International Political Will

I stood outside of the stone-walled compound in rural northern Afghanistan passing time with a couple of UN drivers.

A young boy on a donkey ambled up and joined us, curious about the foreigner. Smiling, he began asking me questions, which were then translated by one of the drivers. Where are you from? What is your name? Do you like it here?

I replied with similar questions. His name was Hakim. He was 12 years old. His father lived in the house up the road. He was supposed to be hauling food from down the hill, but now, it seemed, was distracted and had forgotten his task.

After a few minutes, the young man settled down, still perched on his donkey. He listened in on our conversation, giggled when the men told a joke, occasionally threw in a comment or two, and showed us how his stubborn donkey could be cajoled into obeying.

I was going to ask to take a photo with him, but then a foreign woman came out of the compound. She was one of the UN observers (from Finland I think), there to document aid projects.

The middle-aged woman walked straight out of the doorway, over to our group, pulled out her camera, and aimed for a close-up of the boy on the donkey.

Without asking. Without even acknowledging the boy. As if he was a sunset or a flower, there purely for her amusement.

Before she could snap the photo, the young man – who only moments before was smiling and enjoying himself – stared back at her camera lens with an empty gaze, almost scowling.

It didn’t bother the Finnish woman. She took a few photos anyway, and then moved on to another part of the compound to intrude on someone else’s life.

My photo would have shown a smiling young man. A boy with a name. Someone with a life and a personality. A hopeful young man who was proud, good-natured, and eager to interact with strangers. But I never got that photo.

Instead, the Finnish woman’s photo – one that she would take back to Finland (and to the UN) – shows a solemn, unhappy boy. Someone she doesn’t know and couldn’t describe other than as “a poor kid in northern Afghanistan.” And the boy’s facial expression would support the stereotypes, images, and ideas that the West already has about Afghans – that even their children are oppressed, unhappy, and already learning to be unfriendly.

Unfortunately, I see this all too often. Tourists seem to think that even the people of foreign countries are inanimate objects there for their amusement and that they have the right to snap photos without permission (or even without interacting as humans). Traveling – an activity that should nurture human relationships between different cultures – too often becomes an exercise in promoting stereotypes or images that don’t tell the whole story.

Tourists want to bring back something from their trip for their friends and family to see. Something to record their experience. But in their effort to document, they forget to actually experience anything and end up just seeing the world through an LED screen. Human relationships are not transmitted through a lens.

It’s not just a Western thing, either.

Japanese are notorious for their over-indulgence in photographing anything and everything with little regard for reality. We’ve all see the tour bus pull up to Yosemite Falls, the hoards of Japanese tourists (for some reason wearing white gloves) all file out, snap a few photos, and pile back into the bus to move on. They do the same thing in places like Cambodia, Thailand, India, and China. They take photos of the local people as if they were the ancient brick ruins of Angkor Wat: a thing simply there for documentation, not interaction.

Even Indians do it. I watched a bunch of Bengali tourists in rural Northeast India crowd around a young boy and his little brother sitting on a log on the side of the road. The cell phones came out, and the tourists from Calcutta snapped away at the “cute little boys living in poverty” (even though the boys weren’t living in poverty – at least not like they do in Calcutta, Mumbai, or Delhi). It looked to me like the boys were just enjoying the morning Himalayan sunshine, but once the cameras appeared, the tourists got their photo of boys with blank stares.

There was no interaction. No one asked what the boys’ names were. No one asked if they could take their photo. The boys looked at their photographers like they were strangers who had just walked into their home – empty, wary, distrustful. So each Bengali tourist went home with a grainy photo in their cell phone to show their friends of some pitiful looking boys that fit the stereotype of “rural India.”

“…look how sad he is…he must be starving…he’s lost all hope…Oh! And here’s a photo of me in our hotel room drinking tea. What a great view, huh?…”

Indians like to take photos of foreigners, too. On a wildlife safari in Northern India, a jeep of Indians pulled up next to my wife and me and whipped out their cameras. No asking, nothing. Like we were the monkeys they had come to see.

The Indians that do ask fail to understand that a conversation is usually considered a polite segue to taking a photo. Ask my name. Ask where I’m from. Ask what I’m doing here. Engage me. Don’t just come up and ask “Can I take my photo with you?” What the hell are they going to do with that photo – other than show it to their friends?

“…here’s me at the Taj Mahal, here’s me riding an elephant, here’s me with some white guy…”

With the popularity of digital cameras, taking photos – especially of children – has taken on new meaning. The kids know that you have that instant LED screen, and if you actually engage them first and talk to them (I dunno, treat them like people), they are excited to gather around and see their photo on the back of your camera.

When we travel to distant lands with foreign cultures and see people that are different from us, it’s only natural to want to document it. To remember. To share with others back home.

But just because we have taken a photo doesn’t mean it actually represents reality. Without interacting as people, photos of other human beings are a false image that can distort our views, build on stereotypes, and even piss off the locals.

And kids – kids love to have their photo taken. They may be poor. They may be living in poverty. But in general, if approached like people instead of historical landmarks, they are eager to have you take their picture. It’s a rare chance for many of them to document that they are real, that they exist, and that they will be remembered.

We just need to make sure to document their existence on their terms, not ours. After all, what good is a memory if it wasn’t a happy one?

Tags: children, camera, pictures, Photography, tourism

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