Turkana

 

The challenge I set myself in Turkana was one of the oldest in humanitarian photography: how to show suffering without diminishing the people who are suffering.

 

The Turkana region of northwestern Kenya was in 2011 in the grip of one of the worst droughts in sixty years. Oxfam GB had been working there for four decades, helping pastoralist communities rebuild their herds, dig wells, and develop vegetable gardens in dry ground. They invited me to document the crisis and its recovery. I accepted — but on my own terms.

 

Nobody photographs humanitarian work at night. I did. I brought my large-format camera, my moonlight, my long exposures, and applied to Turkana the same visual language I had developed over years in the Paraná Delta. The result was something the humanitarian photography world had not seen before: portraits of people living in extreme poverty that radiated dignity, warmth and grace.

 

The images provoked immediate debate. Oxfam itself asked the question publicly: were the photographs too beautiful? I responded: "I would like to break with the idea that a beautiful picture of a hurtful situation detracts from its message or documentary value. My intention is to highlight a hopeful vision of the present, showing people's strength and to inspire the viewer that a change is possible."

 

The debate touched on something fundamental about the ethics of documentary photography — about the difference between showing poverty as spectacle and showing people as people. I refused the approach where subjects appear to beg for mercy. Instead I leveled the camera to eye height, literally and figuratively. The children of Turkana do not look upward. They look frontally.

 

The exhibition at OXO Tower Wharf in London was covered by BBC News. The campaign raised £150,000 in donations for Oxfam GB — enough to fund three more years of work in the region.

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— Alejandro.

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Technical Sheet 

 

Year: 2011  ·  Location: Turkana, Northwestern Kenya

Commission: Oxfam GB, in support of GrOW campaign

Large format camera  ·  Moonlight, long exposures, artificial light

Impact: £150,000 raised for Oxfam GB  ·  3 additional years of work funded

 

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Critical Texts

 

Rodrigo Cañete — "Why Photography Matters As Art As Never Before," Dante Magazine, Italy, 2012:

 

"He has redefined the way inequality should be portrayed in order to achieve maximum efficiency: by making his ART subjects equal to the viewer... At the level of the metaphysical, the phenomenological, the procedural, this picture is almost a theological statement of work, empathy, and what makes us human. Love, actually."

 

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Selected Exhibitions

 

2012  ·  Turkana Collection  ·  OXO Tower Wharf, London  ·  April 18–22

2012  ·  Human Landscapes  ·  Nordic Light Festival, Kristiansund, Norway

2012  ·  Human Landscapes  ·  Noorderlicht Festival, Groningen, Netherlands