Giving Back to your Subjects

(photo by Thomas Holton)

"As traveling photographers, we are often in the unfortunate position of taking from subjects less fortunate than ourselves without giving anything back. On an ideological level, I like to believe that a great image comes from a collaboration between photographer and subject. However, we capture images, show them off to friends and relatives, promote ourselves professionally, and maybe even sell prints. For the barefoot pilgrim, the hungry child, and the lonely grandmother with the tattered shawl though, life continues unchanged."

Here's a short article I did for Collective Lens on the one-way "take but don't give" relationship that sometimes exists between photographers and their subjects, and what one photographer did to help when the subjects of his long term documentary peice narrowly escaped disaster.