Rebel Respect

Picturing Poverty

Sometimes being a missionary takes you to oases where being a photographer is almost a natural happenstance...

 

 Because let's face it, we missionaries like taking selfies just as much as the next millennial. (If slideshows are no longer scrolling, just hover over them and click the little arrow "play" button that appears.)

Photo Gallery by QuickGallery.com And it so happens that as a missionary, I have the privilege of living in a country that could easily be the most beautiful on earth (if you shove the poverty, lack of education, and the streetside trash under the rug, if you've got one).

And that's the Dominican Republic that everyone wants to believe in. When I say this is where I live, the first images that pop into people's minds are the resorts and beaches... turquoise pools like jewels rimmed by swaying windblown palms and white sand beaches. Coconuts with little umbrellas and straws, beachside vendors selling jewelry and tasty treats.


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Reality is, that's reality for remarkably few people on this island. If you go to those places, you usually don't see Dominicans. Most families live on the primary breadwinner's earnings of less than $1/hr, and despite what most folks would like to tell you, living here is not actually cheaper than living in the USA. Food and anything produced (furniture, cars, dishes, paper products, etc.) are just as expensive, if not more so, due to import costs.

Statistics indicate that most of the "real people" on Facebook and social media dress up their lives by choosing what they post, so that it makes things look better, richer, more comfortable, and more fun than they actually are, on average. For the most part, we make posts when we're happy, when we have something we want to make others envious of, when we want to share a pretty photo we took.

Because the unhappy things in life aren't beautiful.
The unexciting things in life aren't sharable.
The unlovely things in life aren't worth "liking."

Enter my little rant's sarcasm here: Unless, of course, you're a missionary in a foreign country. Then the poverty, the discomfort, the hardship, is expected, romanticized, and becomes our cover photos, profile photos, and memes, accompanied by little heart shapes and smilies. We intentionally trade the "happies" for evoking emotion.

I guess that I do fall too often into the trap of wanting to share only the beautiful. The things we want to believe in. But... I want to tell the whole truth, with my words or with my camera lens. Just in a way that truly respects who people are, what they do, and how they live... without exploiting it to gain emotional responses from others.

Last week when we had our Operation Christmas Child shoebox distribution event, one of the mothers practically begged me to take a picture of her twin sons. "¡Mellizos! ¡Mellizos!" she told me, pointing and pulling their little brown faces together. "¡Una foto de mis mellizos!" So I smiled and pointed my Rebel their way, wondering why that was so important to her, or why she was so sure I would need a photo of her two adorable little boys. But... sometimes snapping a photo is a way to make a person feel important, like they matter, like someone wants to remember them. Snapping pictures can actually be ministry.

Regardless... I got a cute picture of a couple adorable kids out of the deal!

I just wonder how often the subjects of our photography recognize our boldfaced, wide-eyed, ethno-centric, point-and-shoot reactions as the pity it is for a lifestyle they've worked hard to be proud of. They sweep their dirt floors, shower several times a day, and almost always dress their best-- with more conscientiousness than most USA-ians, to be truthful.


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Somehow we feel justified sticking our camera lenses into their everyday reality because "Everyone wants to see the little naked babies!"

Do we see the sanctity to their poverty? The singularity to their struggle to make life work, that their determination merits our respect? Don't get me wrong. As this post exemplifies, I love photography. I love the art of composition and showing people things they wouldn't otherwise see. I just wonder... are we extending others the same respect and courtesy we would expect of them were the shoe on the other foot?

I don't mean to be abrasive... this is just food for thought: If it were my naked baby, would I want his picture plastered on National Geographic?

That's why I had a hard time photographing anything outside our outreaches or moments of tourism for the first several months of living here. I lived with a Dominican family, and traveled with a couple of my Dominican friends. There was an indescribable richness to those experiences, and pulling out my camera to photograph the differences in lifestyle felt like a demonstration of disrespect tantamount to "slumming" in a Hooverville of the Great Depression. It's just how they live, what they do. Why do I get to take its picture?

 I wonder sometimes if we do more damage to the people we photograph than anything else, invading their privacy, capitalizing on their inconvenience, and discounting their lives as "quaint" or "picturesque" when the reality is... that kid is naked because he doesn't have clothes, the currency is worth nothing, and there are very few jobs. I've even heard stories of tourists having the local kids volunteer to be in photos with them...then turn around and expect to be paid for the job. Even their image is valued in pesos.

So if I post all pretty pictures, I seem like a pretty awful missionary. And if I post all poverty pictures, I'm a pretty awful Christian. So how do I balance that--share stories without soliciting censure of well-meaning individuals who don't understand why some of that beauty they equate with "vacation" is just a small sliver of my workday--ten minutes we carved out between outreaches, or an afternoon after running an errand to the beachside city? Or without becoming a cultural voyeur who exploits poverty for another "like" on Facebook just because it is somehow a romantic concept for those who have never seen it firsthand? Maybe I would be better off never to post at all.

But there is so much joy and so much enjoyment here, too! So much color in the culture I feel I would be selfish not to share that richness with others, even if it's just through that singular eye of my Rebel. When I share pictures, it's because I want to share the story. It's an attempt at portraying a perspective; a lens through which we almost never view the world. And it's a balance I'm constantly reckoning: to rebel against the tendency to unintentionally exploit, and instead portray beauty and Story in a different light.

Sometimes a picture's worth a thousand words...sometimes even words fall flat. But there's a depth to the beauty that goes beyond color and contrast. If you truly want to experience that wealth, a photo's never going to do it. You've got to see for yourself, smell for yourself, taste it and know that it's good.