NGO Photography - 2008

Spreading the Web



Tim Hetherington has worked in West Africa for 8 years, his medium format colour images providing a complex insight into a region where the boundaries of political and military power are continually shifting. Hetherington’s West African odyssey began in 1999. “I heard about this Liberian football team called the Millennium Stars. They were supported by an non-governmental organisation ( NGO ) and were touring the UK,” says Hetherington. “I went to the NGO and I said, I can get a great story connecting Liberia to the UK through football. I want to be on their tour bus. The NGO said yes, sure, if you can get the story into a magazine. The story was published in the Independent and the NGO said they needed a photographer and a cameraman in Africa. They flew me out to Liberia and paid for accommodation, film and processing. That’s how I started to work in Liberia.”

Hetherington’s use of an NGO to gain initial access to Liberia typifies the increasingly important role NGOs play in funding and providing opportunities for photographers around the world.

“The first time I started working with NGOs was in the late 90s in Sierra Leone,” says Marcus Bleasdale, whose work in Congo has won international acclaim. “Initially I used them to gain access and information, but as your experience grows you have more to offer and you can get more in payment or compensation. This compensation may come in terms of exhibitions, books published, access or simply a place to sleep for a night. In the work I do at Human Rights Watch, I get paid very little, but my relationship with the organisation gets me grants and funding from elsewhere that helps my work be shown and allows me to have a more powerful voice.”

Security and information are two key issues for Bath based photographer, Matt Shonfeld. “I work for Orbis who have operations all over the world. I’ve worked with them in places like Bangladesh where gaining access to places like state run hospitals would be difficult. I also work with MSF and Unicef so I can cover stories which would take years of research. They also provide accommodation and security. Working with NGOs gives you the ability to work freely and safely and that is very important.”

Though Delhi based photographer Stuart Freedman has traded access for images on occasions, he also feels that reasonable payment is essential. “Photographers have to act in a professional way. We are all, regrettably in a market place. Selling your photography for a pittance for exposure or 'jam tomorrow' has landed us all in the position of negotiating from weakness. It's not that NGOs by and large are taking advantage. We as photographers have to accept some responsibility for taking bad deals.”

An NGO can be everything from a local toy library to the United Nations, and each NGO has different visual needs. “There are lots of NGOs,” says Tim Hetherington, “and different organisations have different agendas. In Chad, I worked for Human Rights Watch. They exist to expose abuse. They don’t need funding, they don’t need to provide images for marketing, they need photographs for evidence, so there is no editorial guidance.”

In contrast to the evidential documentary needs of Human Rights Watch, Greenpeace uses images for marketing that tie in with their campaigning agenda.
“We don’t have to look for people. They come to us,” says Daphne Christelis, Greenpeace UK’s photo-editor. “I’ll ask for a link to a website and then ask the photographer to come in and show their portfolio. I’m interested in people with a background in press photography, people who are committed to what Greenpeace are trying to do.”

“Some people do come thinking that they are going to photograph dolphins, but our work is very fast-paced. When you are shooting on an inflatable for example, you have to be able to think and work very quickly, and because a lot of our work involves trespass, photographers can get arrested and get into trouble.”

“We pay the same as standard press rates. Sometimes we’ll pay more. It depends on the skills of the photographer. We do a long edit of about 30 pictures which we have exclusive use of for 90 days. After that photographers can use these pictures for their own projects.”

Laurence Watts, photo-editor at Action Aid, has a line of wannabe NGO photographers queuing outside his door, but he says NGOs increasingly work with photographers in the field. “A photographer I know will give me their mobile number and say I will be in this place at this time. If an emergency or disaster situation arises or a project pops up, then we might get in touch. We need shots which show our work and the challenging situation of poor people in a variety of situations. And the people who shoot this work are increasingly locally based photographers.”

“Editorial is also marketing,” says Watts. “We do have a visual identity, but it is important that we try to avoid clichés, that we try to make people engage with the issues. We can do this by using intelligent photographers who have an understanding of development, politics and history, who can tell stories and show people as people, not as victims.”

Given the nature of assignments, avoiding clichés is not always an easy thing. “A bog standard NGO assignment is pretty boring,” says Adrian Evans, director of Panos Pictures. “You go there and shoot wells, clinics or primary schools being opened and once a photographer has done that ten times, you know what needs to be done.”

“NGOs are stuck. On the one hand they say they have gone away from the pleading image of the big-eyed child, but they have to work with marketing and fund-raising and raise awareness of particular issues and what the NGO does. And then the images they use are the same ones because that’s what people respond to.”

This is a problem Tim Hetherington, who was the only photographer to work with the LURD rebels in Liberia and has broken news stories like the spread of the Darfur War to Chad, believes is especially apparent in Africa. “I don’t disagree with working with NGOs, but it’s problematic to look at Africa only through NGO and news lenses. The problem with Africa is about more than just debt and money. The problem with Africa is how Africa is perceived and represented as a basket case.”

“The NGOs have a problem. They have been railroaded into stereotypical images. They know they need to counter these images, but at the same time they know these images work. There is also an emphasis on victims. In my more recent work, I want to identify the aggressors, who did this, who is responsible for this. That’s why I like Human Rights Watch.”

If making new types of images is important, so is showing that work to new audiences. “I did an exhibition at UBS in Switzerland highlighting the illegal export of gold from eastern Congo by European, especially Swiss, companies,” says Marcus Bleasdale. “We invited UBS shareholders and companies who were implicated in the import of the gold. It was a naming and shaming exercise where we provided visual evidence of what was happening. You know that if the US$80 million that is buying the gold does not go into Congo, the war will stop because that is the money that is buying the guns. We managed to prevent Swiss companies from importing gold from eastern Congo. More and more photographers are trying to work in this way.”

This new way of exhibiting work is typical of the innovative work photographers must do to show their work and make a living in a rapidly changing market.

“If you talk to older photographers, they say everything is going down the pan but they are confusing change with a dying part of the industry. The industry is shifting from newspapers and magazines to other forms of funding,” says Adrian Evans.

Stuart Freedman agrees. “I think there are less major commissions now than ever. NGOs are a small part of an increasingly complex process to generate income that comprises grants, magazines, self finance and often just plain luck. The NGO market has got bigger and the media market smaller. But ask around and you soon discover that the most successful photographers are those who spread their web as far as possible in search of income.” So in Delhi, Freedman is doing written, film and photographic work for The Guardian, Action Aid and corporate clients. From Bath, Matt Shonfeld combines photography and work for the Digital Railroad online archive, Marcus Bleasdale’s Congo work is getting shown to the unconverted thanks to a series of grants and awards he has been awarded. And Tim Hetherington? He’s taking a year out from photography to monitor security issues for the United Nations Security Council. Nobody, it seems, is be just a photographer anymore.

End