Picturing and Portraying the Poor: What I See as a Consumer and Aspiring Non-Profit Professional

Fouad Abou-Rizk
Jul 23, 2017 · 4 min read
Two very different portrayals of starving people from Samaritan’s Purse (top) and Food For The Poor (bottom).

I want my future career to help the poor in the developing world. My skill set is primarily photography and videography, as well as layout work. I want people to see my work and say “I want to take action to help others!”

I recently watched Poverty, Inc., a documentary about how non-profit relief organizations and NGOs actually harm people in the developing world through their aid work. Aid work outside of crises leads to impoverished people becoming dependent on foreign aid rather than focusing on how they can work for their own betterment and becoming sustained by the self and the community. A core example is subsidized American rice being sent to Haiti and distributed in mass for free, ruining the livelihoods of Haitian rice farmers.

I not only want to work for a charity, but I also want to be a person who does acts of charity. As a result of small donations I have given, I receive letters from different charities. Some portray the poor in wonderful ways, some in terrible ways.

In May I went on a Wine To Water volunteer trip to the Amazon region of Colombia. I was told that if we were going to take a photo of someone, we should know their name, and it should portray them in an empowering way. Here are a few of my photos from the trip.

I think I was successful in portraying the locals (I do not consider them “poor people”) in a way that you can see their joy and assume no bad things about them. They were all wonderful, joyful people and I do not want to show them as other than that.

I’m going to do some name-calling now. For many years, a priest from Food For The Poor came to my parish and spoke about their mission. They do a lot of good to help the poorest people in the Caribbean and Central America. I have given to them at church, and since I have given to them online twice last year, I have been receiving letters from them two to three times a month.

The letters are awful. In one brief twelve-paragraph letter, I counted “starving children” six times. They send me photos of children, usually under 5 years old, who are naked except for underwear, often have dirt or mud on their faces for some reason, and are usually crying. They tell me is it up to me to save this child, whom they give the name of.

That content does not empower the poor in any way. It shows them as helpless and broken; I assume the majority of poor people around the world do not want to be the subjects of Americans’ pity. It causes the American subject of this message to feel like if they don’t donate to this organization, they are letting children die and by doing so committing a terrible sin. It is also selfish on the part of the American giver in how donating is often an appeasement to the pressure to feel like they’re a good person and not a bad person.

What I think organizations should and shouldn’t do when picturing and portraying the poor

  • Be honest in your images. Don’t put mud on someone’s clean face to make them look more poor. That is unethical photography.
  • Tell me about the person you are portraying: Seeing pictures of smiling children on Instagram is wonderful, but I keep scrolling to the next picture when all they say is “donate to help children get clean water/food/education.” Tell me their name, where they live, what they’re like as a person, and how you have benefited them. Hopefully the photographer will have spent some time with them and know that stuff.
  • If you think it may not be right or ethical to show people this image of a person, such as them looking destitute, don’t show it. If it’s going to motivate people to give out of guilt and pity, rather than generosity, mercy and compassion, don’t show it.
  • Always know that they are not just the faces of a poor person. Each person has a unique personality, is made in the image of God and should be treated with dignity and respect as you would your friends or family.
Fouad Abou-Rizk

Written by

Lebanese-American Catholic who is passionate about international crisis relief. I write Humanitarian Prayers to be an advocate & help people care.

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