myth of objectivity (transparency, unmediatedness), which implicates not only photography but all journalistic and reportorial objectivity used by mainstream media to claim ownership of all truth.67

Within my documentary practice, aesthetics are the

grammar of the visual, the combining of components—light,

elements, framing, angle, depth of field—so as to create an

64 Ibid., 63–64.

65 John Taylor, War Photography: Realism in the British Press (London: Routledge, 1991), 10.

66 Ingrid Sischy, “Good Intentions,” The New Yorker, 9 September 1991.

67 Rosler, “In, Around, and Afterthoughts,” 188.

16

68 ‘Majority World’ is a term introduced by Shahidul Alam that is becoming increasingly used to replace the terms ‘Developing World’ or ‘Third World’, which most southern practitioners consider to be derogatory. Shahidul Alam, Reframing the Majority World, accessed on 28 April 2013, http://auroraforum.stanford.edu/files/transcripts/Aurora_Forum_Essay_Shahidal%20Alam_Reframing%20the%20Majority%20World.10.01.07.pdf.

1.5 Project Rationale

Leading activist, writer, and photographer Dr Shahidul Alam,

who is Managing Director and Founder of Drik Picture

Library, Pathshala, and Majority World Photo Agency, argues

that Majority World68 countries have almost invariably been

photography was not the only focus of this period of

interrogation. Rather, this was a period of upheaval in

academic thought. The modernist ideas of the big narrative,

of fixed meanings, and of reality existing independently

were replaced with a more nuanced understanding of the

world and society’s part in constructing that world.

The mystique that photography had enjoyed in its first

century no longer fitted easily into this new paradigm.

Corporate media markets the easily understood notions

of fact finding and truth telling as taken for granted.

However, to many, they are no longer taken for granted.

The philosophy underpinning my documentary practice, as

much a product of the gallery and scholarly critique, makes

no such claim to objectivity, but arguably still trades on the

assumptions that the camera evidences the inherent ‘sleight

of hand’ of the medium.

affective/emotional response in the audience. Good visual

storytelling is about knowing through feeling rather than

knowing through describing. However, there is a very fine

line between the use of aesthetics to move an audience

to the suffering of others and the use of the suffering of

others to move an audience to appreciate the ‘talent’ of the

author. Sischy’s critique of Salgado’s work is damning indeed

and questions the intentions and humanity of Salgado

himself. However, the anger embedded in this critique could

be read as a form of ‘shooting the messenger’. Arguably,

Sischy’s knowledge of the suffering in Salgado’s images could

only have come from viewing those images. The compassion

for the ‘subjects’ of Salgado’s images again could only

be derived from those images. The anger felt arguably

evidences the success of those images, albeit mis-directed.

Nonetheless, the second century in the history of

photography began with a period of deep interrogation

of this discipline. The unique traits on which photography

had enjoyed its first century of unchallenged supremacy—

evidence, truth, fact finding—were not only challenged

but those areas of photography that relied heavily on

these traits to justify their existence (photojournalism and

documentary practice) were also lampooned. However,

17

portrayed through a very narrow lens,69 with Bangladesh

being no exception. He argues that, “When people are

denied their humanity and become icons of poverty;

they become lesser beings.”70 In other words, those

suffering impoverishment become no more attractive

than the phenomenon of poverty itself. Representations

of poverty, like any other social phenomena, should

be understood in relation to structures of power and

dominance.71 Photographic images of poverty, however

well-intentioned, often obscure the context within which

they are documented. Much of the available photographic

material ‘recording’ Majority World issues are done

so by Minority World photographers, journalists, and

academics, who distribute their work through Minority

World outlets. Arguably, this approach does not help to

address the causes of poverty-related issues. Instead, it

simply perpetuates existing stereotypes whereby people

living in impoverished conditions are seen as being

(the sole) contributors to their circumstances. These

representations only serve to increase the distance

between the people from the Majority World (seen as

‘impoverished subjects’) and the privileged Minority World

viewers, incontrovertibly cementing the cultural divide.

This project has tried to combat this by challenging the

power relationships between the researcher and those

researched. Simultaneously, it has aimed to bridge the gap

between the researched and the global audience (both from

the Majority and Minority Worlds).

In her essay “Torture and the Ethics of Photography:

Thinking with Sontag”, Judith Butler argues that our

responsiveness to tragedy or trauma is often affected by

the representation of the suffering through photographic

imagery, which frames the visual narrative either to humanise

or dehumanise others.72 In his book Distant Suffering: Morality,

Media and Politics, sociologist Luc Boltanski questions

humanitarianism that aims to alleviate suffering and how the

spectator reacts to spectacles of suffering. He considers how

this confrontation is different between global (mainly Minority

World) and local audiences. He states that from the distant

space of a comfortable living room, spectacles of the suffering

of others might create pity and while this might provoke some

people to take political action, it is still very different from

creating a sense of solidarity with those in need.73

In light of the ideas put forward by Butler and Boltanski,

this project is based on an in-field approach of collaborative

storytelling without any preconceived and controlled

representation. As such, I have engaged in certain activities,

69 Shehab Uddin and Shahidul Alam, “Pavement Dwellers, Conversation with Shehab Uddin and Shahidul Alam”, Emergency Fund, Magnum Foundation, 2011, http://emergencyfund.magnumfoundation.org/projects/pavement-dwellers.

70 Ibid.

71 Shahidul Alam, “The Visual Representation of Developing Countries by Developmental and the Western Media”, ZoneZero, 30 May 1994, accessed 12 September 2015, http://v1.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/shahidul/shahidul.html.

72 Judith Butler, “Torture and the Ethics of Photography: Thinking with Sontag”, in Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London: Verso, 2009), 63–100.

73 Luc Boltanski, Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

18

1.6 Project Aims

The project aimed to investigate the impact that poverty

has on three families in one of the world’s poorest

countries, Bangladesh. Succinctly put, my objectives were to

investigate the affective dimensions of poverty and create

a sense of solidarity in the viewer/reader with (at the very

least) the families involved. To achieve these objectives, this

project sought to find various dimensions of impoverishment

through personally experiencing the everyday lives and

hardships of three particular families. It was important

that the work represents each family as complex and

multidimensional by challenging the stereotypes usually

applied to the poor. Below are the three key elements that

have underpinned my approach to this project:

• Achieving social justice (in relation to structures of power and dominance): This research project strove to create agency for the participants by giving them authority at different stages throughout the process, including their participation through informed consent, active sharing of thoughts, narrative, and representation.

• Challenging the tired notions inherent in traditional journalism: Within mass media, poverty is presented as a constant and absolute,

such as sleeping next to Jarina Khala on the street of Dhaka,

spending days with Nurjahan Khala as she completed her

chores, and fishing with Bellal Bhai, which has provided me

with a little more inner perspective of those three families.

Documenting their lived experiences as I went, I was able

to explore and participate from the inside rather than the

outside. But I noticed that by doing this, I became invested

in their lives and their that (good or bad) fortune had a

direct affect on my life and sense of worth.

For example, I felt horrified as I witnessed Jarina Khala’s

disabled daughter Mali being turned away from much-needed

medical help simply because she is poor, and I felt angry

as I came to understand that Nurjahan Khala’s husband Ali

Hossain Khalu contributes little to the fortune of his family.

Of course, there were also positive moments, such as the

joy I experienced in helping Bellal Bhai achieve his modest

dreams, of seeing him asleep on my couch, and of being

brothers going to the movies together. In all of the stories

told, I am not merely an observer: I am a participant too.

19

I have long questioned the intentions of the Minority World

media. But as this project grew, I began to also interrogate

my early work as a Majority World photographer, work that

I now view as being heavily influenced by mainstream media

1.7 Background to the Project

1.7.1 Career Experience: A Cross-Examination of

My Work


75 Shehab Uddin, Amrao Manush: The Pavement Dwellers, 2008, http://shehabuddin.net/amrao-manush-1/#1.

76 Shehab Uddin Uddin, “Amrao Manush: The Pavement Dwellers”, Concern Worldwide, News and blog (blog), 2008, accessed 12 September 2015, https://www.concern.net/news-blogs/concern-blog/we-are-people-too-video.

77 Angkor Photography Festival, 4th edition (Siem Reap, Cambodia: November 2008).

78 Shehab Uddin, “Amrao Manush: The Pavement Dwellers”, Chobi Mela V, International Festival of Photography (Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2009), ex. cat., 40–41, http://archive.chobimela.org/chobimelaV/pdf/cm-v_catalogue.pdf.

79 Shehab Uddin, “Amrao Manush: The Pavement Dwellers”, Viewpoints & Viewing Points, Asian Art Biennial, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMoFA) (Taichung City, Taiwan:

2009–10), http://www.ntmofa.gov.tw/english/ShowInfomation2_1.aspx?SN=2558.

80 Shehab Uddin, Nordic Light, International Festival of Photography (Kristiansund, Norway: 2010), ex. cat., 17, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/50a507b3e4b013b04b89fbe6/t/50fddc99e4b0fa3b9225b7b2/1358814361258/NLE_catalogue_2010.pdf.

81 FINDING Chéri Samba (Brussels, Belgium: 2010), http://bamart.be/nl/news/detail/4566/266.

82 I Witness, ex. cat. (Miami, FL: Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, 2012).

83 Shehab Uddin, “Shehab Uddin: The ‘Bird Keeper’ of Bangladesh Stalks the Street of Dhaka,” CPN magazine 2008, 1–6.

whereby individuals are little more than the personification of a fiscal event. This project has adopted a more reflexive social documentary approach to identify the complexities of the participants and to ascertain how they provide meaning to the social institution of poverty.

• Dismantling the boundaries between ‘them’ and ‘us’: In giving agency to the participants and by portraying them as more complex than simply victims of an economic situation, this project effectively ‘names’ them. This allows the reader to perceive the participant as a member of the world community to which we all belong. In doing this, it is hoped that compassion is generated that helps narrow the gap between ‘them’ and ‘us’.74

from the Minority World. During my twenty-five-year career

as a photographer, I have worked with and for national and

international newspapers, magazines, and NGOs, the outcome

of which has been the production of several bodies of work on

poverty.

One significant project was titled Amrao Manush: The Pavement

Dwellers (2007–8),75 which was commissioned by the Irish

NGO Concern Worldwide76 and aimed to present the impact

of poverty on individual and families on the street of Dhaka.

Concern Worldwide’s ultimate goal was to gain sympathy from

Minority World audiences in order to convince them to donate

money. The photographic images were featured in a number

of international exhibitions, among them Angkor Photography

Festival, Siem Reap, Cambodia (November, 2008);77 Chobi

Mela V, International Festival of Photography, Dhaka, Bangladesh

(2009);78 Viewpoints & Viewing Points: Asian Art Biennial, National

Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (2009–10);79 Nordic Light: International

Festival of Photography, Kristiansund, Norway (2010);80 FINDING

Chéri Samba, Brussels (Elzenhof, Sans Souci, Kultuurkaffee, Den

Teirling), Belgium (2010);81 and I Witness, Bernice Steinbaum

Gallery, Miami, Florida (2012).82 The pavement dwellers’ story

was also published in different newspapers, magazines, web

publications, such as CPN Magazine,83 and books such as Under

20

84 Shahidul Alam, ed., Under the Banyan Tree (Dhaka, Bangladesh: South Asian Media Academy, 2011).

85 Uddin, Amrao Manush: The Pavement Dwellers.

86 Alam, “Visual Representation of Developing Countries.”

87 Roger Bennett and Rita Kottasz, “Advertising Imagery Employed by Disaster Relief Organisations and Media Stereotyping of the Recipients of Aid”, in New Meanings for Marketing in a New Millennium: Proceedings of the 2001, Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference, ed. Melissa Moore and Robert S. Moore, Springer (2015).

88 Shehab Uddin, “The Pavement Dwellers”, Emergency Fund, Magnum Foundation, 2010, http://emergencyfund.magnumfoundation.org/projects/pavement-dwellers.

89 Shehab Uddin, “Pavement Dwellers: Homeless Living in Dhaka & Kolkata”, Alexia

Being aware of Alam’s argument of the interconnectedness

between the aid industry and image representations86

(especially those used by NGOs), as well as Bennett and

Kottasz’s investigation of the role of advertising images in

aid,87 I continued to document the street dwellers of Dhaka

as a self-funded project. To some degree, I was able to remain

autonomous in terms of making decisions regarding the

people I was photographing, the content, locations, shooting

time and duration, as well as the narrative of the final images.

This liberty allowed me to portray street dwellers without

any direct interference from the NGOs.

In 2010, I was able to fund the project with the help of

grants from the Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund88

and the Alexia Foundation.89 The aim of the work was to

capture poverty as a phenomenon and give an inner view

of life with impoverishment. Instead of utilising a traditional

and observational journalistic approach, I took more of a

documentary approach, whereby I slowed down and spent

more time with the participants.

Soon after I finished this part of the project, Pavement

Dwellers: Homeless Living in Dhaka & Kolkata,90 I started to

question whether I was presenting the voice of the people in

my photographs or my voice or the voice that the mainstream

the Banyan Tree.84 Several NGOs also used the images on their

websites and in reports and other promotional materials. The

final output was the publication of a photobook titled Amrao

Manush: The Pavement Dwellers.85 Despite achieving the goal

set by the NGO, Amrao Manush featured impoverished street

dwellers who remained anonymous to the audience but were

presented as icons of poverty.

Concern Worldwide used the images to advocate the

project and raise money to establish eleven day/night care

shelters for both children and adults, where children would

have the opportunity to receive non-formal education and eat

lunch. This NGO-run project also provides some other basic

facilities, such as medical assistance and locker facilities for

street dwellers. Working on this project also benefitted me,

as my photographic work gained international exposure. Even

though the project Amrao Manush brought some benefit to the

NGO, to the people in impoverishment, and to me, arguably

it also perpetuated the boundaries between ‘them’ and ‘us’.

This is not a new dilemma. Emotive imagery that engages well

with donors and is used by most aid agencies often does so at

the expense of expanding the distance between the donor and

those to whom the donation is directed.

Foundation, 2010, http://www.alexiafoundation.org/stories/pavement-dwellers-homeless-living-in-dhaka-amp-kolkata.

90 Ibid.

21

media expected (i.e., eulogising Minority World excess and

demonising Majority World difficulties). Was I presenting

these people only as victims? At this stage, I was uncertain

whether or not I should be concerned with how they would

want to be represented. Had I aestheticised their hardship

for the enjoyment and entertainment of the rich and elite?

These questions have driven me to examine the boundaries

of traditional journalism and contemporary documentary

practice and to seek to challenge the methods and approaches

used in capturing and disseminating the stories of the less

powerful.

In my earlier work, very little dialogue existed between the

people I was photographing and myself. In many ways, while

I had become aware of the circumstances in which these

people existed, I knew little about them. By contrast, during

the three-year period (2012–15) that I studied in Australia and

revisited Bangladesh to work on Chain of Poverty, I came to

understand each family far beyond their economic status.

Howard S. Becker argues that photojournalists generally

spend a limited time within the situation they document, have

preconceived ideas of the communities they photograph,

and are often assigned to such projects without any prior

investigation or knowledge.91 My research has found that, by

91 Becker, “Visual Sociology,”

1.7.2 A Legacy from My Family

Growing up in Bangladesh, I shared a two-roomed space

with my family of eleven. My parents did the best they

could to provide food and education for my eight siblings

and me. Their sacrifice came at a cost, as my mother died

of malnutrition at just thirty-seven years of age. She had

chosen to feed us before herself. This early family life

provided me with a healthy disrespect for wealth and the

greed associated with it. But it has also provided me with

a fear of poverty and a desire to ensure a secure existence

for my partner and daughter. Today, I am caught between

the desire to do more and the fear that doing more will

take from those whom I love dearly. The stories I tell are

partly my attempt to walk the line between responsibility

contrast, contemporary documentary practitioners work over

longer periods of time to build relationships with participants,

often becoming stakeholders in the lives of the people they

are documenting. This project challenges the expectations

of Minority World audiences for sensational and seductive

images of hardship and seeks to develop a new approach that

does not follow the ‘script’.

22

In Chapter 5, I outline my documentary approach and

research methodology. In doing so, I argue the importance

of in-field approaches—day-to-day experiences,

stakeholdership, collaborative storytelling, and finally

an immersive approach to capture the multidimensional

complexity of people in poverty.

In Chapter 6, I explain the discoveries that I made

throughout this research. In this chapter, I discuss how the

different life chances of the three families have affected

them in various ways—individually, through family, and

through community.

It was always my intention to publish this work as widely

as possible. In Chapter 7, I present the outcomes of the

project, where I also explain the potential effect and

dissemination of these stories to achieve the project goals.

This chapter describes the exhibitions and publications

(print and online) and future plans to share the stories

globally.

Chapter 8 is presented as the concluding chapter,

where I sum up my findings, experiences, and emerging

understandings. But it is also the chapter in which I highlight

the unresolved nature of much that remains to be discussed

within documentary practice.

1.8 Thesis Outline

Having given a background to the project and its objectives,

I will now briefly outline the structure of the thesis. In

Chapter 2, I discuss the textual and visual context of this

research, arguing how traditional modes of journalistic

observations perpetuate stereotypes and create icons

of ‘pity’. In this chapter I also delineate the relationship

between the mainstream media and charity organisations

and its effect on the images produced.

For many researchers, especially ethnographers, a ‘thin line’

exists between the researched and the researcher. New

researchers are taught to honour this line. Journalists use

it as an argument for objectivity. In Chapter 3, I discuss the

collaborative discourse of this project, and whether or not

the ‘thin line’ should be crossed.

But theory and practice do not always align. In Chapter

4, I illustrate my in-field experiences and cross-check my

theoretical understandings with real life experiences.

and fear and partly my attempt to narrow the gap between

‘them’ and ‘us’.

Chapter 2Challenging Stereotypes

24

In this chapter, I identify approaches to telling stories

of deprivation from the Majority World by corporate

media, and critique how they perpetuate stereotypes and

icons of pity. I also outline how these stereotypes are

constructed and controlled by both mainstream media

and charity organisations (such as NGOs). I describe how

photojournalists often generalise and objectify those who

live with impoverishment instead of trying to understand

and represent them as multidimensional human beings. In

particular, the distance between the researched and the

researcher, the bias of Minority World, the festishisation

of mainstream media and its dependence on stereotypes,

visual fatigue, and the simply callous disregard of the

Minority World for the plight of the Majority World will

be interrogated.

2.1 Evidentiary Images, Icons of Pity, and Otherness

Sociologist Stanley Cohen argues that corporate journalism

(see section 1.3) has historically offered limited access

and has acted as a “negative social force” to complicated

issues regarding the human condition.92 Stereotyping and

misrepresentations are inevitable when attempting to present

complex and multidimensional issues in one-dimensional

frameworks. This is further exacerbated when those images

and stories are made to be easily transportable across the

mass media.

Because of corporate media’s need for visual ‘flyers’ that

anchor news and feature stories, it relies on producing

evidentiary images, supposedly constructed around the

physicality of the ‘subject’.93 In doing this, the nuanced

understanding of the participant’s humanity, the meanings

they construct from their interaction with social phenomena,

as well as the complexities of meanings constructed by

the viewer can be overlooked. Stereotypes become the

vehicle used by the corporate media to make readable the

complex and the incomprehensible.94 It is common practice

for a photojournalist in a crisis situation to seek out spaces

such as the hospital, the feeding station, the orphanage, the

bombed-out street, etc. These spaces are those that are

readily accepted by readers as representing war, crisis and

deprivation and they have become recurring themes in most

mainstream reporting. In turn, images of the deprived, the

destitute, and the victim are conflated into “icons of pity”.95

92 Stanley Cohen, States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering (Oxford, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2001), 83.

93 David James Clark, “Representing the Majority World: Famine, Photojournalism and the Changing Visual Economy”, PhD diss. (Durham University, 2009), http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/136.


95 Ibid.

25

There are numerous examples of this but one of the most

moving images I encountered as a young man deciding

his future in Bangladesh was Don McCullin’s iconic image

from 1969 of a twenty-four-year-old mother and her child

in Biafra, Nigeria.96 This image typifies an approach that

has existed for a considerable time in the imaging of the

Minority World. In his autobiography Unreasonable Behaviour,

McCullin says, “One of my most tragic photographs was

of a Biafran mother trying to feed her baby with withered

breast.”97

However, as unsettling as McCullin’s image is, it belongs

to a stable of images depicting famine that show women

conforming to gender stereotypes. One of the earliest

photographic iterations of this is Dorothea Lange’s

Mother and Child from her work with the Farm Security

Administration.98 Arguably, this image has been repeated in

some form in every famine the world has since experienced.

Examples of this reiteration include Don McCullin, Mother

and weeping child, Bangladesh;99 Sebastião Salgado, Ethiopia

[mother and child], 1984;100 Tom Stoddart, Ajiep, Sudan-July

1998: A Dinka mother and her starving children wait silently for

food at the Medecins Sans Frontieres feeding centre in Ajiep,

southern Sudan, during the 1998 famine;101 Getty Images,

Mother and child during the famine and drought in Ethiopia

‘Madonna’, June 15, 1999;102 Getty Images, Famine in Sudan:

Child famine victim and his mother from Kordofan province in

a Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) feeding

center for children, North Khartoum, Sudan;103 UNICEF,

Barlin and her child at the feeding centre;104 Boris Roessler,

A Somalian mother cradles her malnourished baby in a f ield

hospital in a refugee camp in Dadaab, northeastern Kenya on

Wednesday, August 3rd 2011;105 The Times/Gallo Images/

Getty images, A Somalian mother with her sick child at the Gift

of Givers make-shift hospital on August 2, 2011 in Somalia;106

and Kate Holt, A mother and child from Somalia at a refugee

camp in Kenya.107

These ‘Madonna and Child’ type images reference the

religious iconography of a western aesthetic and are

repeated with every famine on the front of leading

magazines. For example, Time Magazine used such images

in the following covers: “Starvation in Cambodia” (12

November 1979);108 “Famine in Ethiopia” (21 December

96 “A twenty-four-year-old mother and her child in Biafra, Nigeria,” Contact Press Images, http://contact.photoshelter.com/image/I0000rHczpB2_8YY.

97 Don McCullin and Lewis Chester, Unreasonable Behaviour: An Autobiography (London: Random House, 2015), 137.

98 Rosler, Decoys and Disruptions, 168–69.

99 Reproduced, in Introduction to Visual Research, https://julielewiswilliams.wordpress.com/introduction-to-visual-research/.

100 Listed on 1stdibs (website), https://www.1stdibs.com/art/photography/sebastiao-salgado-ethiopia-mother-child/id-a_4172/.

101 Tom Stoddart/Getty Images, The Leica Camera blog, http://blog.leica-camera.com/2012/07/27/tom-stoddart-perspectives/iwitness-4/.

102 Getty Images, http://www.gettyimages.ie/detail/news-photo/mother-and-child-during-the-famine-and-drought-in-ethiopia-news-photo/123081936#mother-and-child-during-the-famine-and-drought-in-ethiopia-madonna-picture-id123081936.

103 Getty Images, http://www.gettyimages.fr/detail/photo-d’actualité/child-famine-victim-and-his-mother-from-kordofan-photo-dactualité/543902844?#child-famine-victim-and-his-mother-from-kordofan-province-in-a-sans-picture-id543902844.

104 Reproduced in Kun Li, “Hunger Still Stalks Somali Children,” UNICEF Connect (blog), 24 December 2015, https://blogs.unicef.org/blog/somali-children-are-still-stalked-by-the-menace-of-hunger/.

105 Reproduced in David Muir, “Inside Somalia’s Crippling Famine,” The Daily Beast, 8 September 2011, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/08/david-muir-reports-from-somalia-refugees-famine-and-freedom.html.

106 The Times/Gallo Images/Getty images, http://www.gettyimages.com.au/license/120275660.

107 Reproduced in Ray Suarez, “Starving Somalis Latest Victims of Broken Government,” The Rundown (blog), 24 August 2011, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/starving-somalis-are-latest-victims-of-broken-government/.

108 Arnaud De Wildenberg, in Time cover, http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19791112,00.html.

26

1987);109 “The Tragedy of Sudan” (4 October 2004);110 “How

to End Poverty” (14 March 2005);111 and “Ethiopia’s Harvest

of Hunger” (18 August 2008).112

Without doubt the content is horrendous and the stories

shared blend innocence, horror and profundity. Often

the images form part of a much more complex story but

have been edited in order to meet the space limitation of

publication. The corporate media is especially brutal in its

editing process and because of this in the images published

there are no clues in the image to inform the audience

of anything other than the despairing state of the people

depicted. They are passive victims of circumstances that

appear to have no political or historical rationale.

Quoting Kleinmann and Kleinmann, David Campbell argues

that “Regardless of the content of any supporting text,

photographs of this kind suggest that the individual is a

victim without a context. ...There is a void of agency and

history with the victim arrayed passively before the lens

so their suffering can be appropriated”.113 The task of

these photographs is to appeal to the pity of the reading

audiences. Whether or not they do this is often debated,

but the cost of meeting this expectation through the use of

stereotypes is often the negation of the worth of a nation

or ethnic group.

Only a few studies looked into how images determine

Minority World perceptions of the Majority World. One

that occurred just after the Live Aid Concerts across the

world, whose results were included in The Live Aid Legacy

report, showed that “80% of the British public strongly

associated the developing world with doom-laden images

of famine, disaster and western aid”.114 The report went

on to argue that “The danger of stereotypes of this depth

and magnitude is the psychological relationship they

create between the developed and the developing world,

which revolves around an implicit sense of superiority and

inferiority.”115

In blaming the victims as being somehow inferior rather

than global inequality, poverty and politics, power elites

escape scrutiny. Whether it be the ‘Madonna and Child’

images of famine, the often repeated ‘Death of a Loyalist

Soldier’ images of war, or the visual clutter images of

poverty, these one-dimensional stereotypes over-simplify

complex situations and increase the distance between

the ‘subject’ and the readers. In the 2005 catalogue that

accompanied the seminal exhibition Imaging Famine, held in

London, Campbell challenged journalists and documentary

109 William Campbell, in Time cover, http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19871221,00.html.

110 James Nachtwey, in Time cover, http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20041004,00.html.

111 James Nachtwey, in Time cover, http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20050314,00.html.

112 Time cover, http://content.time.com/time/covers/europe/0,16641,20080818,00.html.

113 David Campbell, “The Iconography of Famine,” in Picturing Atrocity: Reading Photographs in Crisis, ed. Geoffrey Batchen, Mick Gidley, Nancy K. Miler, and Jay Prosser (London: Reaktion Books, 2011), 83–84.

114 The Live Aid Legacy: The Developing World through British Eyes – A Research Report (London: VSO, 2002), 3, http://www.eldis.org/vfile/upload/1/document/0708/DOC1830.pdf.

115 Ibid.

27

practitioners to

find compelling ways of narrating the story so that the political content of famine can be portrayed in a timely manner. ...Of course, journalists don’t bear the primary responsibility for preventing famine but they need a better understanding of global malnourishment. ...in order to represent the issue before it is too late.116

The Majority World has historically been typified through

text and visual as ‘other’.117 David Clark argues that what

is missing from any portrayal of the Majority World is the

understanding that would be obtained through a “more

equitable view of the political, cultural and economic

realities… that readjust[s] popular perception in line with

these multiple realities…”.118 With their language and

cultural differences and the absence of time to properly

engage with the people and stories, photographers from

the Minority World may not necessarily experience or

witness the nuanced day-to-day deprivation. As Edmundo

Desnöes articulates, these photographers:

...almost always spend just a few days in a country so that they could hardly produce a complex vision. Photographers instinctively glue themselves to the superficial image, which they find in people and places. They have eyes full of preconceived ideas and

116 David Campbell, Imaging Famine, exhibition catalogue (published online), 2005, https://www.david-campbell.org/wp-content/documents/Imaging_Famine_catalogue.pdf.

117 Judith Butler, “Torture and the Ethics of Photography”; Boltanski, Distant Suffering; Clark, “Representing the Majority World”.

118 Clark, “Representing the Majority World,” 12.

119 Edmundo Desnöes, “The Photographic Image of Underdevelopment,” trans. Julia Lesage, Jump Cut 33 (February 1998): 69–81, accessed 11 October 2015, http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC33folder/photoUndvtDesnoes.html.

120 The World Bank, Development Indications 2008, accessed 11 May 2013, http://www.globalissues.org/issue/2/causes-of-poverty.

121 Boltanski, Distant Suffering.

a superficial understanding of each image’s content. Although they constantly encounter objective reality, they easily fall prey to auto-suggestion so that they end up believing they can photograph creatively without understanding the cultural meaning behind gestures and situations.119

In a world where 80% of the global population lives on

less than $10 per day,120 the notion and representation of

‘otherness’ must be challenged in order to dismantle the

boundaries between ‘them’ and ‘us’. Naming each participant

is a fundamental step in ensuring that they maintain their

identity. Moreover, this process is vital to ensure that the

people in images of suffering are recognised as individuals

rather than as types. Boltanski argues for the lessening of the

distance between the sufferer (photographed), storyteller

(photographer), and spectator (audience).121 This distance is

both metaphorical and actual, both attitudinal and physical.

Photographic images recreate the ‘object distance’

(a term used in photography to identify the physical

distance between the subject and the photographer)

of the photographer in the field. When viewed, these

images are embedded with clues and cues (perspective,

size relationships, and angle of view) that create the same

physical (and emotional) distance between the participant

28

and the reader/audience as existed between the storyteller

and the ‘subject’.

Images that have been made using a ‘long object distance’

flatten perspective and cue the audience to being physically

distant from the subject of such images. Using a ‘long object

distance’ is one of the techniques used by photographers

to create a covert gaze. To avoid such distancing in my

project, I have employed ‘short object’ distances and

place the viewer (virtually) the same distance from the

participant as I was when making the image. Thus, my

images are embedded with visual cues that instil familiarity

rather than distance. This simple device brings me into the

space of the participant/s and, importantly, it also brings

the audience into that same space. Additionally, it allows

me to be closer to the participants both emotionally

and physically. This closeness combined with long-term

immersion ensures acknowledgement of the participants as

complex individuals.

However, while optical closeness creates a sense of close

proximity in the viewer and demands physical closeness by

the author, alone, it is not the crucial issue. Long attributed

to Robert Capa is the saying, “If your photographs are

not good enough, you are not close enough”. When I

first read this, I thought Capa was suggesting tighter

cropping, filling the frame, overflowing the image with

happenings. Nonetheless, I now suspect it is not simply a

suggestion for photographers to use long lenses or to move

closer. Rather, Capa may have been suggesting that good

storytelling—regardless of whether it is photojournalism,

documentary, or snap shots—requires the photographer

to share the physical, intellectual, and emotional space with

the participant of any story. And through this sharing, a

sense of solidarity is created between the participant and

photographer, as well as between the participant and the

audience. Interpreting Capa in this way has encouraged me

to find ways in which documentary practice has the ability

to transpose the audience into the space of another and to

allow them to suspend the distance between themselves

and those viewed. This form of practice appears to rely

on both the photographer’s and the viewer’s vision, but in

reality, once that distance is suspended, we breathe the

same air and become invested in the fortunes of those with

whom we now share experiences.

In defining the difference between compassion and

pity, Boltanski asserts that compassion is a personal or

subjective feeling developed by a physical, intellectual,

29

and emotional engagement with the circumstances of

suffering. By contrast, pity is a generalised or objective

feeling experienced from a distance without any intimate

encounter. Pity, although driven by intellect, is devoid of

empathy. It is to see another as different from yourself,

to care but not to share. Compassion, on the other hand,

is derived from a sense that the experience is or could be

shared.122 The driving force behind compassion is one of

identification, encapsulated by the well-known saying “there

but for the grace of God go I”.123

Borrowing from the writings of Samuel and Pearl Oliner,124

Cohen talks about two types of contrasting personalities:

extensive personalities and constructive personalities.

On one hand, an extensive person gets involve with

atrocities and/or the miseries of ‘others’; consequently,

this involvement creates commitment, this commitment

creates care, this care creates responsibility, and finally,

this responsibility creates belonging. On the other hand,

the constructive person keeps their distance as a passive

bystander and feels disassociated; this disassociation

creates detachment (no commitment), this detachment

creates exclusiveness (no care), this exclusiveness creates

no responsibility, and finally no sense of belonging.125

Personalities are constructed rather than innate. Blending

Boltanski, Cohen, and Capa and liberally reinterpreting their

intentions, it could be argued that immersive documentary

practice encourages viewers to become extensive

personalities or, at the very least, encourages extensive

responses from the audiences.

122 Ibid., 3–9.

123 Attributed to sixteenth-century English reformer John Bradford; “John Bradford,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bradford, last accessed 2 April 2016.

124 Samuel P. Oliner and Pearl M. Oliner, The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe (New York: The Free Press, 1992).

125 Cohen, States of Denial.

2.2 Social Issue vs Personal Story: Generalisation and Objectification

Many of the current narratives of people living with poverty

are incomplete or incorrect interpretations that place all

of these people into a ‘one size fits all’ construct. This is

especially prevalent when the story is produced in a very

short period of time and mostly told by foreigners from

different cultures and with different understandings from

those portrayed. This research argues that the stories

found in Minority World outlets consequently generalise

and objectify people in impoverished situations instead of

presenting them as multidimensional, complex, and nuanced

human beings.

30

126 Owen Jones, “Help the Rich, Hate the Poor,” New Internationalist ( January/February 2013), 15–17.

127 Ibid., 17.

128 See the comments made by the jury chairs of the 2014, 2015, and 2016 World Press Photos: “2014 Contest in Context,” World Press Photo (website), http://www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/context/photo/2014; “World Press Photo of the Year 2014 Goes to Mads Nissen,” World Press Photo, 12 February 2015, http://www.worldpressphoto.org/news/2015-02-12/world-press-photo-year-2014-goes-mads-nissen; and, “2016 Contest in Context,” World Press Photo (website), http://www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/context/photo/2016.

In his article “Help the Rich, Hate the Poor”, Owen Jones

argues that the unfair distribution of wealth and power

in the world is justified by the constructed idea that

marginalised people deserve their impoverished position.126

This view is cemented by the demonisation of society’s

poorest as “dangerous, violent and irrational”,127 and/or

through portrayals of people from the low socio-economic

strata as lazy, irresponsible, and derelict. This perpetuates

the attitude that poverty is an individual failing rather than

a social problem. The media then uses these mythological

portrayals to amplify the disconnectedness between

Minority and Majority Worlds. The paradox is that,

fortunately, most journalists and media workers do not seek

this as their end result. Many of them work caringly and

compassionately to bring about justice and fairness in the

areas in which they operate. Unfortunately, the ceaseless

need for news stories, the requirement to simplify complex

issues into bite-size segments, and the digestive patterns of

readership see most of their good intentions negated.

In addition, the structures of corporate journalism within

the mainstream media have become similar to that of the

entertainment industry. Ceremonies and awards are now

prized more than the noble intention of seeking positive

change and journalists are rewarded as much for their

aesthetics, talent and exceptionality as they are for the

social changes they bring about.128 Given this, Minority

World photographers are often driven by the desire

to secure a front cover. Mainstream media is driven by

circulation that, in turn, determines advertisers. The

images published directly influence the advertising secured.

Therefore, the images that front the cover of mainstream

media must complement the desires of the readership more

than the needs of the story or the participants about which

a story is told.

Not unexpectedly, an indirect but nevertheless symbiotic

relationship develops between the journalist and the

advertiser. Journalists seeking acknowledgement, fame, and

fortune must use a language that entertains as much as it

challenges their audiences. In these cases, the photographer

is more likely to share a sense of self-assuredness and

cultural, financial, and social stability with his/her audiences

rather than with the participants of his/her stories. Tired

of this misrepresentation and spurred on by academics

and critics such as Shahidul Alam, Majority World

photographers have begun to document their world in

31

the last decade. Unfortunately, this has had limited effect

because the media to which they sell their images is still

controlled by Minority World editors and publishers.

According to Alam, the “image business” and the

“development business” are alarmingly interconnected.129

As stated previously, images that corral the donations of

a pitying population are not necessarily those that present

victims of tragedy or trauma as multidimensional and

complex human beings. Aid agencies are then faced with the

dilemma and the expense of more complex representations

or resorting to the less expensive “icons of pity” that feed

into the expectations of a Minority World audience that are

created by popular culture.

In his book States of Denial, Cohen refers to charities

as “merchants of misery”.130 He argues that images of

grief and poverty are often presented in a negative way

that influences the viewer to feel guilt and pity. This

consequently motivates audiences to donate money instead

of coming to know the people in the photos as human

beings with the “same rights, ideals and capabilities” as

their own.131

129 Alam, “Visual Representation of Developing Countries.”

130 Cohen, States of Denial, 178–79.

131 Ibid., 183–84.

132 In conversations with David Lloyd in Dhaka during 2013, I found our conversations were always around money; he would ask how much money he should give to a begger, what kind of tip he should pay a rickshaw driver, what the cost of living is, how much a person earns, etc. Undoubtedly, a certain amount of money may change a person’s day. But it can increase living costs in the long run as people’s expectations become higher. Never were our conversations about these individuals as people.

133 “Grameen Bank is owned by the borrowers... Grameen Bank (GB) has reversed conventional banking practice by removing the need for collateral and created a banking system based on accountability, mutual trust, creativity and participation. Grameen Bank

provides credit to the poorest in Bangladesh, without any collateral.” Grameen Bank, http://www.grameen-info.org/.

Paradoxically, while donating money can alleviate the

immediate impact of a crisis, the legacy of this donation will

ensure that the circumstances upon which the crisis was

predicated will continue. It also negatively affects people’s

attitude towards receiving donations.132 Providing assistance

creates a power relationship between the giver and the

receiver. While this complex relationship can alleviate the

crisis, it can also exacerbate the need for the assistance

in the first instance. However, it is not the remit of this

project to interrogate the ‘aid industry’ outside of the

contribution made by documentary images to both assist

in the alleviation of hardship and the exacerbation of that

hardship.

Nobel laureate, founder of Grameen Bank133 and innovator

of the ‘micro credit’ concept, Professor Muhammad Yunus

raises pertinent points regarding donations. He is not

opposed to handouts, but argues about the form of aid and

strategy needed to apply them:

Why not give? ... But is it useful? No, most of the time it is actually harmful. On the donor’s side, you have the feeling that you have done something. But you have done nothing. Handing out money is a way of shielding ourselves from addressing the real issue.

32

134 Muhammad Yunus and Alan Jolis, Banker to the Poor: The Story of the Grameen Bank (London: Aurum Press, 2003), 22.

Handing out a pittance is a way of making ourselves think we have done something and of feeling good for having shared our good fortune with the poor. But in fact we are leaving the problem alone.134

Embedded in Yunus’s critique is the notion that aid is

multi-faceted. Assisting with relief after disasters is a moral

imperative for all of us. But disasters cannot be understood

fully through interrogating consequences alone. Preventing

disasters comes from knowing the structures around which

such disasters are caused.

For the photojournalist, the visual stories made at these

tragic moments seek to corral the good will of a world to

provide immediate relief. As such, the images made seek to

evidence the enormity of the tragedy and to quantify the

loss. These images often appear violent and distant. They

serve the moral imperative to help, but they may not engage

the donor in knowing those involved aside from their victim

status. Whatever good they achieve may be at a cost to

those whom they represent. Alone, these images create

pity and those in the images continue to be represented as

victims long after the tragedy has subsided.

Chapter 3Crossing the Line

34

3.1 Collaborations between Researched and Researcher

In this chapter, I discuss the relationship between the

researcher and the researched, with a particular emphasis

on the working relationship that I developed with the

participants of this study. I discuss the related issues

raised by other scholars and discuss how they have

impacted on my practice. I identify what is at stake for

both the participant and the practitioner in the process

of undertaking visual ethnography, and particularly focus

on whether or not the ‘thin line’ between researcher and

researched should be crossed.

In her seminal work Doing Visual Ethnography,135 Sarah

Pink suggests that the findings of most ethnographic

studies are, often unwittingly, the result of a collaboration

between the researched and the researcher. She disputes

the ability of ethnographers to represent participants

objectively, making specific reference to the unattainable

feat of “knowing another’s mind” and asserting that a

researcher’s meaning making is an expression of their

own consciousness.136 In addition, Pink reasons that the

presence of the researcher is an unavoidable aspect to

ethnographic research, and that the palpable outcome

of this is a distortion of the participant’s reality, which

happens through the conflation of the realities of all the

stakeholders involved.137 Mindful of Pink’s argument from

the outset of this research, I tried to ensure that the

relationship between the participants and myself was

fluid, making space for their authority alongside my own.

As discussed previously, this is not a common practice

in traditional journalism, where the truth is presented as

absolute and knowable. Within my current documentary

practice (of which this project is a component) I have

tried to narrow the distance (political, social, mental,

and emotional) between the participants and myself as

much as possible. In doing this, I have attempted to look

beyond their behaviour and interrogate the meanings

each participant applied to their impoverished situation.

I have tried to understand their life and the struggle

through their eyes—perhaps through both of our eyes—by

discussing this with them and by living with them.

135 Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography, 1–2.

136 Ibid., 22–25.

137 Ibid., 1–2.

35

3.2 Documenting the Impact of a Social Fact

In trying to achieve its stated aims, this project builds on

the approaches taken by early pioneering documentists

of economic trauma, such as Dorothea Lange (e.g.,

Photographs of a Lifetime),138 Margaret Bourke-White (e.g.,

The Dust Bowl, Tobacco Road, You Have Seen Their Faces),139

Walker Evans (e.g., Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, American

Photographs),140 and Wayne F. Miller (e.g., Chicago’s South

Side, 1946–1948),141 and contemporary practitioners such

as Jim Goldberg (e.g., Raised by Wolves),142 Darcy Padilla

(e.g., The Julie Project),143 Jonas Bendiksen (The Place We

Live),144 Daesung Lee (e.g., Futuristic Archaeology),145 Susan

Meiselas (e.g., Reforming History),146 and JR (e.g., Action in

Kibera Slum).147 The project does not seek to measure

poverty but to qualify the impact of poverty on the

participants. This difference—which is difficult to define

and capture in words alone—has defined this project.

In attempting to understand this difference, Angela Blakely

and David Lloyd argue that

Journalism and documentary practice interrogate the same subject matter—the human condition.

However they seek to know different components of this condition. Arguably, journalism seeks to evidence our existence, to quantify our behaviour and to represent ‘us’ collectively through the sum total of what we do and how we behave. Documentary practice, while not opposed to this information, seeks to transcend the purely evidentiary aspects of behaviour and to dissect the collectivity of our functioning, in an attempt to find not only the meanings upon which our behaviour is predicated, but also the affective impact this behaviour has upon us individually.148

An example of this can be seen by how the tragic collapse

of the Rana Plaza was portrayed in the world media. The

Rana Plaza was a nine-storey commercial building (mostly

full of garments factories) that was unexpectedly reduced

to a pile of rubble in Dhaka on 24 April 2013. Over a

thousand people were trapped for days and eventually

more than 1,134 workers were killed and many others

injured. At the time of the disaster, it was unknown how

many people were in the building. Today, it is estimated

that hundreds are still missing.

Many journalists and a few documentists covered the

story. Evidentiary, illustrative, and journalistic images

138 Dorothea Lange and Robert Coles, Dorothea Lange: Photographs of a Lifetime (Michigan: Aperture, 1982).

139 “Margaret Bourke-White,” Photography and the Great Depression (website), https://lis471.wordpress.com/margaret-bourke-white.

140 Walker Evans and James Agee, “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic,” in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South (Boston and New York: Mariner Books, 2001).

141 Wayne F. Miller, Chicago’s South Side, 1946–1948 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000).

142 Jim Goldberg and Philip Brookman, Raised by Wolves (Zurich and New York: Scalo, 1995).

143 Darcy Padilla, The Julie Project, 1993–2010, http://www.darcypadilla.com/thejulieproject/intro.html.

144 Jonas Bendiksen, The Places We Live (New York: Aperture, 2008).

145 Daesung Lee, Futuristic Archaeology, 2013–2014, http://www.indiphoto.net/#!futuristic-archaelolgy/c1zok.

146 Fred Ritchin, Bending the Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary, and the Citizen (New York: Aperture, 2013), 38, 42, 88, 127–28.

147 Ibid., 40–41, 84.

148 Blakely and David, “Am I OK.”

36

saturated the media—collapsed buildings, long shots of

scattered debris, corpses lined up, workers searching

against the devastation in the background, and so on.

Documentists such as Taslima Akther captured similar

images from these scenes. But she also walked through the

rubble seeking to discover how the victims had organised

themselves in the face of this tragic accident. Were the

victims caught out and crushed, did they have time to

run to each other, or to brace each other? Importantly,

Akther named the victims in her images. They no longer

represented the faceless unfortunates, but were people

like us. Finally, Akther sought to meet with their surviving

relatives and loved ones to position these ‘victims’ as a

part of something bigger than themselves. By capturing the

grief of those left behind, Akther gave dimension to those

lost. In doing this, the viewer became invested in the lives

of those killed and the injustice of the sweatshops in which

they worked and the greed of the construction company

that sought to cut corners and save costs in the building of

this structure. Thus, Akther’s images created a solidarity

between us (the viewer) and them (the victim). It is this

difference that underpins my approach to documenting the

families with whom I worked in Bangladesh.

To paraphrase Lange, in my studio work (as distinct

from much of the present exegesis), I am not interested

in documenting a social fact, but how that social fact

impacts the person involved.149 Moreover, my approach

has embraced crossing that ‘thin line’ that separates the

researcher from those researched. This threshold is a

much debated topic in the social sciences and one that

Patricia Lather and Chris Smithies discuss in their book on

women living with HIV/AIDS, Troubling the Angels.150 Lather

and Smithies assert that this line can be crossed depending

on the methodologies employed and the intentions of the

researcher. In relation to her groupwork research with

the HIV-positive women, Lather notes that, “I was NOT

[sic] perceived as an expert or an outsider. I was ‘them’ for

awhile, demonstrating the thin line that is crossed between

‘them’ and ‘us’.”151

Heeding Lather’s comments, this project seeks not to

be research on the impoverished but to be research

with the impoverished,152 where the life and journey of

each family and each individual is uniquely their own.153

The stakeholdership that I achieved in the lives of the

participants does not follow the arbitrary gap sought by

149 Suzanne Riess, Dorothea Lange: The Making of a Documentary Photographer (Forgotten Books, 2014; orig. pub. 1968), http://www.forgottenbooks.com/readbook/The_Making_of_a_Documentary_Photographer_1000530623#1.

150 Patricia A. Lather and Chris Smithies, Troubling the Angels: Women Living with HIV/AIDS (Colorado: Westview Press, 1997).

151 Ibid. 7.

152 Ibid., xxv.

153 Ibid., xix.

37

many traditional researchers. Rather, by crossing the line,

I experienced a little of what the participants experience

while I remained separate from the participant.

Employing this methodology creates a bridge between the

participant and the storyteller/researcher/documentist

across which some of each other’s life can be known. From

1993 to 2010, documentist Darcy Padilla photographed

Julie Baird, a woman living with HIV/AIDS, who was raising

a family and struggling with drug addiction. The Julie Project

came to an end with Baird’s death. Speaking at the end of

their eighteen-year relationship, Padilla commented:

Julie, not sure how you and I got here.

I remember the first day I saw you, took your picture, and talked.

You were so young, a new mum, who I wanted to get to know, document.

Eighteen years later, I am watching you leave this world... suffering... trembling... and scared.

I thank you... for your story, for your friendship and for letting me into your life.

Not at all what I thought of 18 years ago.

I will not let you down. I will tell your story. And

find your children.

Please, leave this world knowing that...154

In his seminal visual ethnography on street kids in San

Francisco and Los Angeles, Raised by Wolves (1987–1993),

Jim Goldberg became heavily invested in their fortunes.

Goldberg states that “the more time I spent out there,

the more the divisions began to blur”.155 This brought

their relationship to another level, with the children

even offering him protection: “It took a few years of

learning the rules of the street before I could develop

the relationships that are central to the work—I felt

completely safe out there too, because the kids I knew

protected me.”156

But Goldberg and Padilla are not the first documentists

to have crossed the line that has historically separated

participants from a storyteller. For example, in 1941,

Walker Evans screamed contempt at those financially

fortunate enough to afford the book that he and writer

James Agee authored, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.157

Meanwhile, in Minamata, W. Eugene Smith likewise not

only became a stakeholder in the lives of the villagers,

154 Darcy Padilla, The Julie Project, 1993–2010, http://www.agencevu.com/focus/medias.php?tab=photographes&id_video=522.

155 Kristine McKenna, “His Feral Children of the Street,” Los Angeles Times, 7 March 1997, http://articles.latimes.com/1997-03-07/entertainment/ca-35572_1_street-life.

156 Ibid.

157 Evans and Agee, “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.”

38

but also actively campaigned and fought for recognition

of their plight and sought compensation from the Chisso

Corporation. This fight began in 1956 and continues

today.158 In his book, Smith says that

Photography is a small voice; at the best sometimes—just sometimes—one photograph or a group of them can lure our senses into awareness…. Someone—or perhaps many—among us may be influenced to heed reason, to find a way to right that which is wrong… The rest of us may perhaps feel a greater sense of understanding and compassion for those lives are alien to our own.159

From the documentary pioneers of the early twentieth

century (e.g., Riis, Hine, and Bourke-White) to

contemporary practitioners (e.g., Kenneally and Padilla),

social documentary photography has, at its heart, a

very noble history. It encompasses getting close to the

participant in a way that creates a mutual relationship

of understanding and feelings while the documentation

process is carried out, and indeed this relationship is often

retained long beyond the act of storytelling itself.

Scholars such as Pink, Lather, and other postmodern

theorists acknowledge that it is the very subjectivity of

the author that qualifies this kind of research. However,

bridging the gap between the participant and the

researcher is more complex than physical closeness. In his

ethnographic work Black Like Me, John Griffin describes his

experience of presenting himself as an African American

living in the deep south of the United States. In trying to

discover the reaction of the white community,160 Griffin

set himself particular boundaries whereby he did not

deny his white heritage and the advantages that came

with it. He retained his confidence, the educated tone

in his language, and the cultural background of a white

man. The only thing he altered was the colour of his skin.

In doing this, Griffin never sought to be anyone other

than himself and acknowledged that while he was able

to turn himself ‘black’, he could never actually be ‘black’.

In the preface to the book, Griffin states that the book

“may not cover all the questions, but it is what it is like

to be a Negro [African American] in a land where we

keep the Negro [African American] down”.161 Employing

this subjectivity acknowledges the presence of both the

participants and author to tell the story together in a

combined voice. It is a negotiated voice—from mutual

understanding, discussion, and/or debate that develops

158 W. Eugene Smith and Aileen M. Smith, Minamata (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975).

159 W. Eugene Smith and Kelly Knauer, eds., Great Images of the 20th Century: The Photographs That Define Our Times (New York: Time Life Education, 2001), 80.

160 John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me (New York: Penguin Books, 1996).

161 Ibid., 4.

39

through the intimacy and solidarity that evolves among us.

However, like Griffin, although I slept on the streets with

Jarina Khala, fished with Bellal Bhai, and ate with Bilkis,

I was always aware of the differences between our lives.

My equipment is expensive, my background is privileged

and my presence with the participant was by choice, not

by circumstances. Respect, curiosity, process, and motives

are the pillars upon which the bridge is built.

In his series Crossf ire, Shahidul Alam collaborated with the

families of victims of extrajudicial killings to draw attention

to the corruption in the Bangladesh government’s elite

Rapid Action Battalion Force. In his attempt to highlight

injustices through his work as a social activist, Alam is

automatically involved with the injustices of those around

whom he constructs his stories. In many ways, Alam begins

subjectively, challenging traditional journalistic methods

of seeking to know from the perspective of the ‘other

side’. But importantly, Alam, working with his participants,

seeks to change the life chances available to them. He

does not claim to know how to resolve the issues about

which he documents, but he shares their desire to alter

circumstances. For Alam, storytelling is a political act

162 Beena Sarwar, “Bengali ‘Crossfire’ Reaches U.S.,” Latitude News, 4 May 2012, http://www.latitudenews.com/story/alam-bangladesh-crossfire-queens-museum.

through which change will occur.162 In many ways, Chain of

Poverty aims to explore the felt experience of poverty. By

incorporating the visual as the means of disseminating this

knowledge, I sought to capture what is beyond words and

never meaningfully conveyed in statistical facts.

Chapter 4In-Field Experiences with

Three Bangladeshi Families

41

The collaborative ethnography and documentary approach

of image construction and the intention of storytelling

had vital roles in this project which, in turn, affected the

process of investigation, my way of thinking, emotional

attachment, perception, and the responses I had to my

in-field situation. In this section, I will discuss my in-field

experiences that help me to discover.

4.1 Power Relationship and Authority

Through this research, I have discovered that many

photojournalists (including myself ) approach situations

believing that they have the right to photograph what

they wish and how they wish without any regard for the

people or situation they are imaging. This is especially so

when photographing people who are impoverished, more

vulnerable, less confident, and less empowered than the

photojournalists themselves. This power imbalance makes

such people even more vulnerable and less confident in

controlling the situation at hand, forcing them to lose their

ability to say no.

As I have noted elsewhere,

When photographers visit a country like Bangladesh, we don’t bother to ask permission from the people we want to photograph. We have the power, with thousands of dollars of gear, nice clothes and a good education, and we think we have every right to photograph.163

By comparison, in this project, I sought informed consent

from participants and ensured that they were aware

that they had the authority to decline my request to

participate. I found it interesting that several families

did in fact decline being involved, even though they were

beneficiaries of the NGOs with which I was involved. This

was new to me, as in all my previous experiences working

in a more photojournalistic mode (without the structure

of an informed consent process), I would almost always

automatically gain access.

I struggled to gain access to a family living in a slum,

even when the NGO’s field officers tried to assist me

by advocating on my behalf. First I went to Manik Nagar

Slum where I spoke to Saju Bhai, a rickshaw puller and

his day-labourer wife, Marjina Bhabi, and they agreed to

participate in my project. However, the next day, they

163 Shehab Uddin cited by Estrin, “An Embedded Photographer Empowers the Poor.”

42

said they could not participate as their landlord had

refused to allow me to live in his slum. I went to four

other slums in Dhaka and I did not get access to those

either. Finally, I gained access to Muslim Bhai’s family after

being introduced to them by their landlord, Nasim Bhai.

The consent gave them full authority to withdraw their

participation at any time during the project period if they

so wished. In fact, Muslim Bhai and his family did indeed

withdraw after fourteen months.

Through this research, I have come to understand that

seeking consent is much more than asking permission.

Although permission is important, ‘seeking consent’

acknowledges a participant’s humanity, and engages them

and the author in an introductory dialogue that sets up the

boundaries in which the participant and the author become

known to each other. In so many ways, ‘seeking consent’

names the participant, and in doing so, empowers them. In

turn, this helps to shrink the socio-political gap between

them and the photographer and ultimately between them

and the audience.

In this project, participant consent was gained using a

consent package that was written in first person and

printed in the participants’ language (Bangla), both of

which are collegial and less authoritarian acts, and a sign of

respect within the Bangladeshi community (See Appendix

2). This research also provided a detailed information

package to the relevant NGOs and to the participants’

communities so that they had a clear understanding of the

project and their role in it (See Appendix 2). In addition,

these procedures also conform to the ethical requirements

of Griffith University and received ethical approval from

the office for research at Griffith University (QCA 27/12/

HREC).164

To describe the power relationship and authority to tell

stories, Alam also argues

When picture-taking becomes part of a voyeuristic exercise and commodity, then it is a problem. When people fly into another country thousands of miles away, take photos and leave, it’s a problem. They don’t know enough about the language, the political and cultural sensibilities, and often there’s a pre-determined editorial point of view that the photographer is only supporting, unlike a local photographer, who is answerable to the community. The farmer in the paddy field knows the most about the situation. The local photographer knows

164 The Griffith University Research Ethics Manual, Booklet 1, https://intranet.secure.griffith.edu.au/secure/research-ethics-booklets/booklet01_introduction.pdf?REF=227178DCBCFBB2D8549FF029AAA6332ED9487BF78DA2ED38CF7D73800003 and https://www.griffith.edu.au/research/research-services/research-ethics-integrity/human/human-research-ethics-manual-2014.

43

something about the situation. The person who knows the least is the picture editor in New York. But the photo editor gets the most say, and the

farmer has zero say in how the story is told.165

In my career as a photographer working for national and

international magazines and newspapers, I found Alam’s

comments to be true. Documentists/photographers are

able to alter the power relationships to some degree, but

the fear of not being published often outweighs the desire

to do so. However, with the rise of independent outlets,

today’s documentists have more publishing options as well

as new modes of communication, such as social media,

to circulate their story to the masses. Today, they can be

their own editor/publisher without mainstream editorial

interference.166

In various stages of this collaborative project, the

participants and I tried to balance our authority and power

relationship. Most of the time, we shared our thoughts

prior to finalising any output. In my previous experience

of working as a newspaper photographer or for NGOs,

I had always photographed impoverished people without

consultation, so the questions I asked in this project

regarded how many of them could see their images before

or after they were published and how many of them could

have a choice in what gets shown. In being allowed to see

their images before they were published, the participants

in this project played an authoritative role.

For example, when I sat with Bellal Bhai’s family to finalise

the editing for the exhibition (figure 4.1.1), Jelekha’s father,

Jalil Bhai, expressed that he did not want photographs

of his daughter’s wedding167 to be shown in the local

exhibition in the village they lived (possibly because of

religious reasons, or perhaps because he did not want

to publicly admit that he had organised a child marriage).

However, Bellal Bhai and Kalam Bhai (another brother)

wanted to keep the wedding images in the show because

they thought they were beautiful images. We finally

decided together that these photographs would not be

included in the local show, but that they would be featured

in the photobook168 and in shows outside the village.

165 Sarwar, “Bengali ‘Crossfire’ Reaches U.S.”

166 Fred Ritchin, Bending the Frame, 8–9 and 28–31.

167 Uddin, Chain of Poverty, 122–27.

168 Ibid.

44

4.2 Personal Perspective

Over breakfast one morning during my in-field trip on 6

December 2012 in the village of Kalabogi, I was offered a

fried egg and rice by Bellal Bhai’s wife, Nururnahar Bhabi

(figure 3.5). It was hard for me to accept this offer because

I knew that the family could only afford one egg in the

previous six months, which they gave to their daughter

Bilkis. The only meat they had been able to eat in the

previous four months was 900 grams of beef that had been

gifted to them by the community during the Eid al-Ahda

Festival,169 and half a chicken that they bought by sharing

the cost with a neighbour. Even then, Bellal Bhai did not

have any money to pay for the chicken, so Nururnahar

Bhabi’s parents had paid for it instead. I shared the

egg with Bilkis out of courtesy, as I understood that

Nururnahar Bhabi was being hospitable.

I recalled a childhood memory when my parents could

afford only one egg to share between our family of ten.

My mother fried the egg as flat as possible and cut it into

ten strips before adding it to the curry she had made. My

mother, who died aged thirty-seven, sacrificed her health

and life for my seven siblings and me in order to save

money so that we could get an education.170 I believe that

our education is what enabled us to break our cycle of

impoverishment and become self-sustaining adults. Out of

nine children, three of my siblings have PhDs and five of us

live in countries outside of Bangladesh.

4.3 Sleeping on the Street

I have been photographing impoverished people for

more than a decade. This long-term experience gave me

the confidence to photograph them in a dramatic way,

creating sensationalised images that helped me achieve

a certain level of success and gave me good exposure as

a photographer. Over the years, I have laid down on the

street hundreds of times to create an image from the

ground level, from the perspective of impoverishment.

However, when I lay down on the street to sleep overnight

for the first time, it was a completely different feeling.171

I felt extremely vulnerable and as if I no longer belonged

to my ‘middle class world’. As I lay on the dusty street, I

had a moment of clarity: my pride, class consciousness,

economic condition, and all of the confidence I had gained

up until that point in my life was suddenly obliterated.

169 Eid al-Adha Festival is a Muslim religious holiday meaning ‘feast of the sacrifice’ in which livestock are slaughtered as an offering to Allah and the meat is distributed to the community, especially to impoverished people who cannot normally afford to buy meat.

170 Uddin, Chain of Poverty, 7.

171 Shehab Uddin, Shehab In Field documentation, Vimeo video, 1:50, 6 May 2013, https://vimeo.com/65611806.

45

It was a moment that also helped me to see the sky, to

see the world around me, to see the people around the

participants, and to understand why impoverished people

and privileged people see each other differently—perhaps

as being from ‘another world’ or ‘another planet’.

This experience reminded me of the fear of crossing ‘the

thin line’ between participants and researcher that Lather

talks about, which can be crossed throughout the process

of research despite the best intentions of the researcher.172

The next morning when I woke up, Jarina Khala asked

me, “Last night when you slept here, what did you feel?

Cheerfulness or hardship? See how hard it is? This is the

way it is living on the street.”173

When I first approached Jarina Khala to ask if I could

work with her, I was critically aware that our economic

differences empowered me and disempowered her and the

issue of consent became a discussion where I sought to

negate this power differential. However, this was not really

achieved until I entered her territory and slept on the

streets of Dhaka.

4.4 Compassion and Understanding: Converting Outrage to Compassion

Jarina Khala chains her fourteen-year-old daughter Mali

to a fence every day by her ankle. A natural first reaction

to this shocking sight is that this is an inhumane act, an

injustice, or even a ‘crime’, and most are outraged by it.

However, through living with Jarina Khala and Mali, I was

forced to confront these first impressions and gain new

understanding through learning more about their life,

which supports the arguments outlined by Pink, Griffin,

Goldberg, and Lloyd.1174 Mali is seriously mentally and

physically disabled, and Jarina Khala fears that Mali could

be lost or be abused while she is away working. So, Jarina

Khala has no choice but to chain Mali. This harsh reality is

unavoidable for them and Jarina Khala is deeply conflicted

about chaining her daughter. During our time together,

I had several conversations with Jarina Khala concerning

this. On one occasion, Khala said,

People keep keys for jewellery, cupboards, cars and houses, but I keep the keys for a human; how lucky a mum am I? [said with sarcasm] …It is so hard to chain her every day, dawn to dusk, but what else can

172 Lather and Smithies, Troubling the Angels, xiii–7.

173 Jarina Khala, conversation with author, December 2012.

174 Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography, 1–2; Griffin, Black Like Me, 5; Goldberg and Brookman, Raised by Wolves; Blakely and Lloyd, “Am I OK.”

46

I do? To protect her, I have to do it. It is better to die instead of having this life.175

I came to see that this act was done completely out of

love and this underscored for me the importance of

acknowledging the whole reality of the situation with

compassion rather than reacting to the most sensational

aspects, which would likely generate feelings of pity and/or

outrage.

4.5 New Extended Family

Through sharing life experiences and emotional and mental

support, Jarina Khala’s family, Nurjahan Khala’s family,

Bellal Bhai’s family and my own family have become an

extended family and we (them and I) regularly keep in

contact with each other (see Appendix 3). Jarina Khala

strongly believes that I am her deceased son, re-birthed

and sent back by God. Likewise, whenever I spend time

with Mali and/or Bilkis, I see the face of my own young

daughter Ahona.

In October 2013, Bellal Bhai went with me to Khulna—my

parents’ hometown—for the first time to see a doctor for

his skin disease and to visit my family. During his time in

the city, he also fulfilled some of his modest dreams.176 This

was his first introduction to my family and the relationship

has continued to this day (not only with my own family but

also with my sister’s family). So, Bellal Bhai and his family

now have a place in Khulna to visit, stay, and get assistance

if needed. For instance, even when I had returned to

Australia, Bellal Bhai’s family visited Khulna a few times to

get medical treatment for Shamima, their infant girl, who

had pneumonia at the time.

As I describe in the photobook Chain of Poverty, Jarina

Khala and I took Mali to the doctor in November 2013,

where she underwent an electroencephalogram in order

to finally receive a diagnosis and determine a course

of medication. She was diagnosed with cerebral palsy

and epilepsy, and started her long-term medication

immediately. I continue to assist Mali and Jarina Khala both

emotionally and financially (the latter in terms of Mali’s

treatment). While I am away, a friend of mine is looking

after them on my behalf. Whenever Mali sees me after

a while, she always seems very happy, cheering loudly,

“Bhaia... Bhaia...” (“brother... brother...”). In January 2015,

175 Jarina Khala, conversation with author, December 2012.

176 Uddin, “Born Into a Poor Family”, Chain of Poverty, 134–41.

47

Mali had to be admitted to the hospital because her health

situation had worsened. At the time, I was in Khulna for

the exhibition in Kalabogi. I was very worried and rushed

to Dhaka to assist. When Mali saw me at the hospital, she

was very happy and started playing with me (figure 3.2). I

can still see Mali’s smiling face in my mind, and I wish she

could be happy like this for her whole life. After a few

days, she got better and we were able to take her back to

Kamalapur Railway Station, but my fear for her wellbeing is

never diminished. I care for her as if she is a blood relative

and I believe Jarina Khala does the same for me. A few

diary entries from this time illustrate our relationship:

I woke suddenly from a bad dream, shaking, sweating. It was 4am in Brisbane and midnight in Dhaka. I could not get back to sleep again and wanted to know that Mali and Jarina Khala were okay. I hadn’t called them for a long time after I left a few months back. I dialled the number, fingers shaking, body shaking. Finally, Khala answered. I felt instant relief, they are alright...177

I had a very vivid dream again, ‘some one called me in the middle of the night, saying what happened to Mali. I rushed to the place. ...Everyone was crying. I stepped through the door. Mali was covered with a clean white sheet. I slowly took off the sheet.

4.6 Looked Down Upon: Social Outcast

Privileged people generally see impoverished people as

‘social outcasts’, which is a situation that needs addressing.

Kieron Crawley, former Country Director of Concern

Worldwide, Bangladesh, mentions this issue in the

(previously discussed) photobook Amrao Manush: The

Pavement Dwellers:

...we [Concern Worldwide] recognise that like everyone else—they [impoverished people] are citizens that deserve the opportunities that the rest of us take for granted—their ongoing poverty is a reminder of the injustice and inequality that all poor people suffer.179

US President Barack Obama also acknowledges the

repercussions of this inequality:

The failure to uphold universal human rights, denying justice to citizens and denying countries their full

177 Note from personal diary, 25 April 2014.

178 Note from personal diary, 12 August 2015.

179 Kieron Crawley (Country Director, Concern Worldwide, Bangladesh) talks about “Making the invisible visible and then giving them a voice” in Amrao Manush: The Pavement Dwellers, 5.

...she started crying and hugging me. Saying, “Bhaia..., Bhaia...”. I woke from the dream, shaking, sweating and could not get back to sleep again. I made a call to Jarina Khala next morning and found they are okay. I felt so relieved.178

48

potential, economic inequality, and extreme poverty . . . is a recipe for instability. . . every individual is born equal with fundamental rights, inalienable rights, and that it is the responsibility of governments to uphold

these rights.180

Nevertheless, it remains hard for people living with poverty

to have basic human rights regardless of society’s or the

state’s efforts to protect human rights. It is even harder

in Majority World countries, like Bangladesh, where

both general awareness and implementation of law are

very limited. Class structures also impact the treatment

of people in Bangladesh. Accompanying Jarina Khala and

Mali to a neurologist appointment in November 2013, I

witnessed this first hand when the physician rudely refused

to deal with us because of their lower class status.

Beautiful hospital building, where Mali was wondering around, smiling, and Khala and I were sitting on the chair in the waiting room. We were waiting to see a doctor, a neurologist, a professor; and we had to wait around five hours in the queue. After that long wait, the moment came, and when we [ Jarina Khala, Mali and I] entered the doctor’s chamber, the bright light waved us the hope. But within a few seconds the dream broke by the harsh voice. Suddenly the doctor got really angry with us and started to yell

at us. He was not happy with our appearances, especially Mali’s, she started wondering around doctor’s chamber. There was another elderly ‘rich’ person sitting next to the professor. Doctor started saying to him, “See how can these sorts of people enter my room?” Then pointed at us asking, “Who allowed you to come in here? Get out.” I replied, “Sir, we have an appointment with you. We want to see you.” “No, no, no. Go to a psychiatrist. Go to a psychiatrist.” Then he called the assistant to escort us out. Finally we had to leave his chamber. However, we were lucky enough to see a psychiatrist instead of a neurologist. Being refused by a doctor from a posh clinic in Dhanmondi, Dhaka, I did not understand why they don’t think that people like Mali, have the right to see a good doctor and/or why they might not have enough money to pay their fees.

I also had another experience when we were waiting for the doctor. I could feel the different attitude from others [the privileged] towards us. One woman with all her curiosity asked me, “What is your relationship with the girl?” I replied, “She is my sister.”181

Spending time with Jarina Khala and Mali, I have come to

understand the hopelessness of their situation. Through

our conversations, I learned the despair a mother must

feel when she can do nothing more than chain her disabled

child to a fence while she goes to seek out a living through

180 Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Obama at the University of Queensland,” 15 November 2014, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/11/15/remarks-president-obama-university-queensland.

181 Note from personal diary, 29 November 2013.

49

182 McIntyre, Participatory Action Research, xiii.

183 Dr Mohammad Niaz Asadulla and Dr Zaki Wahhaj, “Taruan der paliya bia kora probanata kom,” The Daily Prothom Alo, 3 September 2015.

unskilled labour. Being with Jarina Khala or remaining

with Mali was, at times, heart breaking, and it became

impossible for me not to assist them.

The ‘burden’ of looking after these members of my

extended family is both pleasurable, knowing that I can

help in the immediate sense, and weighty, knowing that

Mali’s problem has no solution, and Jarina Khala’s struggle

with her survival is never ending. Anger, pathos, sadness,

and familial love became the foundation of my experience

with Jarina Khala and Mali. It was obvious that I had

become a stakeholder in their lives but if I could not live

with Jarina Khala and Mali on the streets and not care for

them, then how could I expect the audiences (to whom I

showed this work) to care for the participant/s or to feel

solidarity with their plight? At this point in my research,

I understood that this highly subjective position not only

qualified me to continue to work with Jarina Khala and

Mali, but also qualified the findings from this experience.

All that was involved in bridging the distance between

them and me was the ‘new knowledge’ that I sought to

capture and convey to a broader audience. For it is in this

bridging that the experience of poverty can be understood

and felt.182

4.7 Child Marriage: A New Kind of Slavery Perpetuating the Poverty Cycle

Recent research conducted in sixty-eight districts of

Bangladesh by Dr Mohammad Niaz Asadulla, Professor of

Development Economics at Malaya University and Deputy

Director at the Centre for Poverty and Development

Studies (CPDS), and Dr Zaki Wahhaj at University of Kent

found that 73% of women respondents reported to be the

victim of a child marriage arranged by their parents. These

researchers predict that if the Government of Bangladesh

accepts a revision to the marriage law (changing the

minimum age for marriage from 18 to 16 for females and

from 21 to 18 for males), it will overrule the power of

the parents and will increase the child marriage rate in

Bangladesh even further.183 This argument is also supported

by most of the humanitarian organisations operating in the

country, including Human Rights Watch. The Government,

however, has stated different measures to reduce child

marriage among girls. According to the United Nations

Children’s Agency, 74% of women currently aged between

20 and 49 were married before the age of 18, which has

resulted in Bangladesh having the second highest rate

50

of child marriage in the world.184 A 2013 report by Plan

International states that in the Majority World, one in

three girls becomes married before they are 18, of whom

12% are aged 15.185 In Bangladesh, the numbers increase,

with one in three girls being married at 15 or younger.186 If

the current trend continues, it is estimated that more than

140 million girls in the world will be the victims of child

marriage by 2020. The report argues that, “Girls from the

poorest 20% of households are three times more likely

to marry before they are 18 than those from the richest

homes.”187 As Plan International notes, “Despite being

prohibited by international human rights law and many

national laws, child marriage continues to rob millions of

girls of their childhood, forcing them out of education and

into a life of poor prospects.”188

I witnessed this phenomenon first hand on 27 October

2013, when Jelekha, Bellal Bhai’s fourteen-year-old

niece, was taken to her in-laws’ home, as the family

had organised for her to marry a sixteen-year-old boy,

Masud. As I mention in my photobook, Chain of Poverty,189

I strongly opposed their marriage, and being a father of

an eleven-year-old daughter made this marriage all the

more terrifying for me. However, it was impossible to

stop or even interfere with the proceedings because I was

an invited guest. To bypass the laws prohibiting underage

marriage, both the bride’s and groom’s families managed

to make false birth certificates for them. A BBC report

states, “Aid agencies have described the practice as a

‘new kind of slavery’, made worse by the fact that some

in the country see girls as a burden who do not earn an

income.”190

Within child marriage, there is an increased chance of

domestic violence towards women, such as acid throwing

or even murder committed by the husband and in-laws

in order to collect dowry money from the girl’s family.

Another observation of this in-field research is that the

marriage ceremony must be paid for by the bride’s parents,

so money is often loaned from others, including relatives

and/or local loan sharks who charge very high interest.

Most of the time, it takes the rest of the bride’s parents’

life to pay back the loan. Sometimes, they mortgage their

only land, house, last pieces of jewellery, or anything

that will bring in some money. Both situations contribute

towards making them even poorer. For instance, to

184 Human Rights Watch, Bangladesh: Don’t Lower Marriage Age, 12 October 2014, https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/12/bangladesh-dont-lower-marriage-age.

185 Plan International, A Girl’s Right to Say No to Marriage: Working to End Child Marriage and Keep Girls in School, 30 May 2013, https://plan-international.org/girls-right-say-no-marriage.

186 Reaz Ahmed, “One in Three Girls Married Off at 15 or Below”, The Daily Star, 12 October 2015, http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/one-third-girls-being-married-15-or-below-155713.

187 “Proposal to Reduce Bangladesh Marriageable Age,” BBC, News Asia, 15 September 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-29216141.

188 Plan International, A Girl’s Right to Say No to Marriage.

189 Uddin, “Born Into a Poor Family”, Chain of Poverty, 122–26.

190 “Proposal to Reduce Bangladesh Marriageable Age,” http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-29216141.

51

organise Jelekha’s wedding, her father, Jalil Bhai (Md. Abdul

Jalil), had to borrow from his brothers, including Bellal

Bhai, who is also poor and has loans of his own. Bellal Bhai

believes that it will not be easy for Jalil Bhai to pay him

back, driving them both further into poverty. Gias Uddin,

a project manager for the Family Planning Association of

Bangladesh, states that child marriage is a big problem for

Bangladesh, and is also a contributor towards maternal

mortality and the overall morbidity of women.

Occasionally, the law enforcement authorities intercede

to stop child marriages, but the law is difficult to enforce

because families keep the marriages secret. Jelekha and

Masud became the parents of a baby girl the year after

their wedding, and it has not been easy for them to

manage the financial and mental pressures of having a

family. As a result, they have become more vulnerable

and their impoverishment has become more extreme

and almost impossible to break out of. In the name of

socio-cultural and rural traditions, everyday children like

Jelekha and Masud are starting families when they are

not mentally, physically, and/or financially ready to do so.

The rate of child marriage is higher in rural areas because

the lack of awareness among village dwellers is significant

when compared to their city-dwelling counterparts, and

is compounded by poverty and limited education. Zinnat

Afroze, a Social Development Advisor at Plan International

Bangladesh,191 notes that payment of a dowry and fears of

sexual harassment are the root causes of child marriage.

She argues that advocacy through awareness programs can

end this destructive practice.192

191 Plan International, https://plan-international.org/.

192 IRIN: Humanitarian News and Analysis, Asia, BANGLADESH: Parents Still Not Heeding Child Marriage Warnings, 6 April 20122, http://www.irinnews.org/report/92375/bangladesh-parents-still-not-heeding-child-marriage-warnings.

Chapter 5Methodology

53

5.1 Documentary Practice: Blending Ethnography and Participatory Action Research

The documentary practice used in this project blends visual

ethnography193 and participatory action research (PAR).194

I used these qualitative methodologies to construct a

framework that aims to engage with participants in order to

understand and capture the multidimensional legacy of their

lives in poverty. Documentary practice is mostly political in

intention and subjective in approach. Thus, in this project,

the research methodology developed through a direct

involvement and response to the participants with whom I

was collaborating.

I borrowed methods used by new ethnographers such

as Pink and Lather, and documentists such as Goldberg,

whereby participants collaborated with me in determining

the stories that should be told. In this chapter, I will discuss

the methodologies used in this project in greater detail.

While I discussed the philosophical differences between

documentary practice and photojournalism in Chapters

1 and 3, it is worthwhile identifying the differences

experienced in the day-to-day world of practitioners as well.

As previously stated, the terms ‘photojournalism’ and

‘documentary practice’ are commonly used interchangeably.

In attempting to position the approaches I used in this

project and why they differ from the common sense

understanding of photojournalism, I have defined this

practice as belonging to the world of corporate media

(section 1.3) and documentary practice as borrowing heavily

from the methodologies used in the social sciences. In the

world of corporate media, photojournalists work from

a perspective of being objective and telling the ‘truth’—

the emphasis is on ‘newsworthiness’. Their employers

are motivated by this objectivity; as Desnöes describes,

“Editors and publishers want to sell photographic images

as the objective truth.”195 The photojournalist must remain

flexible and able to change as their subjects change. A good

photojournalist must be able to respond quickly, draft

summations, and employ a reflexive approach to capture

what is before their lens.

The world of corporate media builds stories around bites of

information that are extrapolated through the journalist’s

observational skills. Although it may be an intense

experience, the involvement between a photojournalist

193 Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography.

194 McIntyre, Participatory Action Research.

195 Desnöes, “The Photographic Image of Underdevelopment.”

54

and the ‘subject’ of their story is more often than not a

quick and short-term undertaking. The justification of this

approach is often attributed to the urgency of the news

cycle and the attention span of the reader:

…readers do not expect to spend any time deciphering ambiguities and complexities in the photographs that appear [via news outlets] . . . Such photographs must therefore be instantly readable, immediately interpretable. . . [Also] photojournalism is constrained by available space and by the prejudices, blind spots, and preconceived story lines of their editorial superiors.196

By contrast, documentary photography has historically

been tied to exploration leading to social reform.

Documentary practice allows practitioners to collect,

examine, and report on the veiled elements of human

practice. For example, Becker observed how Jacob Riis

portrayed “How the other half lives”197 in 1890 and Lewis

Hine interrogated child labour in the US from 1908 to

1912198 in order to “expose evil and promote change”.199 As

Becker comments, “Their images were, perhaps, something

like those journalists made but, less tied to illustrating a

newspaper story, they had more space to breathe in.”200

Their work was disseminated in ways that were conducive

to generating change. For example, instead of working

for mainstream media, Hines worked with the social

organisation National Child Labor Committee to campaign

against the exploitation of American children.

While it could be argued that journalists require a reflexive

approach, ‘ideal’ documentary practitioners employ

reflective methods of inquiry to know their participants

and the human condition. Less interested in deadlines,

these practitioners are concerned with discovering what

underpins social actions. This approach requires longer

times spent with participants, the use of different media—

voice, image, artefacts—and a willingness to interrogate

the documentary practitioner’s observations and emerging

understandings.

The corporate world of media requires only that images

be formed from what can be ‘taken’/‘captured’/‘recorded’

in the immediate. As argued in Chapter 2, this has the

purpose of coralling pity with the intention of securing

relief, driven by a humanitarian spirit. In his lecture

titled Photography after Digitalisation, Professor Fred

Ritchin argues that “photography was built on this sort

196 Becker, “Visual Sociology,” 75–76.

197 Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York, ed. Sam Bass Warner, Jr., intro. by Alan Trachtenberg (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010).

198 Lewis W. Hine, “Child Labor in America, 1908–1912”, The History Place, http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor; Alison Nordstrom, “Lewis Hine: The Child Labour Photos That Shamed America”, BBC News, updated 12 April 2012, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17673213.

199 Becker, “Visual Sociology,” 76.

200 Ibid.

55

of recording from visible reality”.201 Photojournalists use a

photographic style that is very recognisable: a ‘third person’

style that attempts to show ‘what is happening’ to those

they photograph. It does not seek nor is there sufficient

space available in mainstream media for images that are

generated from deep immersion and a visual vocabulary

suitable to capture the nuanced and minute moments of

their lives.

5.2 Participatory Action Research and My Documentary Practice

Researcher Alice McIntyre argues for the “necessity

of [participatory action research] within the social

sciences and the need for researchers across a number

of disciplines to participate with people”.202 She defines

participatory action research as a type of research

premised on the active participation of the participants

and the researcher in order to co-construct new

knowledge.203 McIntyre asserts that the shared lived

experience and knowledge gained throughout the process

qualifies the research practice, and allows for “researchers

201 Fred Ritchin, Photography after Digitalisation, YouTube video, 1:06:22, lecture recorded at C|O Berlin: An Exhibition Centre for Photography, 10 April 2013, posted by “coberlin,” 17 March 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=541UY8jgkxU.

202 McIntyre, Participatory Action Research, ix.

203 Ibid., xii.

204 Ibid.

205 Ibid.

206 Photovoice website, http://www.photovoiceworldwide.com; Caroline Wang and Mary Ann Burris, “Photovoice: Concept, Methodology, and Use for Participatory Needs Assessment,” Health Education & Behavior 24, no. 3 (1997): 369–87.

and participants [to] reshape their understanding of

how political, educational, social, economic, and familial

contexts mediate people’s lives”.204

An objective of participatory action research is to seek

social change through collaborative processes that stem

from critical thinking and understanding of all engaged

parties in a particular project.205 This empowers their

agency (described in sections 2.1, 5.4 and 7.3) by fostering

a mutual understanding of the complexity of their lives,

and is acknowledged throughout the various layers

inherent in a participatory action research project.

‘Photovoice’, a pioneering concept in the use of the

participatory research approach, was developed in

the mid-1990s by Caroline C. Wang of the University

of Michigan and Mary Ann Burris of the University of

London.206 Effectively, today ‘Photovoice’ has become

a term for any form of research using insider access

versus outsider documentation. It normally takes the

form of accessing insiders, seeking their collaboration to

collect data, use of cameras, offering tutorials on visual

communication and then collaboratively eliciting the story

from the images made. Its aims are to enable people to

56

reflect on their community, promote critical dialogue

about important issues through the photographs, and to

reach policymakers to bring about change.207

‘Photovoice’ combines participatory research strategies

with forms of documentary practice, which are both

change-seeking disciplines. It has become a template used

by many organisations and researchers for documenting

social issues and communities not easily accessible to

outsiders. To this end, Wang considers ‘Photovoice’ to be

“...history in the making, as it records current situations

and enables the participants to define these situations as

they see them and to represent them to others, including

policy makers”.208

Using the camera in this way complements participatory

action research whereby the researched can become

a collaborator and can co-construct knowledge.209

‘Photovoice’ is used in situations that are usually off limits

to Minority World storytellers, such as in North Korea

and Myanmar; or where an adult (especially of Minority

World origins) might contaminate or alter a situation

simply by being adults in a child’s world (represented in

works such as Born into Brothels,210 Shooting Kabul,211 Break

Every Chain,212 and Participatory Photography Project213).

Clearly, we live in a digital world where almost everyone

has access to a camera, regardless of geographical

location or economic position. It is now so easy to take

photographs and we can take as many as required—

whenever, wherever, almost without any cost (apart

from spending once to buy a digital camera or mobile

phone). It could be reasonably argued therefore that

this easy accessibility makes the camera a democratic

communicative tool, and gives voice to those rendered

silent. However, as implied throughout this exegesis, the

camera is very similar to a dictionary, which is loaded

with words and phrases but unable to create meaning.

Communicating requires more than just knowing the

words and/or their collective sum; but rather, it requires

understanding them and organising them in particular

sequential structures. So it is with photography.

Photography is guided by a visual syntax through which

elements are structured in ways that can be embedded and

understood to communicate meaning using notions that

have already been mentioned in this exegesis—evidence,

metaphor, actuality, truth. Visual authors use these laws

207 Caroline C. Wang and Mary Ann Burris, “Empowerment through Photo Novella: Portraits of Participation,” Health Education Quarterly 21, no. 2 (1994): 171–86; Kirsten Maclean and Emma Woodward, “Photovoice Evaluated: An Appropriate Visual Methodology for Aboriginal Water Resource Research,” Geographical Research 51, no. 1 (February 2013): 94–105.

208 Cited in Maclean and Woodward “Photovoice Evaluated,” 95.

209 McIntyre, Participatory Action Research, xii.

210 Zana Briski, Born Into Brothels, http://www.zanabriski.com/born-into-brothels-1/.

211 Shooting Kabul, https://photovoice.org/shooting-kabul/.

212 Hope House Ministry Men & Alumni, Break Every Chain: A Photovoice Project for Improving North Lawndale, https://breakeverychainphotovoice.wordpress.com.

213 Participatory Photography Project, Save the Children, Nepal, https://nepal.savethechildren.net/sites/nepal.savethechildren.net/files/library/Participatory_Photography_final_CTP.pdf, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwivh0Yc7kE.

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of syntax and combine them with grammar inherent

in photographic discourse to construct affective and

cognitive ways of knowing. The camera produces images

without meaning, but the photographer adds meaning by

carefully considering the elements and other aesthetical

components of the images—moment, composition, light,

angle, exposure, etc.—which is influenced by their culture,

knowledge, understanding, and visual language judgment.

Photography, as with any language, is a complex and

diverse form of communication.

Much of the criticism of ‘Photovoice’ scrutinises its

sampling, thoroughness of recruitment and training, and

methodological application used to elicit change.214 These

criticisms are not unique to ‘Photovoice’. However, as a

documentary photographer who has been involved with

a similar project, I found that a number of problematic

areas arise around the image itself and the meanings

applied. From 2009 to 2010, I was involved in a similar

program collaboratively run by UNICEF Bangladesh and

Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, which provided

cameras and training to children to document their life.

The project culminated in several publications (a book,

websites, calendars, etc.) and exhibitions titled Do You See

My World?215 Despite the collaboration, the excitement,

and the engagement of the children involved, the question

could be asked as to how much intentional information

was incorporated into the images made by the children,

how much was happenstance, and what reliance could be

placed on the accidental. Images are as much metaphors

as they are evidence. They work as much affectively as

they do cognitively. The researchers (in this case, the

trainers, and editors), who were highly educated, had

come to understand life through such metaphors. They

were as interested in the unwitting testimony of each

image as they were with the textual information. Yet, this

unwitting testimony created by the children with cameras

was not seen nor understood by them as authors. It is

in the examination and extraction of the meanings from

this component, that the children became once again ‘the

researched’ and their agency reduced. Can, or even should,

a middle ground be established between the image-maker

and the researcher as to what meanings can be attributed

to the images made? I remain uncertain. Applying meaning

to the image requires complex editorial processes,

including combatting the desire for aesthetics, finding

214 Caricia Catalani and Meredith Minkler, “Photovoice: A Review of the Literature in Health and Public Health”, Health Education & Behavior 37, no. 3 (2010): 424–52; Patricia Hansen-Ketchum and Florence Myrick, “Photo Methods for Qualitative Research in Nursing: An Ontological and Epistemological Perspective”, Nursing Philosophy 9, no. 3 (2008): 205–13; and Kenneth C. Hergenrather, Scott D. Rhodes, Chris A. Cowan, Gerta Bardhoshi, and Sara Pula, “Photovoice as Community-based Participatory Research: A Qualitative Review”, American Journal of Health Behavior 33, no. 6 (2009): 686–98.

215 Do You See My World?, UNICEF Bangladesh and Pathshala South Asian Media Institute (2009), https://www.unicef.org/bangladesh/Do_you_see_my_world.pdf.

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5.3 A Distinctive Eye: Local vs. Foreign

As a native Bangladeshi, I know the language and culture, I

am aware of the social protocols, and I have had previous

relationships with many people who experience different

degrees of impoverishment in their lives. All of this

enhances my ability to be a good in-field researcher. In

documenting issues from the Majority World, I contribute

to a genre of scholarship that is subject to much criticism.

This criticism finds its greatest target when the authors

of those works come from the privileged Minority World

and do not share the cultural and social mores of the

participants. At the same time, only the reasonably well-off

Minority World photographers can tell the stories of the

Majority World population. This is because it is expensive

to buy the necessary equipment, to travel to other parts of

the world, to stay in-field (especially for extended periods

of time), and finally to secure a publication.

There has been much debate whether local photographers

have an advantage over outsiders in visually telling the

stories of others. In his article, “Do Local Photographers

Have a Distinctive Eye?”, visual critic Professor David

common ground on what constitutes discoveries, taming

an acute awareness of the expectations of an audience,

and bridging the distance between the under-educated and

privileged researcher, documentists (community members)

and/or NGO. Individually, each aspect and each process is

problematic, but combined they make any ‘co-construction

of meaning’ between the collaborators challenging.

Recalling Tagg’s comments, research comes with an

embedded ideology, as does the camera and its use, the

images and their interpretation, the change sought, and

the need for change.216 In navigating the complexities of

constructing meanings that can be attributed to visual

representation, it may be too optimistic to consider that in

this research the expanse between the underprivileged and

privileged can be breached in reasonable time limits. If this

is so, the problematic concerns with the distance between

the researcher and newly inducted research assistants

continue. Nonetheless, as these methodological concerns

are addressed the worth of approaches such as ‘Photovoice’

can be found in the changes it creates, the lessening of

the distance between different worlds and the sense of

connectivity it establishes through the research undertaken.

216 Tagg, The Burden of Representation.

59

Campbell asks, “Can we say categorically that local

people would be better storytellers simply because they

are native?”217 While this debate remains ongoing, it has

created a space in which Majority World photographers

are being trained by local tertiary institutions, critiqued

by social commentators, and employed by transnational

media corporations. It is doubtful that a consensus will be

reached; nevertheless, journalists will be reminded of the

mistakes that can be made by ‘touristing’ through the lives

of another, and opportunities that never existed before

are now available to photojournalists of the Majority

World. At the very least, popular culture today is awash

with images from authors of different socio-cultural

backgrounds a nd it is this diversity that, arguably, will

collectively produce a more complex representation of the

Majority World.

5.4 Day-to-Day Experience of Poverty

This project was conducted using an in-field approach

whereby I temporarily lived with three impoverished

families to experience the tasks, emotions, and difficulties

they face on a daily basis. Through this process, I shared

the uncertainty of each day and closely observed the

trauma and insecurity of homelessness, the impermanence

of employment, and the fragility and precariousness

of the participants’ daily routines. After I had spent an

extended period with the participants, my presence

became less obvious. In doing this, I sought to tell a

story that transcends a purely cognitive response and to

develop a story through which the audience comes to

know the participants and the phenomenon by affectively

experiencing the life of another.

In the beginning of the project, the relationships between

the participants and me were somewhat forced/unnatural,

but as the days passed, the relationships deepened, and I

now feel that we are like an extended family (as explained

in Chapter 4). These relationships were built through the

sharing of day-to-day experiences. By playing with Mali, I

can feel her boredom and the hopelessness of Jarina Khala;

by fishing with Bellal Bhai, I can understand his frustration

at the meagreness of his catch and the dependency of his

family on that catch; by spending time with Nurjahan Khala,

I can appreciate her anger towards her husband as his

217 David Campbell, “Do Local Photographers Have a Distinctive Eye?”, David Campbell Blog, 27 June 2011, http://www.david-campbell.org/2011/06/27/thinking-images-v-19-local-photographers-distinctive-eye.

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contribution to his family becomes less and less. This has

sometimes led me to cross ‘the line’ and act directly with

and/or for them. For example, as already mentioned, after

some time with them Jarina Khala and Mali, I began to

actively seek medical support for Mali. Together, we visited

doctors to seek a diagnosis for her. Once it was given,

I began searching for a hospice or home that could free

Jarina Khala and save Mali. That search continues today.

Aesthetically, this project combines different approaches

that work together to form a continuous narration. The

aim was to pursue a language that tells a complex story

of impoverishment and retains the idiosyncrasies of the

participants. They are presented as individualistic and

multidimensional, which will hopefully provide a better

understanding of their lives.

I collected data via open interviews, informal discussions,

and photo/video documentation. My diaristic field notes

have also become part of the data.

After each of my trips, I went through my photographs

and my in-field diaries that held my instant reflections on

my in-field experiences. This gave me the opportunity to

analyse the images I had made and to interrogate my day-

to-day experiences. I also made prints to share with the

participants. I gauged their reaction and discussed their

response to the images. At times, changes had to be made

to the editing or sequencing of the images. Agreement

on how each would be represented was sought and

achieved. But I believe that in this project, my attitude on

image timing and composition had changed even before I

pressed the shutter because I had shared in the particants’

experiences. For example, sometimes I saw that Jarina

Khala was so frustrated and broken by her situation that

she behaved in a way to Mali that may have looked cruel or

uncaring to outsiders. For these images to represent Jarina

Khala, the context in which they were taken would have to

be known to the audience. Without that context, I elected

either to not take the image or to not show those images.

Editorial decisions were often made in-field as well as

during post production. However, the veracity of the story

was the main determinant in all editorial decision-making,

rather than the drama of an image.

The composition of some of the images came about

through the discussions I had with the participants. In

61

the case of the family portraits, the participants chose

the location, background, their dress, body language,

facial expressions, and even the date of the shoot. On 23

December 2012, Jarina Khala hung her family’s brand new

floral bed sheet (one of their most valuable possessions) as

a background. For their family portrait, Jarina Khala chose

to sit in the place where she and her daughter sleep every

night.218

In a similar way, Nurjahan Khala hung their colourful bed

sheet as a background.219 Bellal Bhai chose his family’s

house as a background, and he and his wife and daughter

dressed in the most beautiful clothes they own, although

Bellal Bhai still had to borrow pants from his brother.220

He also had a haircut and trimmed his beard for the

portrait sitting. Throughout the process of making the

portraits, I sought to include the wishes of the participants

as to how they would like to be represented and to allow

them to present with dignity. The resulting images not

only capture their likeness but also tell us that no matter

what our socio-economic position and/or no matter what

possessions one owns, everyone wants to be represented

in ‘a decent way’ to others. In these images, I feel the

218 Uddin, “No Life on the Street,” Chain of Poverty, 19.

219 Uddin, “This Is the Life,” Chain of Poverty, 59.

220 Uddin, “Born Into a Poor Family,” Chain of Poverty, 97.

221 Uddin, “No Life on the Street,” Chain of Poverty, 45–53.

222 Uddin, “Born Into a Poor Family,” Chain of Poverty, 149–54.

participants’ sense of pride despite their socio-economic

circumstances.

From my first meeting with Jarina Khala and Mali, I became

increasingly aware of the chain that binds Mali during the

day. At times, it made sense. At other times, it formed a

critique of Bangladeshi society, of global politics, and of

the disregard of those who passed her by. Throughout

the project, I never reconciled the chain, and the rattling

sounds it made, lost in the clutter of street life in Dhaka,

tormented me. I set the camera up on a tripod and

captured a twenty-four-hour period in fifteen-minute

intervals. The final work composed of these images

measured 9.5 metres long and 1.22 metres wide. The image

took up more space that the chain provided for Mali during

the day.221

For the series Born Into a Poor Family, I attempted to visually

capture the tyranny of time passing by making several

images inside Bellal Bhai’s home that showed the passing

of approximately twelve hours each night. I used a long

exposure (bulb mode on a 35mm analogue film camera)

to document the rhythms of the nights.222 These rhythms

allowed me to capture a night time of individual moments

62

that, once conflated, present as a shroud covering them.

This was intended to represent a life of the uncertainty,

struggle, and little hope. Moreover, repeated across five

nights, the images capture the hollow echo of the family’s

daily life. As I detail in the book, at the time, Bellal Bhai

had no money to buy kerosene for his hurricane lantern,

so the family used a mobile phone light to perform their

nightly activities (including making dinner) for five days.

The collaboration continued through the editing process

to the development of the visual narrative and the

construction of the final visual work. Through this process,

participants exercised a high degree of control over their

representation. The work is neither an outcome of only

the participants’ voice nor the author’s: rather, it is the

outcome of a combined voice.

Instead of using the traditional editorial captioning found

in photojournalism I sought to juxtapose the images with

transcripts of the participants’ words. Direct quotes given

by the participants to describe certain situations, images

or stories allow the audience not only to comprehend

them better but also to feel an association with the

participants. I also combined Mali’s voice and ambient

sounds on video and photos of handwritten text/drawings.

I blended multiple data sources and voices with an

increasingly metaphorical visual language that blurs the

edges of good and bad, right and wrong.

I adopted this approach because it allowed the

participants to be acknowledged as human beings who

are impoverished, rather than as objects of poverty.

Having input into the way in which they are represented

empowers each person and provides a platform through

which their voice can be heard. As described already,

this empowerment is not embedded into traditional

Minority World journalism. The result of this is that much

of the work produced in mainstream media celebrates

one culture over another. It implies that the poverty of

the Majority World is somehow linked to the cultural

backwardness or individual flaws of those photographed.

It does not represent poverty and wealth as having been

created through unfair advantage and maintained, at least

in part, through the creation of pity.

63

5.5 Immersive Approach: Some Recommendations

In evaluating the methodology used in this research, it

is again important to understand that the effectiveness

of an immersive participatory approach depends on

the researcher’s understanding the phenomena, their

commitment to long-term immersion, and to working

collaboratively with participants. The documentary

photographer who employs this approach has to become

part of the lives of participants, and seeks to work

collaboratively with the participant in the telling of their

stories. Becker argues, “Contemporary documentary

photographers, whose work converges more consciously

with social science, have become aware, as anthropologists

have, that they have to worry about, and justify, their

relations to the people they photograph.”223

The methodology employed in Chain of Poverty was inclusive.

I sought to become involved in the lives of the participants

and to celebrate my subjectivity. In each story, I became

a stakeholder in these lives. This stakeholdership, which

continues today, saw me become intimately involved in the

medical decisions of Jarina Khala and Mali. Of the other

two stories, friendship, opinion giving, task partaking,

anger, joy and frustration were shared. There is no doubt

that it is time consuming, intensive, flawed, and open to

corruption through inexperience, poor preparation, or

differing agendas. But then so is any form of storytelling

and investigation of the lives of others. If the intention of

the storyteller is to become a conduit for the stories of

others, then any notion of social justice must depend on

being deeply informed of the story being told. In adopting

this methodology, I would make the following further

recommendations.

Planning: The documentist must read widely and be

informed about their topic prior to commencing in-field

work. They must have an understanding of the theories

that underpin the phenomena under investigation and the

social forces that surround it.

Time: The documentist must be prepared to commit a

long period of time to undertake the work, sometimes up

to several years. The immersive participatory approach

demands the researcher to get close, not only physically

but also psychologically in terms of building genuine

ties with the participants. In order to form mutual

223 Becker, “Visual Sociology,” 76–77.

64

in each and setting up fertile ground in which compassion

can grow. It is about becoming informed of the stories and

narratives that surround the meanings each participant

creates and recognising the nuanced complexities of those

narratives. Naming lessens the likelihood of stereotyping

and this, in turn, lessens the distance between the

photographed, the photographer and the audience.

Observation: Researchers involved in this process are

required to exercise heightened observation skills. This

involves much more than watching. Observation here means

to look, to contextualise what you see, to hypothesise, and

to evaluate and test understandings through communicative

strategies with the participants. Documentists must make

sure they observe and test their observations in order to

understand the phenomena as correctly as possible.

Collaboration: This refers to the mutual understanding

and decision-making that can be achieved through a

discussion of how the participants wish to be represented.

Documentists should not give away authorship, but seek to

know the intentions of the participants, and develop their

methods collaboratively, working with participants rather

than for them.224

224 McIntyre, Participatory Action Research, xii.

relationships and a vested interest in each other’s lives,

both parties should be willing to commit to an extended

timeframe.

Consent: Informed consent is required from the

participants in order for the documentist to be involved in

their lives. This gives the participant authority and control

over their story, empowering them, while at the same time

allowing them to withdraw at any stage. Informed consent

is a non-binding agreement between the storyteller and

the participants that they share the same goal and both

understand the risks and benefits of the work (for a

detailed explanation, see section 4.1 in this exegesis).

Respect: The key to success in this type of research

is first and foremost for practitioners to respect their

participants as equal to themselves. This may mean

that the practitioner will have to step outside their

comfort zone. In addition, it is important to respect

the participants’ agency—their right to make their

own choices about their life and situations—even if the

practitioner does not agree with their decisions.

Naming: It is imperative for practitioners to name the

participants. It is about recognising the dignity inherent

65

Ownership: The shared ownership of the story needs to

be considered. Ownership differs from authorship—the

documentist is the author, but needs to understand the

story as a shared process that is jointly owned. In Chain

of Poverty225 I shared some of the rewards with Jarina

Khala that accrued from her story. This story could not

exist without Jarina Khala’s experiences, her willingness

to share those experiences and my ability to capture and

disseminate them. In many cases documentists share with

the participants the financial proceeds of their work and

this reflects the relationship and responsibility that forms

through such projects. While this remains a much-debated

position, ownership of the story should be clarified before

the project commences.

Evaluation: An immersive participatory approach

requires a constant feedback system. Stories written

or visually made should be shown to and discussed with

the participants in order to be certain that the story

accurately represents the phenomena under investigation.

Relationships: Finally, the documentist should be

prepared for the emotional attachment that is inevitably

forged between storytellers and the participants. Such

a bond, I found, generated feelings of responsibility for

the people I was photographing, which then had a ripple

effect on my family relationships, finances, and physical and

mental wellbeing, but which overall, provided me with the

sense of now having an extended family.

In summary, maintain an open mind and expect to be

transformed by the experience. Be open to surprises

and do not attempt to fit situations into already pre-

determined frameworks. The documentist will need to

understand that this is a time-consuming process and one

that demands discipline, review, and risk taking. Stories

do not exist in a vacuum and the above is not the only

way in which stories can be gathered and told. Working

with human beings is always complex, multilayered and

requires deep reasoning. Such stories are rich in detail.

In a time-poor world, sometimes the synopsis is more

attractive than the details, the book cover is better

than the book and the trailer is more enjoyable than the

movie. The method used in Chain of Poverty is one way

to tell a story and, this approach combined with other

approaches, adds to a wealth of storytelling that allows

the reader to understand they belong to a world much

225 Shehab Uddin, Chain of Poverty.

66

bigger than themselves. But knowing you are part of

something bigger is not the only mission of storytelling.

Positive change is more often than not the motivating force

behind this form of narrative. However, the will to act for

change does not come from any story alone. Rather, it

comes from a complex process of making and attributing

meaning to a cohesive and coherent series of events and

stories. Documentary practice is one process in that

meaning-making and it fits within a family of processes that,

combined, allow us to know the world in which we live.

This knowledge germinates forces of change.

Chapter 6Discoveries

68

This project sought to transcend the common

understanding of poverty and challenge the conventional

imagery that dictates many of the assumptions around what

it is to live in impoverishment. For most of us, poverty

means the absence of material goods, but I hope that

through these stories, the audience will come to understand

poverty as the absence of life chances, the denial of hope,

and the non-existence of any form of security.

It is not the intention of the project to attempt to place

a sociological framework around each of the families;

however, I reference the important work of Hans Gerth

and Charles Mills, and of Abraham Maslow to give some

foundational explanation for what I experienced in the

presence of the participants.

In their seminal work Character and Social Structure: The

Psychology of Social Institutions, Gerth and Mills related the

effects of poverty to a person’s access to life chances.226

They argue that these chances are much more than just

about being alive; rather, they encompass the opportunities

to be educated, to be enculturated with the civility of a

society, to have hope, to aspire, and to pursue happiness.

It is very difficult to document the absence of life chances,

even through textual description. It is much easier to

recognise a person who is experiencing poverty by their

external appearance. For example, their lack of nutrition

and other basic material needs are visibly noticeable—

they are usually emaciated, perhaps have torn clothes.

However, their intangible losses (i.e., belonging, worth,

hope, dreams) are mostly invisible. This loss is not only

challenging to document visually, but is also challenging

to disseminate meaningfully to an audience through

traditional modes of communication.

Through his research, Maslow identified five stages of

development on the pathway to self-actualisation—

physiological, safety, belongingness and love, esteem,

and self-actualisation—which he placed in a hierarchical

pyramid titled ‘Hierarchy of Needs’,227 more contemporary

and nuanced iterations of which exist today. Maslow

sought to present a person’s transitions towards becoming

who they could best possibly be. In doing so, he also

captured what is lost if this progression is interrupted and

a person becomes stranded on any one level. Simply put,

poverty destroys a person’s opportunity to satisfy their

full potential. It breaks down their capacity to achieve and

reach the height of their own ability. I sought to work with

226 Hans Heinrich Gerth and Charles Wright Mills, Character and Social Structure: The Psychology of Social Institutions (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1953), 313.

227 A. H. Maslow, “A Theory of Human Motivation,” in Motivation and Personality (London: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1954, orig. pub. 1943), 35–58.

69

each of the three families in the hope that somehow this

failure to transition could be captured and made tangible

for others to feel and experience.

Using Gerth and Mills’s definition, Jarina Khala and Mali

were left with only the most basic access to life chances:

each day they fought to stay alive. In Maslow’s terminology,

each day is tasked with meeting their physiological needs.

Living on the streets provides no safety, no sense of

belonging or of being loved. Thus, Jarina Khala exists on

the lowest level of Maslow’s pyramid. Khala and Mali did

not experience enduring friendships, romance, status,

or respect; nor did they experience the wonder of being

more than they thought possible of themselves. In our

conversations, Khala never talked of a better tomorrow.

Tomorrow was always more of the same or the possibility

of a day worse than today. The thoughts of Mali’s life

without a mother concerned Jarina Khala, but there were

no solutions within reach.

On the surface, all of the three Bangladeshi families

I worked with belong in the bottom half of Maslow’s

pyramid.228 Yet, each family experiences their pursuit of the

most basic needs for survival differently.

Both Bellal Bhai and Nurjahan Khala have achieved their

‘physiological and safety/security’ needs. Bellal Bhai

struggles with, but is not resigned to, his situation. He is

still hopeful that some good fortune will come his way.

Nurjahan Khala’s family differs from Bellal Bhai’s in that

they continue to strive to achieve more. They have a strong

sense of belonging and an undiminished understanding that

together they can move ahead. This differs from Bellal Bhai

who hopes that fate will be his saviour, and from Jarina

Khala, who knows and accepts that there is no saviour.

228 Ibid.

6.1 Individually Centred: Living for the Present

Mali’s mental and physical impairment adds an extra

obstacle to the impoverishment that she and Jarina Khala

experience. The chain that shackles Mali throughout the

day became my torment as the project continued. Yet I had

no way to overcome these feelings. My best efforts were to

seek medical intervention for Mali and to continue to fund

her medicine indefinitely, but the chain was everpresent.

Following Mali’s diagnosis, Jarina Khala and I looked into

residential care, but the lack of a long-term facility and the

70

vast distances she would have to travel to see her child in a

short-term facility posed another problem as big as that of

the chain. This chain that made sense in a society deprived

of generosity and the provisions to assist the vulnerable still

remained offensive.

When we first met, our conversations were non-existent

and it wasn’t until we slept on the streets next to each

other that I detected a sense of pride in Jarina Khala. It was

obvious that I wasn’t equipped to ‘rough it’ and that I relied

on Jarina Khala to be my guide. That first night, the power

difference that had existed between us was reversed for

just a moment and this was something that took us both by

surprise and made each of us a little uncomfortable.

Over our time together, I realised that each moment for

Jarina Khala is about survival. It is about enough food,

shelter (just a place to sleep for a night), and sometimes a

small and rare joy—a discarded or a purchased cigarette.

Our conversations were not musings on the future or

remembering the past, for neither addresses the most

fundamental needs; that is, Mali’s and her security. For

Jarina Khala, time is not continuous and sequential; rather,

it is static—each day is the same. Small mercies found are

229 See the video (on USB) that accompanies the photobook Chain of Poverty, or by accessing it at https://vimeo.com/user46130823.

230 Uddin, “No Life on the Street,” Chain of Poverty, 28–33.

consumed instantly; there are no networks on which Khala

can rely and there is no romance in the life lived. Given

her circumstances, she is neither angry, nor miserable, nor

hopeful. With each day comes the need to live, and life

offers her no more than that opportunity.

Mali has become used to being shackled, since she has

endured this almost since the beginning of her illness. For

her, security comes in the form of her mother. Life then

has become about minimising the boredom. She uses her

voice, paces within the limitations of her chain,229 and plays

whenever the opportunity presents itself through scraps

of paper, a found coloured pen, or interactions with those

around her.230 I have come to realise that poverty has

robbed Jarina Khala and Mali not only of material wealth but

also of the joy of a mother loving her daughter, of a parent’s

hope and a child’s dreams.

While many within Bangladesh believe that illnesses such

as Mali’s are the result of some form of evil or curse, the

educated classes acknowledge the bio-medical rationales of

such ailments and disorders. Even more so, the educated

classes understand the impact that poverty has on the

health and wellbeing of the people in impoverishment.

71

Before I worked with Jarina Khala and Mali, I never thought

about the plight of people such as Mali, nor its causes.

Again, it was an accepted understanding that, in Bangladesh,

if you are not blessed with a sound economic footing, bad

things follow. On reflection, I suppose I had an intellectual

response to the plight of Mali, something akin to pity,

but there also was an urgency to ensure that I kept a

distance (metaphorical, economical, and physical) between

Jarina Khala and Mali and my family. In many ways, it is no

different from the enforced distance between the Majority

and Minority Worlds.

The images in Chain of Poverty have attempted to capture

those absences of life chances and hope. Hard surfaces

negated the romance of life, the chain became a metaphor

for the insurmountable, the streets simply a job. As

we prepared to sleep on the night, I first sensed that

momentary pride in Jarina Khala, the buzzing of the

mosquitoes brought back the reality that Jarina Khala

lives precariously and that this life is so easily affected by

and could be destroyed through, this simple insect. The

mosquitoes became more powerful than Jarina Khala and

the ants became more fortunate. Time became repetitive

231 Ibid., 19–53.

and full of patterns of purposeless motion; colour became

coarse and vulgar.231 The images are not meant to be

read alone like words nor are they meant to be read as

dictionaries for words not written. Rather, the images are

collectively intended to minimise the distance between

Jarina Khala, Mali, and the audience. The images are an

attempt to momentarily put the audience in the participants’

space and for them to know, affectively, hopelessness and

through this to feel compassion and solidarity with the

participants.

The words written above about the participants and the

images made portray a life of disappointment, of loss and

disregard, and the reader could be forgiven for believing

that Jarina Khala’s and Mali’s lives are no more than a one-

dimensional struggle for survival. Of course, they are more

than this. Humans are multidimensional creatures who adapt

and adjust. In addition, each of us makes meanings from the

world in which we exist and it is through these meanings

that we can qualify our lives. Did Jarina Khala and Mali smile

and laugh in the time we spent together for this project?

Were there moments of respite from the daily grind? Yes, of

course. Jarina Khala could find humour in my fumblings on

72

6.2 Family Matters: Looking Towards the Future

Within these three families, I found Nurjahan Khala’s family

to be better off overall. When I entered their home, their

attempt for an ‘organised’ way of living was apparent—

the tidy room with some well-folded garments, some

cutlery shown in a showcase next to some other low-cost

ornaments and cosmetics, a TV, posters of film stars, a

calendar hanging on the wall, etc. It was not that difficult to

realise how much popular culture influences them.

Over time, I also discovered that Nurjahan Khala’s family

members shared their earnings, since they valued working

232 Nurjahan Khala in Uddin, “This Is the Life,” Chain of Poverty, 78–79.

233 Ibid., 61.

the street at night and enjoy that sense of being dominant;

Mali was curious of the camera and my work. But just as

Mali’s chain restricts her from following that curiosity,

so too does the reality of their impoverishment restrict

other dimensions of Jarina Khala’s character. At best,

these moments gave me an insight to what could have been

possible under different circumstances. They became a

small glimpse into what has been lost.

together. The family’s collective effort offered them some

hope towards moving forward, both emotionally and

financially. They understood that the difference between

‘them and us’ and their life moves with small ‘challenges’—

the chance to find a ‘better job’, a little ‘more earnings’,

and to stay together, giving them hope for the future.

Nonetheless, they also recognised that a very long road

lies ahead of them. Nurjahan Khala’s comments in the

photobook acknowledged this:

I was able to provide some schooling for my children and now for my grandchildren too. I believe education can make a difference, which I didn’t get the chance to have in my own childhood.232

Since I work as a housemaid for another family, I usually leave early in the morning and get home around 3pm, sometimes at nighttime. It’s a lot of work, cooking and washing for them and then coming back to do the same for my own family. My two daughters work in a garment factory from dawn to dusk. My second daughter does extra work at home each night making necklaces to sell. Thanks to

all of this, our lives are a bit better now.233

However, as I worked with the family, I came to dislike Ali

Hossain Khalu and felt anger towards him, as I did with

73

Mali’s chain. He was often a drain on the family’s resources

and an impediment to their attempts to better themselves.

Early on in the project, I sought to counter these feelings.

How to address this dislike, the subjectivity it referenced

and whether this became as important to tell as the

lifestyle they endured, continued to be ongoing concerns

in telling their story. But when I looked at the story I told

of this family, his presence was minimised. In many ways,

this reflected his absence from the family itself and my

uncertainty in my right to disapprove.

The images in this story attempt to capture that the

family’s daily activities—studying, cooking, eating together,

bathing, and cleaning—are not only passing the day, but also

welcoming the next morning, the future of hope. Despite

all their hardship, Nurjahan Khala and the family together

are rewarded with a ‘better’ life than many of the other 47

million people in Bangladesh living with poverty.

6.3 Community Defined/Oriented: Looking at the Horizon

In Bellal Bhai’s story, the community is an important

influence on his family and so he, his wife and his daughters

bear their poverty together with this community. When I

first met Bellal Bhai, my impression was that he was in a

similar situation to Jarina Khala despite having a one-room

hut. But soon after I started to live with the family, work

with Bellal Bhai (fishing), and spend time with his friends,

this impression faded.

As the days passed, I began to realise that the community

provides a sense of protection for Bellal Bhai, grounding

his existence in local beliefs and customs. Despite his

situation he still had some modest dreams that there would

be some way to break the chain of his impoverishment.

However, most of the time, he is obsessed with the fear

and uncertainty that life presents.

Bellal Bhai belongs to a fishermen community and is

himself a fisherman as was his father, grandfather, and

great-grandfather. He believes that being born into a poor

fishermen family234 denies him the ability to become more

234 Bellal Bhai in Uddin, “Born into a Poor Family,” Chain of Poverty, 95.

74

than a fisherman himself. At the same time, it is not easy

for villagers to find other employment or to move to a city

in the hope of a better life.

While I experienced joyful days with Bellal Bhai fishing—

putting his nets into the river, seeing the sparkle of light

on the water, digging out the tiny shrimp larvae with a

sense of pride—my relative wealth protected me from the

disappointment of the catch. In return, I used that modest

wealth to fulfil a few of his dreams—eating white bread,

seeing a movie together, the purchase of a mobile phone,

a day in the city, etc. These were simple dreams but they

served to keep his hopes of a better life alive.

Chapter 7Publication of Outcomes

76

Chain of Poverty seeks pathways for representing the

complexities of people whose daily existence lies outside

the experience of the reader. Throughout the project, and

in the writing of this exegesis, the goals of this work have

been to:

• Seek to know the participants and become a

conduit through which their stories can be told;

• Seek to construct a collaborative representation

of the worthiness of the participants; and

• Seek to create compassion in the reader and

solidarity with the participants.

However, while these goals are easy to write how do they

translate into action? The following section interrogates

exactly this and whether or not these goals have been

achieved. Throughout this chapter evidence of goal

attainment will be provided and analysed.

Wherever an exhibition has been held or the work

published in any format, I have gathered responses through

interviews, personal conversations or a comments book

In its simplest iteration, the goal, ‘to know the participants

and become a conduit…’ does not imply a gifting but rather

it is about restoring the means for others to be heard. At

its most basic level, this goal implies that before a person

can be heard, they must have a visibility that acknowledges

their fundamental human rights. This visibility is much more

than being seen. Rather, it is being seen as a human being

and being given the same respect as all other human beings.

It is about individualising the participant and destroying

collective terms such as ‘them’, ‘the poor’, ‘the needy’ and

‘the subject’ and replacing them with participants’ names;

e.g., Jarina Khala, Mali, Nurjahan Khala, Ali Hossain Khalu,

Afsana, Shabuddin, Rokhsana, Alo, and Akhi, Bellal Bhai,

Nururnahar Bhabi, Bilkis, and Shamima.

in which attendees have been encouraged to write. I also

acquired responses from the Internet by email, comments

on different blogs, and on social media. Some of these

responses and comments are presented as a sample at the

end of this exegesis (See Appendix 4.2, 5.2, 6.2 and 8.2).

7.1 Outcome Goals

7.1.1 Seek to Know the Participants and Become a

Conduit through which Their Stories Can be Told

77

It is also about differentiating between an economic

stratum and a person who occupies that stratum. For

example, the collective term ‘the poor’ denies the

individuality of each person who is impoverished through

circumstances. Similarly, terms such as ‘needy’ portray

each person collectively as victims, as does the term

‘subjects’, which highlights a power differential between

author and participant/s. These and many other collective

terms not only categorise people as being no more than

their circumstances but also stigmatise them in this

process. Becoming a conduit for the participants of this

project required knowing them personally rather than as a

collective, which resulted in me becoming a stakeholder in

their lives. This is, and was, achieved by sharing their space,

becoming a part of their families, even it meant taking sides

in family disputes. In the case of Jarina Khala and Mali, I

became “like Mali’s brother” (See Appendix 3 and 5.2). As

indicated in Chapter 4, I could no longer stand aside while

Mali remained chained to a fence. In desperation, I took

Jarina Khala and Mali to a series of doctors. Unfortunately,

while some medicines were provided, the chain remains.

Bellal Bhai became a fishing partner (see Appendix 3);

together, we sought to satisfy at least some of the items

on his ‘bucket list’, and so on. This subjectivity was not

a fickle response but came about through long-term

immersion. By interacting with each participant, it was

impossible for me not to become invested in their fortune.

In turn, it had become my business that they are seen as

worthy individuals by all audiences and that they, in turn,

see themselves as worthy individuals.

‘Worth’ is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon. In

order to portray a person as worthy, their complexity must

be captured and disseminated. This can only be achieved

through understanding what constitutes not only their

daily lives but also their aspirations, their desperations, and

their dreams. Simply put, respecting another occurs when

that other is seen as a human being in more than shape and

size. In order to achieve this understanding and to embed

the work with this complexity, it was necessary for me to

become a part of the participants’ lives.

7.1.2 Seek to Construct a Collaborative

Representation of the Worthiness of the

Participants

78

Dr Alam raised the importance of this approach elsewhere

and explained how it was achieved in this project. In his

speech at the opening of the exhibition No Life on the

Street, and in comments he made during an interview with

me, he stated that the engagement of the participants not

only changed the perspective of power in the photographic

storytelling but also changed their representation. He

felt that the outcome allowed audiences to see each

participant as human and as an individual (Appendix 5.2).

However, there is an additional component to long-term

immersion that is often overlooked even though it is

one of the greatest strengths of this form of research.

That component is the subjectivity held by the author.

For most of its history, photography has attempted to

minimise the position of the author, attempting to create

the impression of direct access to the viewer of the

phenomena photographed. However, today, among many

photographers who could be classified as documentary

practitioners, the presence of the author is celebrated

as proof of the quality of the interaction that has

occurred between participant and author.235 Moreover,

it is celebrated as proof of the complexity of the human

condition and the worthiness of the participant/s, the

author, and their interaction.

In many ways, the documentist stands as a proxy for

the audience. In this form of storytelling, wherever the

documentist stands—physically and metaphorically—so

too does the audience. If I could be with Jarina Khala

and Mali and not be moved by their circumstances,

then the message conveyed to an audience is that these

circumstances are not sufficiently moving.

It is through the ongoing presence of the author with the

participants that a dialogue—theorising, hypothesising,

testing, evaluating, checking, discussing, debating, and

observing—becomes a continuous and two-way process

of interaction. In the end, a blending of voices occurs and

the refinement of that merging depends on the quality

and quantity of the immersive process. Only through this

blending process can a collaborative voice be achieved.

Thus, my research supports Sarah Pink’s argument that

by working together the stories of the researcher and

the researched become entwined.236 In Chain of Poverty, it

became noticeable that when either the participants or I

spoke (at exhibition openings and/or when sharing stories

235 Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography.

236 Ibid.

79

with others), we spoke about the stories of each other

(See Appendix 4.2, 5.2, and 6.2). What became obvious

is that we no longer had an individual story but shared

stories of this event. For example, Shoshannah Williams,

doctoral candidate at the University of Adelaide who was

also conducting her research on street dwellers at Dhaka,

noted:

...Jarina Khala talked about you a lot. She talked about this PhD student [Shehab], her [Mali’s] Bhai [brother] and how you are part of her life. And she kept talking about you. ...it became quite apparent that you were very integral to her life.237

Paraphrasing Boltanski, in his book Distant Suffering:

Morality, Media and Politics,238 he argues that a move

towards compassion for and solidarity with, a person

occurs when the person is named. This naming is much

more than simply captioning the person’s first and family

name to a photograph. It includes publicly acknowledging

the person within a geographical, local, and social space.

Naming is a process of exclaiming respect for another—

publically and personally.

A planned outcome of this project was to exhibit the

visual stories in the locales of the participants. This

process intentionally sought to publicly acknowledge the

participant as someone whose story was worth telling. It

was hoped that by acknowledging their presence in their

space—both in person and through images—a sense of

pride and dignity could be created. In addition, the choice

of images about everyday situations, achieved through

collaborative understanding and subjective representation,

helped an audience to comprehend the richer life stories

of the participants. Consequently, reading these stories

within the space occupied daily by the participant/s,

rather than within the hallowed halls of academia or

the privileged gallery context, created an authenticity

regarding the lives of those whose stories are told. Thus

the democratised gallery validated the participants (and

their decision to tell their story), blended audiences and

returned ownership of the stories to the community in

which they occured. At the exhibition opening of No Life

on The Street, Shoshannah Williams made the following

7.1.3 Seek to Create Compassion in the Reader

and Solidarity with the Participants

237 Shoshannah Williams, a researcher working within the streets of Dhaka, interview with the author.

238 Boltanski, Distant Suffering.

80

comments:

I think it gives back a little bit of ownership of the space, you know. Like, I think street dwellers here, you talk about them being invisible, and I think that’s a really, really accurate way of talking about the street dwellers; they’re largely invisible and they’re largely ignored by most people here [Bangladesh]. But by them allowing you to portray their lives in this way, within their space, I think, that’s a really powerful, powerful thing.239

But the act of exhibiting alone is insufficient to fulfil

this criterion. In any storytelling, the considered use of

language is the author’s major tool to sway audiences.

Within photojournalism and documentary practice,

the rules are no different. Choice of visual language

will lead an audience towards critical, sympathetic, or

compassionate understandings. And as with any language,

this tool is complex. It is outside the remit of this exegesis

to detail each grammatical choice made, but suffice to

say, the grammatical choices are no different than that

of the novelist. Choice of words, sentence construction,

paragraphing, etc., are replaced by viewpoint, lighting,

and compositional considerations. In the same way that a

writer may choose to use a first-person voice to diminish

distance, a documentist may choose a particular viewpoint

to achieve an intimate effect. Just as each word is carefully

chosen in a written essay, so too is every component in

an image. As the participants revealed themselves, specific

choices of visual grammar were made to capture the

affective dimension of this understanding, as discussed in

previous chapters.

As Boltanski argues, compassion differs from pity in that

it incorporates a sense of solidarity within the audience,

who, through careful storytelling, feel they have come

to know the participant intimately, become invested in

their lives, and can stand with the participant. In short,

compassion is generated out of a sense of solidarity that

has resulted from the most intimate of knowledge. This

differs from pity, which as Boltanski also argues, is an

intellectual response of sorrow generated from a distance:

we care but they are not us.240 As Hasan Rahim, a reader,

comment on the Lens blog:

This is heartbreaking but also uplifting. ...reminds us of our common humanity and our obligations toward the destitute. As an American of Bangladeshi origin, ...I can help bring some happiness to his aunts and nieces he found in the streets and slums of that city.241

239 Shoshannah Williams, interview with the author.

240 Boltanski, Distant Suffering, 3–19.

241 Hasan Z. Rahim, San Jose, CA, 25 February 2015, comment on the Lens blog, The New York Times; see Appendix 8.2.1.

81

In this section, I will identify how the goals discussed

above impacted on each of the participants. The project

culminated in three exhibitions, which were installed on-

site in the three separate outdoor locations where each of

the families live in Bangladesh.

The three exhibitions had separate titles: Born Into a Poor

Family (Bellal Bhai, Nururnahar Bhabi, Bilkis and Shamima);

No Life on the Street ( Jarina Khala and Mali); and This

Is the Life (Nurjahan Khala, Ali Hossain Khalu, Afsana,

Shahabuddin, Rokhsana, Alo and Akhi). The titles were

taken from the participants’ comments.

I printed the images on low-cost PVC. The reason for

this was both to minimise printing costs and to protect

the images from outdoor elements. Combined, the

images were several metres in length. I planned to leave

the canvases behind after the exhibitions, so that the

participants could keep them and utilise the material

as they saw fit; for example, as mats, rooves, and/or

protection against the rain/sun or even the peering eyes of

the streets.

I printed the invitation cards for the three shows on

recycled, handmade paperboard (figure 7.1) that had been

discarded and then collected from piles of garbage by

a street dweller doing similar work to Jarina Khala. In

addition, I printed a large number of exhibition catalogues

on newspaper in a tabloid format, which were mass

distributed (figure 7.2.1–7.2.4). There were two reasons

for this:

1. I hoped the participants would feel empowered

by seeing themselves printed in a newspaper-like

publication.

2. I sought to spread the stories as much as possible,

and the small, lightweight, foldable qualities of

newsprint were perfectly suited to this.

I was humbled by how the participants and their

neighbours spontaneously joined me to work on the

layout and installation of the shows. In many, ways the

communities shared the stories and they felt some

ownership of this work. They assisted me in digging

7.2 Outcomes Towards Achieving the Goals

7.2.1 Three On-Location Exhibitions

82

holes for the poles, hanging the images, and working on

other tasks as required (Appendix 4.1, 5.1, and 6.1). The

participants ‘manned’ the open air ‘galleries’ when I was

not on-site, and they shared their stories with audiences

by having one-on-one conversations with attendees. All

three exhibitions attracted visitors around the clock

(Appendix 4.1, 5.1, and 6.1).

The first of the three exhibitions was titled Born Into a

Poor Family, which was launched at Kalabagi Village in

Dacope, Khulna, where Bellal Bhai and his family live. The

exhibition opened on 16 January 2015 and ran until 20

January 2015. We celebrated with an opening ceremony on

the Friday afternoon. Almost the whole village gathered

for this inaugural exhibition and Bellal Bhai, his brother

Kalam, local leaders and seniors, and I shared our thoughts

with the audience over a loudspeaker. At the end of the

discussion, we shared Jilapi (local sweets) with everyone

who attended the show (Appendix 4.1).242

The exhibition was installed along the village street behind

Bellal Bhai’s hut. The images hung on poles made out of

7.2.1.1 Born Into a Poor Family

tree branches collected from the Sunderbans mangrove

forest. We also used one interior and two exterior walls of

Bellal Bhai’s hut for the installation. Bellal Bhai’s family was

happy to welcome visitors inside their home to view the

images, which made the visitors feel more connected to the

story of the family.

Many of the comments made were in person rather than

by signing a visitors’ book. This was not unusual given the

lack of confidence of many villages to express themselves

textually. However, two comments (one from Bellal Bhai

and another from his elder brother Kalam Bhai) revealed

the joy felt by having the story told:

...a lot of people came to see the photos [through the exhibition] and they like them, so do I. They appreciate it very much. I think it tells our story well.243

The photos are great and beautiful. In my life, I have never seen photos like this. Now I can see that photos can tell stories of life. This exhibition tells us in reality how is the life of a poor family.244

What became evident in both the comments above was the

sense of pride held by Bellal Bhai and his family that others

thought him worthy of an audience. In his village, Bellal

242 In Bangladesh, especially in villages, it is a traditional custom to share Jilapi (also known as Jalebi in India) in any celebration, mainly when launching something good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalebi.

243 Bellal Bhai interviewed by Shaikh Mohir Uddin for the author.

244 Md. Abul Kalam interviewed by Shaikh Mohir Uddin for the author.

83

Bhai is neither an elder, nor self-sufficient nor a prominent

fisherman. Having his story be the subject of a significantly

sized exhibition, corralling the attention of the elders of the

village and worthy of international acclaim—my supervisor

from Brisbane skyped into the exhibition to congratulate

Bellal Bhai—gave him an enormous visibility and a sense of

self-worth.

The villagers championed Bellal Bhai for the story being

told. His elder brother, a relatively respected figure in the

community, while ostensibly acknowledging the quality

of the images, was congratulating his younger brother for

his contribution towards this worthy undertaking. These

two comments, simple in their explanation, highlighted the

impact of knowing your subject and because of that knowing,

creating a conduit through which they can be heard.

7.2.1.2 No Life on the Street

The second show, No Life on the Street, told the story of

Jarina Khala and her daughter Mali. The exhibition was hung

on an exterior wall of the train station in Dhaka. We also

used another wall of the street, where a collage of ninety-

four images ran continuously along 9.5 metres of wall space.

The exhibition included a video titled One Day, Every Day.

It played inside a makeshift hut made out of polyurethane

sheets, collected cardboard boxes, and bamboo (figure

5.1.5). The video portrayed Mali’s life, showing how she is

chained from dawn to dusk. In it, we see Mali walking into

the frame and every now and again, sometimes screaming,

sometimes talking to herself or pretending that she is

talking to others. This video can be viewed by using the

USB at the end of the Chain of Poverty photobook, or by

accessing the web link: https://vimeo.com/user46130823.

No Life on the Street was formally launched on 25 January

2015 at Kamalapur Rail Station (in front of Platform 8)

where Jarina Khala and Mali sleep each night. It remained

up until 29 January 2015 (See Appendix 5.1). Because of

its location, a more diverse audience attended than at

the previous exhibition. Every day, thousands of daily

commuters pass by this street as they use the platform.

Many of them dropped into the show on their way to or

from work.

In addition, Government and NGO officials and workers,

activists, poets, actors, anthropologists, and photographers

had been invited. This diverse mix was further flavoured

84

with the attendance of many Europeans and non-

Bangladeshis who had come to Dhaka to be a part of the

Chobi Mela International Festival of Photography.

At the opening, Jarina Khala and I shared stories from

our time together. In addition, Dr Shahidul Alam, Festival

Director of Chobi Mela, Principal of Pathshala, and Founder

of Drik stated,

Here, I felt that these images were taken by someone from the family, who is well known to them. ...and does not have any distance. ...the important thing here is the closeness and the intimacy that I see. And it can give a different layer to a work.245

James Estrin, co-editor of the Lens blog, The New York Times,

wrote in his article:

the show outside the railroad station, large photos printed on plastic canvas were lined up along the very wall where Mr. Uddin had slept. ...Just as he had walked in the footsteps of his subjects, so too would the diverse audience that caught the show.246

But while the work had moved a critic from the Minority

World, one who is educated and distant, it was not until

Jarina Khala expressed her response to the work that I

realised that Jarina Khala and Mali’s lives had been altered,

albeit in small ways, by this exhibition:

Before this [exhibition], nobody wanted to talk to us, but now people want to talk with us about the conditions of our lives…

After showing the photos, Manager of Sajida Foundation [NGO] came and visited us and expresses the interest to provide meal for Mali and to assist us for her treatment.247

These comments revealed how Jarina Khala and Mali’s

sense of exclusion had been lessened by the exhibition.

Whether or not this will continue is uncertain. But I smiled

at the thought that, for one moment at least, Jarina Khala

was being told that she was OK—a comment so rare in

her world. I hoped that this momentary sense of inclusion

would provide an oasis in the life of this woman who has

endured an existence of exclusion. But of course I hoped

this would last much longer than simply this moment.

But as Jarina Khala continued her response, I became

aware of the responsibility that this project had thrust

upon me. As a husband and father, I am critically aware of

the importance of my family. Many times, I feel inadequate

to fulfil all that these roles require. But unexpectedly this

sense of inadequacy grew when Jarina Khala said,

245 Dr Alam in his opening remarks and in an interview with the author.

246 Estrin, “An Embedded Photographer Empowers the Poor.”

247 Jarina Khala interviewed by James Estrin, co-editor, Lens (blog), The New York Times, 24 February 2015, http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/an-embedded-photographer-empowers-the-poor/?r=0.; interviewed by Saikat Mojumder for the author.

85

I really like these photos. And other people are also appreciating them. These photos are telling stories of our life. But top of that, Bajan Shehab [son Shehab] like as my son took the responsibilities of my daughter as his sister and me as an aunty. Usually nobody will take this kind of responsibilities.248

Of course, I had become a stakeholder in the lives of Jarina

Khala and Mali. It would be impossible to have worked

with two people in such need and not feel at least an

obligation to help. But through this work, I have come to

understand that with any form of philanthropy, there comes

responsibility, something often missing in the pity donations

of the rich to the poor or from the Minority World to the

Majority World.

I cannot image the solution to the problems of Jarina Khala

and Mali. Mali needs institutional care and finding one for

her in Bangladesh is very challenging. Furthermore, to

institutionalise Mali would be to separate mother and child

as well as committing Mali to an uncertain future. However,

not to do so leaves Mali chained to a fence. For now, there

is no solution, and from my comfort in Australia maybe I am

no longer a good ‘son’ and ‘brother’. However, one of my

friends in Dhaka is willing to fill the gap of my absence and

248 Jarina Khala interviewed by Saikat Mojumder for the author.

249 Jakir Hossain interviewed by Saikat Mojumder for the author.

250 Dr Alam, interview with the author.

he assists Khala as much as he can on my behalf.

A further unintended consequence of this exhibition was

its infectious quality. While the stories had focused on

the lives of Jarina Khala and Mali, others who shared the

economic deprivation and isolation with Jarina khala felt

represented in this work. Jakir Hossain, a rickshaw puller at

Kamlapur Railway Station, Dhaka, commented that, “This

[exhibition] is very new to us and it brings the internal

story of poor people like us.”249

In his comments, Dr Alam mentioned:

[ Jarina] Khala or other [participant/s], they were directly engaged in decision making and I believe it is a very important thing [issue]. ...She at least feels that someone is concerned about her. Someone believes that her life also has value.250

What was evident at the exhibition and in the comments

of those who attended was that many viewers felt able to

experience and understand the lives of Jarina Khala and

Mali. For the most part, Jarina Khala and Mali were seen as

individuals and the site of the exhibition, a site that many

encountered daily on their travels in the city, was now

comprehended as much more than a transitory space. The

images and the exhibition provoked the audience to know

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7.2.1.3 This Is the Life

The third exhibition, titled This Is the Life, was held at

Jobbar Hajir Bari slum in Matbor Bazar (Pakka Pul),

Kamrangirchar, Dhaka. It was launched on 30 January

2015 and was displayed until 3 February 2015. The narrow

alleyway was used as a gallery space leading to Nurjahan

Khala’s residence inside the slum. We hung images on the

both sidewalls of the alleyway. This temporary gallery

became a meeting place for many of the workers living

within the slums and a festive playground for the children

of these workers (Appendix 6.1). At the opening of the

exhibition, Nurjahan Khala and I shared our experiences

with the audiences.

On the opening day, neighbours from slums around come

along to celebrate the show. This exhibition also coincided

with the Chobi Mela International Festival of Photography and

as such was visited by a diverse audience, including the slum

residents, people from the educated strata in Bangladesh,

non-Bangladeshis visiting for the festival, and academics both

local and foreign. Significantly, the owner of the slum was

present at the opening day. He had not visited the slum and

Nurjahan Khala’s family for many years.

Nurjahan Khala said,

After this programme [exhibition], everyone is appreciative. You know, our house owner, Jamal Hazi went to my room the other day and asked what happen to my eyes. I explained to him about my bad eye condition. He said, ‘we only know that today, after watching the exhibition’. They never asked that type of question before.251

Ali Hossain Khalu, the husband of Nurjahan Khala, stated,

We’ve never seen something like this before. It is very beautiful. ...The neighbours also appreciate this attempt and like the photos.252

and feel Jarina Khala and Mali not merely intellectually but

through the senses.

However, at a much more fundamental level, this exhibition

brought Jarina Khala and Mali to the attention of an NGO,

which determined to assist where possible. In February

2016, a close friend of mine from Australia went to see

Khala and Mali and spent some time with them, sharing

food and conversations with them. My hope is that those

effects of the exhibition would be longer lasting than the

shows themself.

251 Nurjahan Khala, conversation with the author.

252 Ali Hossain Khalu, interview with the author.

87

Tanzim Wahab, a curatorial member of Chobi Mela,

remarked,

...people are coming, they [participants] are standing next to the prints and they are giving me a better context by explaining [the situation]. ...If we really want to work on social issues we have to re-think about the tools and mediums. ...It’s not only the audio/video and technological things many other aspects like, oral history ...and also people themselves physically representing their work standing in front of their photograph. Yeah, I mean that’s giving me a context.253

Clearly, the exhibition created a positive response in the

community and for Nurjahan Khala’s family. The comments

made highlighted that value was added to the work through

the physical presence of the participants. This provided

a greater authenticity to the work, making the images

appear as real as the participants themselves. In addition,

the audience engaged with both the participants and their

stories in a more intimate way. As a result, it heightened

the verisimilitude of the photographic representation and

altered the traditional way of reading the (visual) stories of

‘the other’.

From the outset of this project, I had hoped that when the

research was exhibited and/or published, it would be seen

both inside and outside Bangladesh. It was my intention

to use social media, competitions, festivals, exhibition

invitations, and a photobook to share these stories as widely

as possible. It is early days, yet the research published mostly

through exhibitions as ‘work-in-progress’ has resonated well

and the stories told have been ‘read’ by audiences whose

lives would never have otherwise intersected with each

or any of the families. In this section, I will address how

this project has just started to become shared with global

audiences through media such as the Internet, gallery spaces,

and mainstream periodicals, such as The New York Times.

I started by publishing the work through national

Bangladeshi newspapers and magazines, some of which

have online portals that wrote features articles on the

shows. The leading Bangla newspaper, The Daily Prothom

Alo, published an in-depth story in their weekend magazine

during the exhibition No Life on the Street in Dhaka (figures

8.1.4.1–8.1.4.3),254 which led to some responses around the

country.

7.2.2 Sharing Stories with a Global Audience

253 Tanzim Wahab, interview with the author.

254 Zadid Rza Noor, “Gorib manushera ki vanbe bache”, The Daily Prothom Alo, 31 January 2015.

88

It is always difficult to break into the media of the Minority

World. It would appear that unless the particular country

is directly affected by events, newspapers simply omit

to report events outside their remit. Of course, even if

this were not the case, it would still be difficult for an

exhibition on poverty to break into mainstream media.

There are so many stories of injustices in the Majority

World that there simply would not be enough space to tell

the stories that need to be told. However, through a lucky

coinciding of events these stories were to be published

in one of the world’s major media outlets. Estrin, the

aforementioned co-editor of the Lens blog, The New York

Times, was in Dhaka for the festival on photography. He

visited my shows in Dhaka and spoke with the participants

and myself. He was sufficiently moved to publish the

series on the Lens blog.255 It was also published on page 2

of The New York Times International on 27 February 2015

(figure 8.1.3). After that, the project started to gain some

attention of other international media platforms and

individuals.

The work has also started to be shared through several

other modes of communication, including social media,256

and I have been trying to reach as many audiences as I can.

For example, I gave a lecture titled Lived Experience: An

Immersive Approach for Telling Stories of Impoverishment during

Chobi Mela VIII, International Festival of Photography, in Dhaka

on 30 January 2015 (figure 8.1.5).257 I also participated in

long interviews for two separate Bangladeshi television

programs, which aired on two of the country’s leading

national TV channels, Boishakhi TV and ATN News. In

Australia, I was interviewed by the Brisbane FM radio

station Radio 4EB (figure 8.1.6). In addition, the work has

been shared by several websites and blogs, such as Head

on Photo Festival blog258 and Griff ith University News,259 and

Memefest: Festival of Socially Responsive Communication and

Art.260 In Italy, Rai Radio2 shared the stories both on their

radio program261 (see the translated transcript in Appendix

8.2.3) and their blog, Refresh.262

I have also started to display the work in galleries within

Australia and the US through a work-in-progress exhibition

co-curated by Dr Jay Younger and Professor Byron Wolfe

at POP Gallery, Brisbane,263 and at Crane Arts, Crane

International Project Space (Gallery 105), in Philadelphia.264

255 Estrin, “An Embedded Photographer Empowers the Poor.”

256 Chain of Poverty, Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/chainofpoverty/info/?tab=page_info&edited=website.

257 Shehab Uddin, Lived Experience: An Immersive Approach of Telling Stories of Impoverishment, lecture presented at Chobi Mela VIII, International Festival of Photography Bangladesh, 30 January 2015, http://new.livestream.com/chobimela/events/3719522/videos/75408451.

258 “Dig a Little Deeper,” Head on Photo Festival (blog), 13 March 2015, https://headon.com.au/blog/dig-little-deeper.

259 Lauren Marino, “Photographer Lives Life of Poverty to Capture It: From Brisbane to the Street of Dhaka,” Griffith University News, 12 February 2015, http://app.griffith.edu.au/news/2015/02/12/photographer-lives-life-of-poverty-to-capture-it/.

260 Memefest: Festival of Socially Responsive Communication and Art, September 2014, http://www.memefest.org/en/gallery/works2014/1714/#cookiesok.

261 Radio Rai, http://www.rai.it/dl/portaleRadio/media/ContentItem-6be06989-c18f-4a73-815d-48c2f65ece72.html# and http://www.radio.rai.it/podcast/A45815841.mp3.

262 Refresh (blog), http://refresh.blog.rai.it/2015/03/15/la-dignita-della-poverta/.

263 Jay Younger, ed. Cast by the Sun, ex. cat. (Brisbane: Queensland College of Art, 2015) https://issuu.com/qcagriffith/docs/cast_by_the_sun?e=3092855/14437363.

264 Crane Arts, http://www.cranearts.com/cast-by-the-sun-philadelphia/.

89

However, there is still a long way to go in distributing

these images further. At the time of writing, I have not yet

achieved my goal of publishing these stories en masse to

a global audience. The way I have chosen to realise this

target is through a photobook titled Chain of Poverty.265

The book is bilingual (Bangla and English), so that it is

accessible to both native and international readers. This

is also important considering that most of the text taken

from the participants’ experiences is presented in their

first-person voice.

The photobook is submitted as another outcome of studio

research and as a part of this exegesis. At this moment,

it is printed as a limited edition, self-published book. I

believe that it acts as another medium to achieve the goals

described earlier.

A dialogue was begun when the story was published in the

Lens blog, The New York Times.266 A number of comments

are listed below and many more can be read in Appendix

8.2.1. Although I am pleased with the attention the work

has received, I am concerned that the participants in the

stories may get lost in the academic critiques of the work

or the desire to manufactured celebritism. Some of the

comments are as follows:

Poverty isn’t only about a lack of money and resources. The worst poverty is found when there is a lack of education, understanding, hope—liberty, fraternity, egality [egalitarianism]. ...The question is, can we grasp this moment and together devise a new path towards peace, freedom from hunger, sustainable development and regional cooperation?267

This is extraordinary. Returning the images to the people themselves. It’s such a temptation to skip them. I’m trying to do something very similar in Nicaragua.268

I wish I will be put in a position one day that empowers me to act to fight poverty and empower people living in underprivileged areas.269

[these images]...brought tears to my eyes. ...With just a few dollars a day, we can make a difference in the lives of people who are invisible to the rest of society. May we all develop lasting empathy for the less fortunate among us.270

While these responses acknowledge the advocacy inherent

in the project, and others included in the appendices

are complementary, very few talk of Jarina Khala, Mali,

265 Uddin, Chain of Poverty.

266 The Lens blog.

267 N. G. Krishnan, comment on the Lens blog, The New York Times, Bangalore, India, 26 February 2015.

268 klfitzgerald, comment on the Lens blog, The New York Times, Florida, 25 February 2015.

269 Nadia Fanous, comment on the Lens blog, The New York Times, Lebanon, 25 February 2015.

270 Hasan Z. Rahim, comment on the Lens Blog, the New York Times, San Jose, CA, 25 February 2015.

90

Bellal Bhai or Nurjahan Khala, or the other participants.

Somehow, they seem to have been lost in the discussions

that have followed. At this stage I cannot confidently say

why this has occurred, nor is it the remit of this project

to find the answer. But I suspect that Stanley Cohen271 and

other such authors have gone part of the way in addressing

this phenomenon. They argue that icons of rage are not

created out of a single image or story. Rather, they rely

on a political process—mostly of denial—to project and

embed these stories into the consciousness of audiences.

I know this would be no different for icons of compassion

and solidarity. If Cohen is correct and should the stories

of Jarina Khala, Mali, Bellal Bhai and Nurjahan Khala ever

become politicised and, by extension, icons of compassion,

each of them will be presented as much more than victims.

I hope that through the processes of gathering their

stories and the visual language used, they will always be

portrayed as complex human beings and the processes will

not cost them their humanity.

271 Cohen, States of Denial.

Chapter 8Conclusion

92

This research started with the statistical fact that 47 million

people live below the poverty line in Bangladesh. Given

the impossibility of knowing each of these people on an

individual level, this project has focused on three families

who are among this group. At various times during my

academic candidature (2012–15) I explored the day-to-day

lived experiences of Jarina Khala’s, Nurjahan Khala’s and

Bellal Bhai’s families by interacting with them intimately—

fishing with Bellal Bhai, sometimes working throughout the

whole nights and even laying down my mat and sleeping

one time next to Jarina Khala and Mali on the street—over

the course of different in-field trips. As a photographer,

my aim was to create a visual response to their individual

experiences that did not objectify or dehumanise them.

The approach of this project draws heavily from the

methodology and approaches of documentary photography.

I believe that the work employs a language that does

not strip the participants bare or present them as being

little more than victims of circumstances. It is hoped that

the reader will understand that the methods employed

in gathering the unique stories of these three families

are as important as the publication of the images in the

photobook itself.

My research revealed that most of the photographic stories

from the Majority World are presented as evidentiary

images that become icons of pity. In this context, traditional

observational journalism has historically offered ‘negative

imagery’, which is controlled by the mainstream media

and charity organisations. These images create sympathy

and pity among (mostly Minority World) audiences, often

leading them to donate money to charity organisations.

Despite providing immediate relief, such donations

perpetuate notions of otherness and negate any sense of

solidarity. This act and the resulting images of the Majority

World objectify and dehumanise the people who are

suffering by presenting them as one-dimensional rather than

as complex and unique.

Through my photographs, I have challenged stereotypical

approaches to telling the stories of people living in

impoverishment by reconsidering the importance of the

deep immersion approaches of early documentists and a

select number of contemporary authors. In revisiting these

methods of enquiry, I strove to apply them to the story

of poverty in Bangladesh, centring on collaboration rather

than objectification. To do so, I have drawn upon Sarah

Pink’s argument regarding collaboration with participants

93

and crossing the ‘thin line’ between researched and

researcher. As a native Bangladeshi in-field researcher, I

temporarily lived with the participants, encountering their

everyday lived experience—on the street, in the slum,

and in the village. I became a stakeholder in their lives,

which made me both a researcher and a participant of

the project. We collaborated on telling the stories—from

making joint decisions on image construction and editing

to exhibiting the works in the participants’ homes and

surrounds. These processes allowed both the participants

and me to each have a voice, creating a combined voice of

us. In this way, I have provided a platform for their voices

to be heard. Wherever possible, I tried to reduce the

typical power imbalance that exists between participants

and photographer by working collaboratively. This included

gaining informed consent from the participants as well

as working with them on the presentation of the stories.

These actions led to the solidarity that I feel with the

participants.

During my in-field research, I had life-changing experiences

that will permanently affect my photographic practice and,

more importantly, my understanding of others. Some of the

situations I faced while living with the three families were

challenging on a personal level—morally, physically, and

mentally—but through these experiences, we have formed

connections in which we can and have shared our struggles.

At its most fundamental level, the aim of the project was

to create a bridge to narrow the gap between us. It is

hoped that the visual stories produced in this project will

also create a bridge to narrow the gap between the three

families and the audiences who view them, inciting respect

and compassion instead of pity and horror.

The dissemination of this work was therefore critical

in conveying the message of ‘bridging the gap’ and

representing people who are different from ‘ourselves’. In

order to achieve this, Chain of Poverty brought the ‘galleries’

to the people whose stories were being told. It then

attempted to reach global audiences using various formats

(photobook, mainstream publications and online portals).

Both of these modes of visual output (makeshift galleries

and international publications) offer pathways to bring

about deeper understanding of marginal people’s stories.

Along with conducting this research came the

understanding that poverty is not only the absence of basic

human needs (food and shelter), but also the absence of life

94

chances, the denial of hope, and the non-existence of any

form of security. I realised that a life without such things

robs a person of the possibility to have dreams to better

their life, and to rise to their full potential.

Though these intangible identified above cannot be

quantified, their presence is nuanced throughout the

images and accompanying text. It is hoped that this will

allow the viewer to grasp what it means to be without the

often taken-for-granted right to aspire or to hope. Such

an understanding of poverty cannot be measured, rather it

can only be felt.

As such, it is important to state that the images in the

photobook are not to be judged on individual merit.

They are not meant to be read and critiqued as examples

of the ‘best picture’ but as a collection of images that,

combined, corrals the in-between moments as well as the

decisive moments. It is hoped that when viewed together,

these images will help the reader to understand the lives

of these three families not only though a rational mode

of understanding but also through an empathetic mode

of knowing. For images offer a vicarious concordance

to occur, whereby we come to know another through

experiencing their life lived.

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Appendix 1Biographical Details of the

Participants of This Project

Appendices

117

Jarina Khala:

Jarina Khala’s Family

Jarina Khala (full name: Jarina Begum), 48,272 is a single

mother who lives with her daughter Mali on the street

outside Kamalapur Railway Station in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

She has been homeless for more than thirty-five years

after being displaced from her family. She does not know

what happened to her parents. To bring in an income,

Jarina Khala used to beg, and has worked in a roadside

restaurant, but now collects recycled garbage to earn a

living. She earns about AUD$30 per month.273

Mali:

Mali (full name: Mosammad Mali), 16, is the daughter of

Jarina Khala, with whom she lives on the street outside

Kamalapur Railway Station in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She was

born with her twin sister as a seemingly normal baby on

the street of Kamlapur Railway Station. But when she

was seven years old, her illness began to become evident.

Everyone believed that some bad evil was with Mali, and so

religious blessings and traditional rituals took place to rid

her of that evil.

In 2013, she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy and epilepsy

and has been on medication (as the family cannot afford to

purchase the medication, I am supporting them with this)

ever since. Jarina Khala has to chain Mali to a fence every

Nurjahan Khala:

Nurjahan Khala (full name: Nurjahan Begum), 51, is a

housewife, mother of five children, and a domestic helper.

She lives with her husband, Ali Hossain Khalu; two of their

daughters, Afsana and Rokhsana; their only son, Shabuddin;

and two of their grandchildren, Alo and Akhi. They rent

a one-room house in a slum called Jobbar Hajir Bari at

Matbor Bazar (Pakka Pul), Kamrangirchar, an area on the

outskirts of the capital of Dhaka.

As a child, Nurjahan Khala migrated to Dhaka from rural

Faridpur with her mother who hoped for a better life for

her family. Khala has managed to make some progress, but

is still in poverty. She used to be a full-time housewife,

but after her father-in-law (who was the head of the

family and main income earner) passed away, she had to

start working, as her husband did not want to take any

responsibility for the family; even now, he does not want

to earn. Nurjahan Khala first worked in an ice-cream

factory, but now works as a housemaid and earns 1500

Taka (AUD $27) a month.

Nurjahan Khala’s Family

Ali Hossain Khalu:

Ali Hossain Khalu (full name: Md. Ali Hossain), 69, is

the husband of Nurjahan Khala and father of their five

children. He lives with his family at Matbor Bazar (Pakka

272 The participants’s ages were accurate as at January 2016.

273 This exegesis and the Chain of Poverty book use the currency conversion rates provided by currency authority, XE.com on 24 November 2015, to convert each of the amounts from Bangladeshi Taka (BDT) to Australian Dollar (AUD), http://www.xe.com/.

day by her ankle in order to keep her safe. Despite having

no hope to free herself from this life, Mali loves to play

with scrap paper, leaves, scissors and bags.

118

Afsana:

Afsana (full name: Mosammad Afsana), 29, is a single

mother of two young girls, Alo and Akhi, and is the third

child of Nurjahan Khala and Ali Hossain Khalu. She works

in a garment factory at least twelve hours a day, six days

a week (sometimes seven). She also does extra work at

home each night making cheap jewellery necklaces to sell.

She earns around Taka 2500 (AUD $45) per month. Her

husband left her around three years ago after stealing her

money and gold jewellery. She went to primary school, but

she was forced to leave after grade four to work in an ice-

cream factory with her mother.

Shabuddin:

Shabuddin (full name: Md. Shahabuddin), 21, is the fourth

child and only son of Nurjahan Khala and Ali Hossain

Khalu. He works in a small cottage industry where he

makes spinning toys and earns Taka 2800 (AUD $50) per

month. His parents enrolled him at the Madrasa (religious

school), but he preferred to play video games and spend

time with friends. Instead, they sent him to work, but he

does not like to work either.

Rokhsana:

Rokhsana (full name: Mosammad Rokhsana), 17, is the fifth

child of Nurjahan Khala and Ali Hossain Khalu. She works

in a garment factory for at least twelve hours a day, six

days a week and earns around Taka 1500 (AUD $27) per

month. She secured the position by presenting her cousin’s

birth certificate as the law prevents people under 18

working there. She went to primary school, but left school

because she did not like it.

Alo:

Alo (Full name: Mosammad Alo Akhtar), 8, is the elder

daughter of Afsana and granddaughter of Nurjahan Khala

and Ali Hossain Khalu. She is attending a non-formal

school run by a local NGO and is also fortunate enough

to receive extra tuition at home from a private tutor. She

spends most of her time playing with her younger sister,

Akhi, and other children in the slum.

Akhi:

Akhi (Full name: Mosammad Akhi Akhtar), 6, is Afsana’s

youngest daughter and granddaughter of Nurjahan Khala

and Ali Hossain Khalu. She spends most of her time playing

with her elder sister, Alo, and other children in the slum.

Pul), Kamrangirchar, an area on the outskirts of the capital

of Dhaka. He wanders aimlessly most of the time without

working. Sometimes, he works as a rickshaw puller or

casual labourer, but always depends on his wife and

children’s income to support the family. He was a frequent

drug user, but these days he only smokes marijuana

occasionally.

119

Bellal Bhai:

Bellal Bhai (full name: Md. Bellal Gazi), 37, is a fisherman

who lives in Kalabagi village in Khulna in the southwest

of Bangladesh with his wife Nururnahar Bhabi and their

daughters, Bilkis and Shamima. Bellal Bhai mainly catches

shrimp fries (larvae), and occasionally collects firewood

from the Sunderbans (the world’s biggest mangrove

forests), which he sells for a living. He earns between

Taka 20 and Taka 350 (AUD 35¢ to $6) per day, but is

unemployed for more than half of every year due to the

off-season. The scarcity of job opportunities in the locality

and not having any education means it is difficult for him to

provide food for the family of four. As a result, he has no

option but to depend on loans from the local loan shark to

feed his family.

Bellal Bhai’s Family

Nururnahar Bhabi:

Nururnahar Bhabi (full name: Mosammad Nururnahar

Begum), 28, is the wife of Bellal Bhai and mother of two

young girls, Bilkis and Shamima. Occasionally, she works as

a domestic helper, but usually she spends her days doing

typical village household work. As a child, she had the

opportunity to go to school, but unfortunately was not

able to complete her primary level education.

Bilkis:

Bilkis (full name: Mosammad Bilkis Akhtar), 9, is the elder

daughter of Bellal Bhai and Nururnahar Bhabi. She spends

most of her time playing with other children. Currently,

Shamima:

Shamima (full name: Mosammad Shamima Akhtar), 2, Bellal

Bhai and Nururnahar Bhabi’s youngest daughter.

Muslim Bhai:

Muslim Bhai (full name: Md. Moslem), 67, is a rickshaw

puller, husband of Sahara Bhabi, and father of six children:

Rekha, Shikha, Masum, Mahfuj, Maruf, Shathi, and Khushi.

The family (he, his wife and their five children) used to live

in Nasim’s slum in Dhanmondi, Dhaka, which is where I

first met them, but now they live in another slum nearby.

Their eldest daughter Rekha lives separately with her

husband and infant son. Muslim Bhai earns on average

between Taka 2,500 (AUD $45) and Taka 5,000 (AUD

$90) a month. Muslim Bhai’s family migrated to Dhaka

from the rural area of Netrokona in the hope of making

a better life for themselves. The total average income of

the family is approximately Taka 10,000 (AUD $180) per

month.

Muslim Bhai’s Family

Muslim Bhai’s family started as participants in this project

in 2012, but in November 2013 they relocated to a

new slum and decided to withdraw from the research.

Therefore, in my show and photobook, I do not include

their images.

she does not receive education, not only because of her

family’s poverty, but also because there is no school

nearby.

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Sahara Bhabi:

Sahara Bhabi (full name: Mosammad Sahara Begum), 35, is

Muslim Bhai’s wife and the mother of their six children.

She works as housemaid and earns around Taka 2,400

(AUD $43) a month.

Shikha:

Shikha (full name: Mosammad Shikha Begum), 20, is one of

Muslim Bhai and Sahara Bhabi’s daughters. She is a garment

worker who earns Taka 2000 (AUD $35) per month.

Masum:

Masum (full name: Md. Masum), 15, is one of Muslim Bhai

and Sahara Bhabi’s sons. He works as a shop assistant for

a business that buys garbage from individual collectors to

sell on to the recycler. He earns Taka 1500 (AUD $27) per

month.

Maruf:

Maruf (full name: Md. Maruf), 13, is another of Muslim

Bhai and Sahara Bhabi’s sons. He spends most of his time

playing with friends and wandering around. However, he is

still in school and is Muslim Bhai and Sahara Bhabi’s only

child who is receiving non-formal education from an NGO.

Shathi:

Shathi (full name: Mosammad Shathi Akhtar), 9, is one of

Muslim Bhai and Sahara Bhabi’s daughters. She also spends

most of her time playing with friends and wandering

around.

Other Participants

Aside from all of the participants mentioned above,

other participants include the extended families and

neighbourhood communities of the three main families.

Many others have also directly and indirectly participated

through sharing their life experiences and thoughts;

however, it is hard to mention them individually.

Appendix 2The Consent and Information Package for

Participants, Government and Non-Government Organisations

122

English translation of the Consent Form (page 1) that was used to gain participants’ consent.

123

English translation of the Consent Form (page 2).

124

Example of page 1 of signed Consent Form, Jarina Khala, 8 December 2012.

125

Example of page 2 of signed Consent Form, Jarina Khala, 8 December 2012.

126

English translation of the Information Sheet (page 1) that was provided to participants to give them a clear understanding

of the project and their role within it.

127

English translation of the Information Sheet (page 2).

128


129


130

Information Sheet for participants in Bangla (page 1).

131


132


133


134

Information Sheet for Government and Non-Government Organisations in English (page 1).

135

Information Sheet for Government and Non-Government Organisation (page 2).

136

Information Sheet for Government and Non-Government Organisation (page 3).

137

Approval letter from Concern Worldwide, in-field documentation.

Appendix 3The Extended Family

The following visual documents are snapshots that capture

the relationship that grew between the participants and

me, whereby we have become like extended family. This

in-field documentation serves the purpose of acting as

research and helping us recall our experiences.

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Figure 3.1 Playing with Mali, in-field documentation, 22 December 2012.

Figure 3.2 Mali was so happy to see me after she had been in hospital for a while, in-field documentation, 24 January 2015.

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Figure 3.3 Getting warm in a cold night with Jarina Khala and other neighbours, in-field documentation, 23 December

2012.

Figure 3.4 A missed call from Jarina Khala. Whenever she needs to talk to me, she gives a missed call to my mobile,

in-field documentation, 7 January 2015.

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Figure 3.6 My wife Runa was very pleased to serve a bit more curry to Bellal Bhai’s plate when Bellal Bhai visited us, in-field documentation, 16 June 2013.

Figure 3.5 I was offered rice and a fried egg for breakfast at Bellal Bhai’s place. I shared it with Bilkis, in-field documentation, 1 January 2013.

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Figure 3.7 Helping Bellal Bhai to bring the boat to the shore, in-field documentation, 1 January 2013.

Figure 3.8 Sitting together at Bellal Bhai’s place the day after the exhibition opening, discussing the show and future

plans, in-field documentation, 17 January 2015.

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Figure 3.10 Talking to Nurjahan Khala on Skype while she was visiting my in-laws, in-field documentation, 21 November 2015.

Figure 3.9 I took Nurjahan Khala to an eye specialist to check her bad eye condition, in-field documentation, 9 January 2015.

Appendix 4On-Location Exhibition:

Born Into a Poor Family

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Figure 4.1.1 Discussing with Bellal Bhai and his family about the plan and selecting images for the Born Into a Poor Family exhibition, in-field documentation, 7 December 2014.

Figure 4.1.2 Community members canvassing and inviting villagers to the Born Into a Poor Family exhibition at the village on market day, in-field documentation, 15 January 2015.

Appendix 4.1 Visual Documentation of the Exhibition: Born Into a Poor Family

146146

Figure 4.1.4 Installing the exhibition in the village with community members, in-field documentation, 15 January

2015.

Figure 4.1.3 Community members installing the Born Into a Poor Family exhibition in the village, in-field documentation,

15 January 2015.

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Figure 4.1.5 Visitors at the exhibition Born Into a Poor Family from the series Chain of Poverty at Kalabagi village in Khulna, Bangladesh, in-field documentation, 16 January 2015.

Figure 4.1.6 A visitor writing comments at the exhibition Born Into a Poor Family, in-field documentation, 16 January 2015.

148148

Figure 4.1.8 Nururnahar Bhabi minding the exhibition and breast feeding baby Shamima at the same time as the

exhibition is installed inside their house as well as outside at Born Into a Poor Family, in-field documentation, 17 January

2015.

Figure 4.1.7 Visitors are served Jipali at the opening of Born Into a Poor Family, in-field documentation, 16 January 2015.

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Figure 4.1.9 Sharing the stories with a village woman, at the exhibition Born Into a Poor Family, in-field documentation, 17 January 2015.

Figure 4.1.10 Nururnahar Bhabi sharing the family’s stories with visitors, at the exhibition Born Into a Poor Family, in-field documentation, 17 January 2015.

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Figure 4.1.12 Bellal Bhai and the author Skyping David Lloyd and Angela Blakely from the opening of the exhibition

Born Into a Poor Family, 16 January 2015.

Figure 4.1.11 Bellal Bhai sharing an experience at the opening of the exhibition Born Into a Poor Family, in-field

documentation, 16 January 2015.

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Appendix 4.2 Response Sample from the Exhibition: Born Into a Poor Family

We [Shehab Bhai and I] stay together like siblings from

same mother. We do things together like; fishing, shopping,

going forest, going movie, wondering with friends, even

visiting my in-laws in muddy and rainy seasons, looking for

bridegroom for my niece and so on. As my brother, he took

me to the city to see the doctor. I was welcomed by his

family like his bother also. His father talks to me like my

father and always asking me to take care of my family and

myself. Which is unbelievable and so pleasing.

Shehab Bhai took photos within the time with us; he took

photos every time everywhere. And finally a lot of people

came to see the photos [through the exhibition] and they

like them, so do I. They appreciate it very much. I think it

tells our story well. It is so nice.

Shehab Bhai always gives me good suggestion. I can

understand, only the donation can’t help much for long,

need to find some idea which can help to run long and make

the changes.

—Bellal Bhai interviewed by Shaikh Mohir Uddin for me

Before Shehab Bhai came here, we didn’t know anything

about photos. He had taken photos of all our everyday life

and exhibit here. After having the exhibition we have a

better understanding. Now we can understand what photos

can do. And we love them very much, these look beautiful.

These photos tell how the poor people lived. It tells how

this [our] family run within a harsh condition depending on

only fishing in the river.

It is so pleasing and beautiful that we are now brother

and sister. He lived with us as a family member, in fishing,

celebrating our nice wedding and visiting my parents place

and so on.

—Nururnahar Bhabi interviewed by Shaikh Mohir Uddin for me

The photos are great and beautiful. In my life, I have never

seen photos like this. Now I can see that photos can tell

stories of life. This exhibition tells us in reality how is the

life of a poor family.

Over three years, they [Bellal and Shehab Bhai] spent time

together as brothers. I can’t express how much love we

got from him [Shehab Bhai]. Earlier we did not know him

but now he is our brother, we do everything together,

eating sleeping fishing etc. When someone asked us, “Who

is the man?”, we reply, “He is our brother.” We, including

my parents and siblings, are very happy that we get him as

a brother. The main thing is that when two hearts mixed

together and form the love that is the big thing. He is

our mate of sadness and we walk together, shoulder to

shoulder.

You know, my younger brother Bellal has no education

at all and has difficulties of understanding of how he can

make bit better. But, after having Shehab Bhai as brother,

these days they share thought; I believe that will help Bellal

somehow. But you to do better you need at some thing to

start; you can’t start something from zero. For example,

if you have one Taka [dollar] you can add another one

with that. But for us, especially for Bellal if we earn Taka

10 we have spend Taka 20 at least. So we are always in

shortage [debts]. So, how can we improve? If he can get

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help by some both financially and intellectually with being

monitored then I believe he might make a change.

—Md. Abul Kalam (Bellal Bhai’s elder brother), interviewed by Shaikh Mohir Uddin for me

I like your photos, for example, the photos you have taken

of ‘dewdrop’. As you mentioned, if we can able to collect

the water; then it would helps us a lot. We have too much

scarcity of fresh drinking. So, it was hard to realise this

sort of small things of our life without seeing you photos.

...Actually Bellal Bhai has a little knowledge

[understanding] and he does not have any education.

If he would have education, then he may have: a better

understating, can plan better, earn more and do better for

his family. However, if he can give some education to his

children then that might help him to get out of poverty, I

recon. And this why, I am giving education to my children.

I believe, only relief can’t change poverty, we need

education more than charity.

—Mohammad Toiabur Rahman, a villager in a conversation with me

I think if the education system developed, then we can

build our life. And if we can have a hospital to access

medical facilities, that would be good for us. And at the

same time, if you get the opportunity to find job along

side of access education, then it is possible to improve our

impoverishment.

—Md. Noornobi Sardar, a villager comments on visitor book at the exhibition

We need education, if we want free from the chain of

poverty. If there is more job opportunity, then it will help

a lot to break the chain of poverty. Especially, the person

living within poverty, they need to get aware.

—S. M. Khairul Islam, a villager comments on visitor book at the exhibition

I never saw exhibition like this ever before. First of all,

I like all the images. However, I like most the images of

dewdrop falling from the broken corrugated tin roof.

Where the extreme poverty of a family reflects. The image

the second most I like, is children running to coming back

from Moktob [religious school].

...When I visit the exhibition, this allows me to know the

harsh life of Bellal Bhai. I also able to know that within

how much poverty people are living in. This exhibition

brings to us the reality of a poor family.

—Mthu Mana, a villager comments on visitor book at the exhibition


No Life on the Street

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Figure 5.1.2 Community members installing the No Life on the Street exhibition at Kamlapur Railway Station, in-field


Appendix 5.1 Visual Documentation of

the Exhibition: No Life on the Street

Figure 5.1.1 Installing the No Life on the Street exhibition at Kamlapur Railway Station with community members, in-field

documentation 25 January 2015.

155

Figure 5.1.4 Visitors at the exhibition No Life on the Street, in-field documentation, 25 January 2015.

Figure 5.1.3 Dr Shahidul Alam sharing experiences at the opening of the exhibition No Life on the Street from the series Chain of Poverty at Kamalapur Railway Station, Dhaka, Bangladesh, in-field documentation, 25 January 2015.

156156

Figure 5.1.5 Visitors watching the video One Day, Every Day installed at No Life on the Street, in-field documentation, 26

January 2015.

Figure 5.1.6 NGO workers writing comments for the exhibition No Life on the Street exhibition, in-field


157

Figure 5.1.8 Comments book at the exhibition No Life on the Street, in-field documentation, 27 January 2015.

Figure 5.1.7 Visitors at the exhibition No Life on the Street, in-field documentation, 26 January 2015.

158

Appendix 5.2 Response Sample from the Exhibition: No Life on the Street

I really like these photos. And other people are also

appreciating them. These photos are telling stories of our

life. But top of that, Bajan Shehab [son Shehab] like as my

son took the responsibilities of my daughter as his sister

and me as an aunty. Usually nobody will take this kind of

responsibilities.

After showing the photos, Manager of Sajida Foundation

[NGO] came and visited us and expresses the interest to

provide meal for Mali and to assist us for her treatment.

—Jarina Khala interviewed by Saikat Mojumder for me

Before this [exhibition], nobody wanted to talk to us, but

now people want to talk with us about the conditions of

our lives.

—Jarina Khala interviewed by James Estrin, Co-editor, Lens (blog), The New York Times, 24 February 2015

This [exhibition] is very new to us and it bring the internal

story of poor people like us. But, what is most important

to me is, how Shehab Bhai, became close to us. Over

the last three years he lived with us as a member of our

community and we don’t feel him as an outsider. He tried

to understand us from his heart, I believe.

I went with him to different doctors and hospitals for Mali;

I never saw something like this [someone taking care of us]

in my whole life on the street.

—Jakir Hossain, a Rickshaw Puller, interviewed by Saikat Mojumder for me at Kamlapur Railway Station, Dhaka

Not adding aura to the story of impoverished people by

showing in a gallery, not create the romanticism of sadness

to the illustrious scholars instead you allow us to see the

art by standing next to ‘the ordinary people’...

—M. Hasan Tareque comments on visitor book at the exhibition

This exhibition is evoking questions about the production

and consumption of photography. Concurrently,

questions on the relationship between the photographer

and the ‘raw material’ of this production process-

‘subjects’/‘participants’, whatever is called, are crossing my

mind...

As a photographer, I have encountered these questions

numerous times myself without finding any convincing

conclusion. Perhaps the answer is hidden within our Socio-

Economic inequality, where I or we are in a relatively

privileged position than our ‘poor’ or ‘marginal’ subjects of

photographs.

I hope Shehab Uddin will search for the answers of these

questions and help us to understand that through his work.

—Abu Ala, anthropologist, photographer, comments on visitor book at the exhibition

...A lot to learn from this! ...Hope it will add to the

documentary photography in the history making.

—Abir Abdullah, photographer, European Pressphoto Agency and former Judge, World Press Photo, comments on visitor book at the exhibition

These images opened our eyes with new light...!

—Shangkar Sajawal, actor, comments on visitor book at the exhibition

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Today I discovered something new. This the first time, I

saw this type of exhibition.

—Yousuf Tushar, General Secretory, Bangladesh Photographic Society, comments on visitor book at the exhibition

Usually when photographers take their photos, normally

then they work within a chain of power, that is a huge

issue. Most of the time the person being photographed

is the least powerful. And at the top of the chain, where

the publishers or the editors exist, that is the place of

the main power. The photographer is placed [exists]

in between. But generally after the photos have been

taken, the person to whom they [the photographers]

give the photos makes all the decisions. The person being

photographed has no say in how the images are going to

be used, or in how or where they’re going to be shown.

How he/she feels about representation, they do not have

any control (influence) at all. This exhibition turns that

concept around. That is very important, because if the

photographers really want to make a change, if the people

for whom they want to make a change are not engaged

with it there is no possibilities to come through the

change. Here it is so important that that happened. And

this practice will not only make a change in photographic

perspective, but also it makes a difference in social power.

I believe that is important.

Out of that there is few other things, because, we have

an assumption of an outcome of our work—it will create

certain change, it will show a certain thing – and because

of this certain reason it will have this effect, etc. But, in

the case of any representation, the politics of those who

are presented, usually we never talk about that. We take it

for granted, how I [we] explain it ourselves and we believe

that is the only explanation. But what happened here [in

this project], what I have been informed about so far; in

image editing, how it will be presented in all of this, who

are being photographed, Khala or other [participant/s],

they were directly engaged in decision making and I believe

it is a very important thing [issue]. And I also believe, this

concept needs to come forward not only here but also

in other cases. But as a matter of fact, when the higher

middle class or middle class is being photographed; they

are much more concerned about their claim, their power,

and their rights. So, they can question—what is going

to happen with the photos, why is that going to happen,

etc.? And if we want to take a photos of a rich person,

we have to take consent from them, we have to know

[make sure] whether they want to be represented in

that way, how the image/s are going to be used and only

then can we proceed. In this situation [this project] the

power relationship is very different. As far as I know, the

photographer and the approach, it has a difference. Here

the power came from a very opposite position, where how

they [the participants] understood, how they wanted to

be represented etc. All those things marry to create this

project. I think this is very important and we have a lot to

learn from this.

On the other hand, most of the time we do not have

control of our sympathy and I don’t think that is too

important either. I believe, it is more important to

understand, to know the people and a photographer

should have more responsibilities. They should inform,

convince and clarify to others and give others the

inspiration to think more. On that point, I think, how

160

the images are presented is more important than the

images themselves, because that is part of the politics.

A photographer tells from a political position and from

the position, they determine what they are saying, why

they saying it. Most of the time, the images we see are

‘striking’ images, glamorous images. On thing I noticed

here [in this project], especially in the large images, is

that the photographer did not try to create images like

that. And I appreciate and welcome it because if we want

to understand a person then first we need to see them

as a human, and the normalcy of a human being is part

of that. When I see another person differently then it

explains from that particular perspective. Here, I felt that

these images were taken by someone from the family, who

is well known to them. Someone who took the photos

does not create any fear in them and does not have any

distance. It is very important for a photographer to reach

that point. It is not easy to achieve.

Our practice, the way we are trained and the way our eyes

become habituated by the types of work we see all the

time; this sort of situation somehow influences our work.

In my thinking, the important thing here is the closeness

and the intimacy that I see. And it can give a different layer

to a work. And I can spend time with these images; these

images will always contemplate me. Even after watching

the images and after leaving the exhibition, these questions

will be in my mind. I think that is the success of the

photographer.

Here I want to raise another issue. This exhibition is

happening at the same time as Chobi Mela. The theme of

Chobi Mela is ‘Intimacy’. And if we see the word intimacy,

then we actually can see that it comes from being close.

And I think the reason behind the choice for the theme

‘Intimacy’ is that in this time, in this moment around the

globe, there is a huge gap within people. Where there is

the massive unrest, where there is enormous violence,

where our life is very much miserable. People want this

intimacy there. They want to come back here. And this

violence is in most cases, created by the gap. The distance

between: western - non-western, Muslim—non-Muslim,

rich—poor, etc. In many aspects/places we do not see/

recognise others as human beings. And when we see/

recognise others as a human being; despite religion, race,

ethnicity, language, politics, top of everything they are (he/

she) human. And if, I can hug (them) him/her I can give

(them) him/her space. It is only possible when the intimacy

is present there. And we are trying to be there. And

definitely that is what this work tries to do. However, I do

not believe that it can be achieved through only images.

Being a photographer myself, I believe, image is only a part

of it. How the images are present here is also another

part of it. In this project photographer tried another

part. And in fact when audiences come here, try to find

[ Jarina] Khala in this situation and try to understand her as

a human only then that would be the success. And that is

what is expected indeed.

We sometimes think that through images we will change

a lot of things. Sometimes it makes the change sometimes

it doesn’t. But, whatever the change come to others,

does it make any change to us (as a photographer), that is

important. I am certain because of this exhibition brings

change to Shehab regardless if any change come to others.

I am also certain as you visit this show it brings change

to Khala regardless if any change come to others. She at

161

least feels that at least someone is concerned about her.

Someone believes that her life also has value and it is

necessary to know and understand her life. That is what I

want to make one think.

—Dr Shahidul Alam, Festival Director, Chobi Mela VIII, International Festival of Photography, Dhaka, interviewed by me

It’s really interesting how a lot of the people in the

station they have photos of themselves, you know. They

carry around pictures of themselves laminated. And it’s

interesting how they portray themselves, they’re sitting

there very perfectly. But I think you capture something a

little bit more than that. You capture a little bit more of

the essence of what it’s really like to live in the station.

And you know, like I asked all the kids here, whether they

like the pictures, and like their eyes light up. They tell you,

“Yeah, yeah, yeah we really like it.” I think it gives back a

little bit of ownership of the space, you know. Like, I think

street dwellers here, you talk about them being invisible,

and I think that’s a really, really accurate way of talking

about the street dwellers; they’re largely invisible and

they’re largely ignored by most people here (Bangladesh).

But by them allowing you to portray their lives in this

way, within their space, I think, that’s a really powerful,

powerful thing.

...I think that’s a really important point that lot of

researchers distance from their participants and it’s very

much us looking into their lives. But I think that you’ve

managed to become part of Jarina Khala’s life. You’re

actively participating in her life, you know like, right

now you’ve just taken Mali, her daughter to hospital, and

you instead of seeing Mali, becoming acutely unwell and

going, “Okay, that’s Jarina Khala’s problem,” you go, “No,

actually that’s my problem and I have to take responsibility

for it because she’s part of my life now,” you know? But

it’s interesting because when I first came to the station

actually Jarina Khala talked to about you a lot. She talked

about this PhD student, her [Mali’s] Bhai [Brother] and

how you are part of her life. And she kept talking about

you and I didn’t quite understand what she was trying to

say and what actual role you played, but over like several

discussions it became quite apparent that you were very

integral to her life.

...I really really enjoyed. Because this is actually the first

time that I was able to see these pictures, and a couple of

them I really love, for example, this one of Khala walking.

I just love, like you can see how you captured her feet,

you can see her, I love the word negotiation. That’s kind

of what’s is like to live on the street. It’s just constant

negotiation, it’s a constant, like in the picture, it’s like a

constant balancing process. She has to go here and she

has to go there, and all this, all these challenges that she

has to get through. And this picture shows, I don’t know,

it just really captures how it’s not just a straight path that

you just walk along on the street. It’s something that you

have to constantly navigate and constantly think about it. I

really, really like that picture.

—Shoshannah Williams, doctoral candidate at

University of Adelaide interviewed by me


This Is the Life

163

Figure 6.1.2 Visitors at the exhibition This Is the Life, in-field documentation, 31 January 2015.

Figure 6.1.1 Visitors at the exhibition This Is the Life from the series Chain of Poverty at Kamrangirchar slum, Dhaka, Bangladesh, in-field documentation, 30 January 2015

Appendix 6.1 Visual Documentation of the Exhibition: This Is the Life

164164

Figure 6.1.3 Visitors at the exhibition This Is the Life, in-field documentation, 30 January 2015.

Figure 6.1.4 Ali Hossain Khalu and his mate minding the exhibition This Is the Life, in-field documentation,

1 February 2015.

165

Figure 6.1.6 Nurjahan Khala is sharing their stories with visitors at the exhibition This Is the Life, in-field documentation, 1 February 2015.

Figure 6.1.5 Ali Hossain Khalu sharing their stories with visitors at the exhibition This Is the Life, in-field documentation, 30 January 2015.

166

Appendix 6.2 Response Sample from the Exhibition: This Is the Life

After this programme [exhibition], everyone is

appreciative. You know, our house owner, Jamal Hazi

went to my room the other day and asked what happen to

my eyes. I explained to him about my bad eye condition.

He said, ‘we only know that today, after watching the

exhibition’. They never asked that type of question before.

—Nurjahan Khala in a conversation with me

This is the first time Khalu, you [Shehab] present our

story. We’ve never seen something like this before. It is

very beautiful. But it also tells how hard the life being

poor. The neighbours also appreciating this attempt and

like the photos.

—Ali Hossain Khalu interviewed by me

This photos tell us how a woman [my sister in-law] take

all the responsibilities of a family where the husband [my

brother] does not do anything. I think the husband need

to come forward and take all the responsibilities. Even as

siblings I strongly believe he [Ali Hossain] need to be more

aware and he has to give up the laziness and only then the

family can do better.

—Md. Awlad Hossain (brother of Ali Hossain Khalu) interviewed by me

You are working on a most important unresolved

issue, where photographers are questioned about their

engagement with the people they photograph, subjectivity

and representation. We all photographers face the same

question and cannot provide the answer. Respect for this

initiative and we are still waiting for your findings. I feel

lucky visiting your exhibition where community itself is

coming the show

—Tanzim Wahab, Curatorial Member, Chobi Mela VIII, International Festival of Photography, Dhaka comments on visitor book at the exhibition

...these people are treated as individual, you know, their

name is being showed, their identity is being exposed.

So, that’s a powerful tool one can use, but I think it’s a

blend of both, you know. I mean compassion comes there

when you know the people and they know you, they are

giving you access, and you are comfortable and you are

making them comfortable. At the same time, you are

not just avoiding the fact that a lot of struggle is involved

with them. I’ve seen with the captions of some of the

photographs, and how much the grocery shopping they do

have to just survive for one particular week. Yeah I still

think this work is talking about struggle. But struggle from

a maybe very subtle voice.

...the best thing I felt you know that the tea stall owner

who is also coming and showing me the photographs and

I am going to his tea stall, who is not ready to accept

any money and offering me tea for free. So I think that’s

an added thing with the prints, two-dimensional prints.

Because people are coming, they [participants] are

standing next to the prints and they are giving me a better

context by explaining [the situation]. So, that’s also very

interesting, you know. Because whenever we actually

exhibit work we send an air ticket to the artist, so artist

comes and explains the work, but I rarely saw people

being photographed are also standing next to the print and

explaining the work. So I think that’s an added thing. If we

really want to work on social issues we have to re-think

about the tools and mediums. And multiplicity of things

167

you know. It’s not only the audio/video and technological

things, many other aspects like, as I said the oral history

things, and also people themselves physically representing

their work standing in front of their photograph. Yeah, I

mean that’s giving me a context.

—Tanzim Wahab interviewed by me

Appendix 7Other Outcomes from

On-Location Exhibitions

As discussed earlier in the exegesis, beside the on-location

exhibitions, some other outcomes helped to distribute

the stories of the participants. Also, some of the physical

materials from the exhibitions were repurposed by the

participants following the shows, which have assisted

them in their daily lives. The following documentation

demonstrates a few of these.

169

Figure 7.1 Invitation card for the on-location exhibitions.

170

Figure 7.2.1 Exhibition catalogue for the on-location exhibitions, page 1.

171

Figure 7.2.2 Exhibition catalogue, page 2.

172


173


174174

Figure 7.3.1 Sample from comments book.


175

Figure 7.4 Md. Ershad Ali from the local NGO, Sajida Foundation, contacted me after the No Life on the Street exhibition, as the NGO wanted to assist in paying for Mali’s treatment and also to provide meals for Jarina Khala and Mali.


176176

Figure 7.5 Nurjahan Khala and Ali Hossain Khalu taking all the materials back home to use them after closing the exhibition This Is the Life from the series Chain of

Poverty at Kamrangirchar slum, Dhaka, Bangladesh, in-field documentation, 3 February 2015.

Figure 7.6 Nurjahan Khala uses the printed canvas (images) as a bed mat at home after the exhibition This Is the Life,

in-field documentation, 13 February 2015.

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Figure 7.7.2 Jarina Khala uses the printed canvas (images) as a mat after the exhibition No Life on the Street from the series Chain of Poverty at Kamlapur Railway Station, Dhaka, Bangladesh, in-field documentation, 22 February 2016.

Figure 7.7.1 Jarina Khala uses the printed canvas (images) as a mat after the exhibition No Life on the Street from the series Chain of Poverty at Kamlapur Railway Station, Dhaka, Bangladesh, in-field documentation, 13 February 2015.

Appendix 8Off-Location Exhibitions and Other

Publications: Sharing Stories through Different Channels

As mentioned earlier in this exegesis, along with the

on-location exhibitions, I have started to share this body

of work locally and globally as much as possible through

different channels (i.e., exhibitions, publications, lectures,

interviews, and so on). The following documentation

demonstrates a few of these outcomes.

179

Appendix 8.1 Visual Documentation of Sharing Stories through Different Channels

Figure 8.1.2 No Life on the Street from the series Chain of Poverty in group show Cast By Sun at POP Gallery, QCA, Griffith University, Brisbane, July–August 2015

Figure 8.1.1 Work in progres exhibition at Webb Gallery, QCA, Griffith University, Brisbane, May 2013.

180

Figure 8.1.3 Feature published in The New York Times International, 30

February 2015.

181

Figure 8.1.4.1 Feature published in the weekend supplement of The Daily Prothom Alo, Bangladesh, 26 January 2015.

182

Figure 8.1. 4.2 Feature published in the weekend supplement of The Daily

Prothom Alo, Bangladesh 26 January 2015.

183

Figure 8.1. 4.3 Feature published in the weekend supplement of The Daily Prothom Alo, Bangladesh, 26 January 2015.

184184

Figure 8.1.5 Giving a lecture at Chobi Mela, International Festival of Photography, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 30 January 2015.

Figure 8.1.6 Sharing stories on a program at Radio 4EB , Brisbane, Bangladesh, 26 July 2015.

185

Appendix 8.2 Responses Sample from Off-Location Exhibitions, Publications and Internet

This article was amazing and very inspiring. It really

changed my views on photography and especially

photographing strangers...

...I feel that is kind of like this where he had to ask for

there permission or ask which photos they liked. I will

surely remember this next time when photographing

strangers. This also really represents how a picture is

worth a thousand words.

—Audrey Karber, Michigan, 2 March 2015

..! Breathtaking. It is hard to articulate how well this work

–’from the inside out’, as it were-- portrays or re-creates

or brings to our life the reality of its subjects’ lives...

—John Rudoff, Portland, Oregon, 27 February 2015

The photo essay was heart wrenching.

Poverty isn’t only about a lack of money and resources. The

worst poverty is found when there is a lack of education,

understanding, hope - liberty, fraternity, egality...

...The question is, can we grasp this moment and together

devise a new path towards peace, freedom from hunger,

sustainable development and regional cooperation?

—N. G. Krishnan, Bangalore, India, 26 February 2015

Appendix 8.2.1 Comments on article in the Lens

blog, The New York Times274

This is photography that empowers its subjects.

—Chuck, Ray Brook, NY, 26 February 2015

I was very moved by these images and the stories behind

them. The tenderness, compassion and humanity Mr.

Uddin demonstrates towards his subjects is obvious.

—Laura, Bay Area, 25 February 2015

He overcame two hurdles. He came to see that his

“subjects” were people and then he did something about.

—Gene, Ms, 25 February 2015

Shehab’s empathy with the marginalized Bangladeshis

he has photographed brought tears to my eyes. As

an American of Bangladeshi origin, I often fail to see

the grinding poverty beneath the glitter of Dhaka and

Chittagong when I visit Bangladesh. Shaheb’s photographs

have opened my eyes. With jut a few dollars a day, we can

make a difference in the lives of people who are invisible

to the rest of society. May we all develop lasting empathy

for the less fortunate among us.

—Hasan Z Rahim, San Jose, CA, 25 February 2015

...The world’s majority, the poor, may remain stuck in a

situation not of their own making, by an unjust system

instead, that benefits those privileged few (by virtue of

true advances for society’s needs, or not), in name and

action of the majority (in providing their hands or their

meager individual expenses that, when combined, become

the vast income of the rich and powerful). Keep those

pictures coming; they may, yet, change things for the

better. And the sooner we see justice, the hope is these

pictures may represent an oppressive past, not the ever-

ominous present.

—manfred marcus, Bolivia, 25 February 2015 274 Estrin, “An Embedded Photographer Empowers the Poor.”

186

Bravo for telling image truth and asking permission from

the subjects in order to tell it. Rather than shooting

photos with an eye itching for the shock and awe and the

framing for dramatic commercial effect...

...I just think my august institution is clinging to the idea

that journalism is still an ethical gimmick free profession. I

hope more photojournalists will heed the old school ways

and stop jumping sharks for shots.

—Toutes, Toutesville, 25 February 2015

This is extraordinary. Returning the images to the people

themselves. It’s such a temptation to skip them. I’m trying

to do something very similar in Nicaragua...

—klfitzgerald, Florida, 25 February 2015

These photos capture the plight of an entire country and

its extremes. While not giving thought to composition,

the emotion is bare, unashamed and very real. It is

unfathomable that human beings are forced to survive like

this while most don’t understand how lucky and fortunate

we are. Thank you for sharing these painful stories with

photos and narration from the families.

—Nancy, New York, NY, 25 February 2015

Thank you for this very moving article and thank you to

the photographer for this compassionate work. This makes

me ashamed that I waste money on things like Starbucks.

Those poor people. And many more in many countries. It

is disturbing how easy it is to go on about your life without

thinking about how millions of others are suffering.

—Hdb, Tennessee, 25 February 2015

Touching photos that speak for themselves. The sad reality

is highlighted.

I wish I will be put in a position one day that empowers

me to act to fight poverty and empower people living in

underprivileged areas.

—Nadia Fanous, Lebanon, 25 February 2015

...we are all on a level playing field. By yielding to his own

sense of humility, Mr. Uddin has enlightened and enriched

us. If only we all had the courage to do so, the world would

be a much better place.

—Paul Filipkowski, Oxford, Ohio, 25 February 2015

Finally, a photographer who treats desperately poor people

with the respect they deserve.

—JoanneN, Europe, 25 February 2015

Made me tear up. But the photographer is right about one

thing: poverty is a state of mind, which be brought about

by lack of material goods or things like health, etc. We all

see what we want to see and so the stories that sell papers

aren’t stories like this one, if they were done day in and

out. I sometimes feel celebrity culture is about witnesssing

another kind of poverty, that seeing that no matter how

much people have in material wealth, they still can lack

happiness.

—RamS, New York, 25 February 2015

This is heartbreaking but also uplifting. ...reminds us of our

common humanity and our obligations toward the destitute.

As an American of Bangladeshi origin, ...I can help bring

some happiness to his aunts and nieces he found in the

streets and slums of that city.

—Hasan Z Rahim, San Jose, CA, 25 February 2015

I am myself a photographer, and i can hardly adequatly

express my admiration for Mr. Uddin’s approach; it is

absolutely admirable in every way, particularly in wanting

187

the subjects of his photographs to judge to the truth of

the way he shows them; does it not demonstrate suddenly

the inherent nastiness of the usual and other extreme,

that we really want to show them “as the really are”? As

though they really want to lie about themselves, but we

can somehow see through all that, knowing nothing about

them as human beings or anything about their inner lives,

but only how to use a camera, if even that in so many

cases?

—Sean Thackrey, Bolinas, CA, 25 February 2015

Appendix 8.2.2 Sample Comments through

Social Media (Twitter, Facebook), Email, and

Other Internet Portals

189

...A real masterpiece, as masterpieces are some

photographs taken by a photojournalist from Bangladesh

that you can find on our blog (refresh.blog.rai.it): his name

is Shehab Uddin and he was studying in Australia when he

had an intuition.

The point was that rich people, dressing with expensive

clothes and using hi-tech cameras, are quite arrogant

when they face poor or humble situations that they want

to photograph, often not even getting in touch with the

persons that they will frame in their pictures.

Shehab has decided to overset this approach by going

and living for three years with the poorest people of his

country: so he has spent nights and days on the streets

of Dhaka (the capital of Bangladesh) with a woman who

has to chain her own daughter suffering from mental

and physical disabilities not to let her loose herself in

the big city; he has lived with a humble fisherman in the

countryside; he has shared his time with a big family living

in the slums of Dhaka.

But what Shehab did was totally different from what

normally happens when a photographer decides to portrait

poverty because, by all the time he has spent with these

people in their ordinary life, he has discovered and shown

that poverty doesn’t only mean sadness and it’s not just

despair and hopelessness: there are also happy moments in

those people’s lives, there are also “normal” hours in their

days.

Appendix 8.2.3 Transcription of the Radio

Program Refresh (Radio2 - Italy), Transcribed and

Translated from Episode on 15 March 2015

It could sound obvious but it’s not: poor people are

perfectly equal to each of us.

And the importance of what Shehab Uddin made is also in

the exhibition he organized: not in a prestigious museum

or publishing the pictures on the pages of an expensive

magazine but, on the contrary, in the Kamalapur train

station of Dhaka where the visitors were the poor people

themselves.

Shehab also asked the persons involved in the project to

select the pictures to show: this means that the subjects of

the pictures didn’t become “victims” of a photograph but

instead they were real protagonists within the project.

More than any other aspect of this story, the most

important thing is that dignity was recovered and given

back to that man, to that woman, to that family that were

tortured by prejudice more than by poverty.

Please come and watch Shehab Uddin’s pictures in an

article on Refresh’s blog ….

chain of poverty - griffith university · to the best of my knowledge ... 7.2.1 three on-location...

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