When Photos Speak

There is a new generation of photography, digital photography that innovates itself from the traditional manual photography.More and more photographers are enjoying their DSLR cameras as their shots can immediately come to life, since these cameras are also equipped with multimedia capacity. With the available computer applications and softwares, they can recreate these images into evocative presentations.

Photos remind us of our experiences and the memories of our past. One of my student is joining a photography contest with human rights theme. I remember him, from his creative works with photos and powerpoint presentations. I told him that he should take photography or multimedia arts and not hotel and restaurant management to hone his craft. Now he is the chief photographer of the school's student paper.

He asked me a favor to like his photo entry. I did not immediately heed to his request. Instead, I have to ask him a few questions first. As I saw his entry, I remember an issue from an international news program about the responsibility of photojournalists.

In the news, images of war victims were shown, and photojournalists merely took shots of them. The question is whether they have the responsibility to help those people whom they took pictures of. I could not immediately like my student's photo until I am convinced that his answers would have satisfied me.

He took a shot of a boy playing with a toy gun on the streets, with other kids. He said it was a candid shot and the boy was not a model. What came to my mind was the thought of creating a culture of violence, and that to these kids, they could be desensythize to the idea of violence.

I asked my student what did he do, after he took the shot. He said nothing. He replied, that it was a just a toy gun and that for him, it was photo opportunity. My issue here, is that a photojournalist is not just an eye or a lens. A photojournalist is thinking social individual, who has responsibility for other members of the society, most especially to the subject of his craft.

I argue that objectifying human subjects is dehumanizing them and dehumanizing the photographer. My student passed my gatekeeping by responding well to my second question. I asked how did the image impact him. He answered that the shot was taken two years ago, which influenced him to take photography seriously, and he wanted to tell other people through those kinds of shots that we have situations like that. Further, he explained that taking such images made him more aware and socially proactive, that he joins rallies and advocacies for such cause.

So he got my like on Facebook for that photo. But I would like to go back to an idiom that pictures speak a thousand words. An image will have multfarious meanings. Hence a caption or a story would help to clarify to the viewer what the artist intends to say about the subject.

He got my like because he was true to his words. That when he joined a seminar on photography, he came up with a multimedia presentation of the pictures he got about the aetas. For a novice, he got my approval. This is the link to his work on another human rights blog. In this blog, his photos speak, as he narrates a story on the plight of the Aetas of Zambales. If you like his photo, like the fan page that hosts it and like his photo. Share the photo as well to your friends if you like it.

Lastly, I would have to say that worst toy you could give any child this Christmas is a toy gun, whether it shoots water, foam or pellets. If you do this you participate in the promotion of a culture of violence.

As an update, the photo taken by Mario Espinosa, won both the people's choice award and the grand prize winner for the 2010 Tinamaan ka ng Lente, photo competition.