John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

Look3, the Festival of the Photograph, 2013: On the Verge of Greatness

Look3, The Festival of the Photograph, has just announced its lineup of participating artists for 2013, and it's a stunner -- Carrie Mae Weems, Susan Meiselas, Gregory Crewdson, Josef Koudelka, Richard Misrach, and more. 

Each of these men and women has had a long and distinguished career, and they've all earned their places among the most admired fine art photographers, photojournalists, and documentary photographers in the world.  (Weems, a truly revolutionary artist who was doing multi-media work long before it was cool, is beyond categories.)  Huge props to guest curators Melissa Harris and Yolanda Cuomo for pulling together such an impressive group.

Look3 runs from 13-15 June 2013, in Charlottesville, Virginia.  Tickets are on sale now.

 

I'm especially happy to see Carrie Mae Weems on the schedule.  After a very slow start -- in terms of inviting photographers of color to participate -- Look3 has changed directions in the last few years.  African American photographers have been on the program in each of the last two years -- LaToya Ruby Frazier, in 2011, and Stanley Greene and Hank Willis Thomas, 2012.  While both are accomplished artists with growing reputations, they're still young.  Greene, on the other hand, is, like Weems, a towering figure in the world of photography.

Last year, as well, Ernesto Bazan became the first Latino photographer to be featured at the festival.

Oops, 15 February 2013:  I can't believe that I didn't mention Camille Seaman, whose talk at last year's festival and exhibit, "The Last Iceberg," blew everyone away.  She's the daughter of a Native American father and African American mother.

All of this is good.  In fact, it makes me very happy.  Look3 is my hometown festival, and its events take place no more than a five-minute walk from my home.  I'm one of a number of people in the Charlottesville community who challenged Look3, during its early years, to open its doors to photographers of color.  At the time, none of the featured photographers -- Masters (a title that seems to have been retired this year), Insight Artists, workshop leaders -- had been of Asian, Latin American, Native American, or African descent.  It's been gratifying to see things change.  (You can read about this here and here.)

But things need to keep changing. 

That's because Look3 wants to become one of the world's great photo festivals.  That can only happen if it actually embraces the world.  Much of the most powerful and creative photography anywhere is being done in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.  (In the case of South Africa, this was amply demonstrated last fall, at the International Center of Photography's exhibition, "The Rise and Fall of Apartheid.")  Little of this has been seen at Look3 in the past.  Sadly, the situation won't change very much in 2013.

Look3 is on the verge of greatness.  I'm not saying that it will be easy, but a just couple more steps will get it there.

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Making Peace with Look3, the Festival of the Photograph

For most of its brief life, Look3, the Festival of the Photograph, has been a spectacular success and a miserable failure.  It's annually brought together some of the world's finest photographers for three days of peace, love, and photography.  Or, to put it another way, for three days of exhibitions, workshops, talks, and parties.  The cast of characters has included the likes of James Nachtwey, Sally Mann, Mary Ellen Mark, Bill Allard, Larry Fink, David Alan Harvey, Martin Parr, Sylvia Plachy, Gilles Peress, Maggie Steber, Alex Webb, and others whose names I can't remember at the moment.  How can anyone who loves photography complain about success like that?

 

[Click on either screen shot to see a larger version.]

We could complain -- it was vitally important to complain -- because Look3 was also a failure.  Until last year, no photographers of color -- no photographers of Asian, Latin American, and African descent -- had been featured at the festival.  None had been been "Insight Artists," "Masters," or workshop leaders.  This was a problem on a number of different levels.  Thinking narrowly about photography itself, Look3 was excluding many of most interesting photographers working today.  It was also wrong in the sense that taxpayer and corporate money was being used to support a racially exclusive event.

I took all of this personally.  After all, Look3's events take place in my hometown (Charlottesville, Virginia), no more than a 5 minute walk from my front door.

So I did something about it.  Being a child of the '60s, I organized -- bringing together members of the Charlottesville photo community, city councilors, and members of the University of Virginia faculty (where I teach) to press Look3's organizers to include leading photographers of color.  Being a citizen of the twenty-first century, I also blogged about it (for instance, here and here).

 

 

There were tensions along the way, but all of this activity culminated, last spring, in what turned out to be a friendly meeting with Nick Nichols, Look3's founder and guiding light, and Andrew Owen, its managing director.  They told us that they were bringing the African-American photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier to the festival in 2011 and promised that there was more to come.  (By the way, everyone that I talked to last year -- and that has to be dozens of people -- thought that Frazier's master talk was fabulous.  Her exhibition was also a resounding success.)

Nick and Andrew were right.  Much more is here.  The lineup for this year's festival has just been announced, and it includes two important African-American photographers -- Stanley Greene, a highly acclaimed, prize-winning photojournalist, and Hank Willis Thomas, a young and immensely creative multimedia artist and conceptual photographer who has been making big waves in the art world.

These are superb selections, no doubt about it.   Greene will be one of three "Insight Artists" (the true stars of the event), while Thomas will be one of about six photographers who will give a "Master's Talk."  ("Master" is awfully ironic, given the ways in which his work deals with race and American history).  Thomas' photos will also be displayed outdoors on the Downtown Mall.

Thomas is one of my favorite younger artists.  I recently saw Question Bridge, a multimedia work that he created with Chris Johnson, Bayete Ross Smith, and Kamal Sinclair, at the Brooklyn Museum.  It was one of the most moving and challenging experiences that I've had in a long time.  The video below will give you a since of what Thomas and his collaborators are up to.

 

Question Bridge: Black Males - Project Trailer from Question Bridge on Vimeo.

 

Does this mean that I'm perfectly happy with Look3?  Who, me?  Perfectly happy?  No.  I'd still like to see much greater representation Asian, Asian-American, Latin American, Latino/a, and African photographers, who are all few and far between at the festival.  These folks are doing some amazing work.  But is does mean that Look3 is something that I'm proud to say happens in my hometown.

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Tickets to Look3 are already on sale.  Get them while you can, here.

Look3, the Festival of the Photograph: A New Beginning

Look3, the Festival of the Photograph, is turning the corner on race and ethnicity.

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That, friends, is a sentence that I've been hoping to write ever since the festival first opened its doors, in 2007.

Like many members of Charlottesville's photographic and academic communities, I've been ambivalent about Look3.  On the one hand, I've been delighted to find a major photo festival happening almost literally on my doorstep, a five-minute walk from my house.

On the other, I've been dismayed by the festival's failure to include photographers of African, Asian, and Latino descent among those that it has featured.  None of the the more than two dozen photographers who were "Insight Artists," "Masters," and workshop leaders, or who were given gallery shows, during Look3's first three years, were persons of color.  (The festival was on hiatus in 2010.)

This year, it's different.  For the first time, a photographer of color will be among those featured at the festival.  She's LaToya Ruby Frazier, and she's fabulous.  Just as importantly, Nick Nichols, Look3's co-founder and guiding light, told me over lunch just a few weeks ago that he and the festival's curators and staff are committed to including more great photographers of color in future festivals.  I believe him.

 

 

(Click on the images to see larger versions.)

That is, I believe him, now.  But I really didn't know what to expect when Andrew Owen, Look3's managing director, invited me to have lunch with him and Nick.  After all, I've been very public about my misgivings and, with a number of others, I've been pressing the festival -- publicly and privately -- to open itself to photographers of color.  We've pursued two lines of argument.

First, we've said, no festival that aspires to world-class status can afford to ignore the powerful, challenging, and often aesthetically stunning photography that's being produced in the developing world and by members of minority communities in industrialized nations.  Anybody who pays any attention at all to contemporary photography knows that some of the strongest work is being done in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and by black, brown, and yellow people in the West.

 

 

 

Second, the festival, which has its roots in a private gathering that Nick held at his home every summer, is now a public event.  It's attracted sponsorship from major corporations and financial and in-kind contributions from the city of Charlottesville.  It's also collaborated with the University of Virginia, the public institution at which I teach.  In doing these things, it's acquired a new set of stakeholders and a new array of responsibilities.  The calculus is pretty simple:  Consumers come in all colors; taxpayers' money can't be spent in racially and ethnically discriminatory ways; and the university, as an institution, is committed to diversity.

Even before our lunch with Nick and Andrew, I had an inkling that things had begun to change.  Last fall, Look3 invited me to nominate photographers for inclusion in its "Shots" and "Works" evening projections.  The invitation came as a surprise, given my uneasy relationship with the festival.  I wasn't quite sure how to read the invitation, but I took it at face value and accepted it.  I'm happy to say that one of the photographers that I nominated was invited to participate.  In a delicious irony, she's white (and fully deserving of the honor).

Given what I perceived as Look3's history of foot-dragging, I was skeptical even of the announcement that earlier this year that Frazier, an African-American, will be one of five photographers who will give a "Master's Talk," this year.  (The others are Christopher Anderson, Ashley Gilbertson, David Littswager, and Steve McCurry.)   After all, Frazier's appearance might be mere tokenism, a one-off.  I became convinced that Look3 is genuinely committed to embracing the work of photographers of color only during that lunch-time conversation with Nick and Andrew.

 

 

Back-of-the-napkin graph of "Your Development Potential.  Yes or No."  Source:  Aid Watch Blog

What could have been a tense encounter turned out to be cordial.  (We were joined by my colleague Richard Statman.)  After some small-talk, Nick and Andrew both said that they and the festival's curators share our concern about Look3's lack of racial, ethnic, and geographic diversity.  Nick acknowledged that, for a variety of reasons, the festival has been heavily populated by members of what he calls "my tribe" -- photographers who are his friends and colleagues, and who are overwhelming white.  He and Andrew both agreed that, if it is to achieve its potential, the festival will have to leave tribalism behind.

Nick did point out that relying on his "tribe" to fill the ranks of featured photographers allowed a young and not-especially-well-funded festival to bring in the likes of James Nachtwey, Eugene Richards, Sally Mann, Mary Ellen Mark, Bill Allard, Sylvia Plachy, Martin Parr, Maggie Steber, and Giles Peress, among others.  Richard and I agreed that it's an impressive line-up, no matter how you slice it.  Our problem, however, has never been with who's invited to Look3.  It's been with who isn't.

Nick and Andrew also told us that Look3 had twice tried to bring African-American photographers to the festival as featured photographers.  Neither was able to attend, however.  One was too old to travel (he has since passed away), and the other was quite ill (he has since recovered).  It occurred to me that trying twice in four years isn't trying particularly hard, but I let the thought pass.

 

 

Stew Says "Black Men Ski."

Finally, Nick and Andrew said that the festival and its curators realize they'll need help in identifying photographers from outside of the "tribe."  He asked us to help; we'll certainly do anything we can.  And we won't be alone in this.  I get the sense that the festival knows it must ultimately turn to people like Deborah Willis and Okwui Enwezor, to name just two rather obvious possibilities.

There are other promising signs of change.  This year, The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative will be teaming up with the folks from Luceo Images to run a photo workshop for disadvantaged black and Latino youth.  The workshop builds on earlier, informal connections between Look3 and the Bridge, but remains the first major outreach effort that the festival has sponsored.  If all goes according to plan, I'll help to bring a group of young people from one of Charlottesville's public housing projects to the festival.  They'll spend an afternoon looking at the exhibits and meeting some of the photographers.

One festival does not a transformation make.  The Look3 has yet to reach beyond the United States and Europe for its featured photographers, and, even after this year, none will have been of Asian or Latino descent.  But Nick and Andrew have pledged that further change is on the way, and, as I've said, I believe it.

We all know that enduring change won't come easily.  Look3's culture -- its way of doing business -- can't stay the same.  It will have to open itself to new ideas and to people from other "tribes," who will bring new areas of expertise and new creative visions.  I admire Nick, Andrew, the staff, and curators for being willing to take up the challenge.

Look 3, the Festival of the Photograph: Afterthoughts, Part 3, Nick’s Tribe

A couple weeks ago, C-ville, a Charlottesville, Virginia, news weekly, ran a six-page spread celebrating Look 3, the Festival of the Photograph, which was about to open. In it Nick Nichols, the Look 3's co-founder and guiding spirit, called the Festival as gathering of "my tribe." This is an apt description, and it is, at the same time, Look 3's greatest strength and greatest liability.

 

Micheal Barnes at Look 3.  (Click directly on the photo to see a larger version.)

Without Nichol’s tribe, the Festival would not exist. That’s a pretty categorical statement, but one that I think is true. In each of its three years in existence, including the first, Look 3 has brought to Charlottesville a truly impressive cast of characters--Eugene Richards, Sally Mann, Bill Allard, James Nachtwey, Mary Ellen Mark, Larry Fink, David Alan Harvey, Martin Parr, Sylvia Plachy, Gilles Peress, Maggie Steber, Alex Webb, and others that I’m surely forgetting. It’s no overstatement to say that these are some of the world’s leading photographers. My guess is that most of them came because Nichols asked them to.

That’s an oversimplification, no doubt, but Nichols seems to have used his personal and professional networks to do the heavy lifting of creating this festival. That is, he tapped into his tribe. Yes, it’s heavy on Americans, and, yes, the Magnum, ex-Magnum, and National Geographic connections are plain to see. But it remains a stellar line-up.

In addition to the stars, Look 3 has attracted fine photographers in all stages of their careers and people who have other careers and a passion for photography. From the beginning, it’s been a place people want to be.

 

Stephanie Gross and Paul Corbit Brown at Look 3.

Stars are one thing, money is another. The Festival has attracted significant corporate sponsorship from the very beginning. Apple, Adobe, Canon, National Geographic, and Aperture, are just a few of the brands that have attached themselves to Look 3. It’s also secured the cooperation of the City of Charlottesville and its taxpayers.

For such a young festival, Look 3 has been a tremendous success, in many ways.

Most of the exhibitions and slideshows have been artistic triumphs. The workshops, two of which I participated in, have ranged from merely worthwhile to (if participants are to be believed) life-changing. The schmoozing and networking have been superb.

But Look 3 has also failed. It’s failed to reach beyond Nichols’s tribe, which is almost entirely white.

 

In the background, Paolo Pellegrin's installation at Look 3.

I’m tempted to say that the only people of color to be seen at Look 3 are paying customers and the starving and diseased subjects of the photographs. That’s not as much of a cheap shot as it sounds. During the Festival’s first two years, none of the featured photographers, none of workshop leaders, and, as far as I can tell, no board member or person in a decision-making position on the Festival’s staff was Asian, Latino/a, or black.

This year, the situation improved. While none of the featured photographers--workshop leaders, those given solo exhibitions or slideshows, those accorded "Master" status or "Insight" conversation--was a person of color, several were part of the outdoor group projections.  Others, such as some of the people in these photos, bought tickets and participated in workshops.

But, on the whole, Look 3 has both reflected and reproduced the lack of racial and ethnic diversity within the photography profession.

As I said in an earlier post, this critique has nothing to do with diversity for diversity’s sake.

Instead it’s the assertion that if Look 3 wants to be a truly world-class festival, it should open itself to the best work being done in all communities and all parts of the world. It should be willing to hear people of color speak for themselves (or, to phrase it more appropriately for photography, it should allow people of color to represent their own lives, rather than always relying on the representations of outsiders). It should be aware of the ways in which excluding photographers of color hinders their career development. Having one’s work seen at the Festival opens the door to networks of mentoring and patronage. Excluding photographers of color from the Festival excludes them from these networks.

Steve Floyd at Look 3.

Why should the Festival change its ways of doing things? Well, in a nation and world in which racism, ethnic prejudice, and social inequality are still problems, it’s the right thing to do If the people behind Look 3 believe that the Festival’s lack of racial and ethnic diversity is a problem, as they have told me that they do, then they’ll have to reach beyond Nichols’s tribe.

There’s a practical side to this as well. With success come responsibilities and obligations. The Festival isn’t a backyard cookout. It’s a public festival, sponsored by major corporations, receiving the support of the city of Charlottesville and its taxpayers, funded in part by a ticket-buying public. The Festival has acquired many new stakeholders--consumers, taxpayers, members of the audience--who have their right to expect that Look 3 will reflect the interests of their tribes, as well as Nichols’s.

Why am I spending so much time talking about Look 3? It’s my Festival.

I live five blocks away from the main Festival venues; I teach college courses in the history of photography in the same small town; I pay taxes in that town; I’ve bought tickets to each of the Festivals and participated in workshops at two. I acknowledge that many people have a stronger claim to ownership, but mine is certainly valid.

(You can read my other comments about Look 3, in which I both praise and protest, here, here, and here.)

 

Bill Emory at Look 3.

Recently there has been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere about diversity in photography. It’s timely and important. Anyone wishing to hear what photographers and other people in the photo industry have been saying on the issue might want to start with the contributions of Stan at Reciprocity Failure, Rob at Photo Editor, Benjamin at Duckrabbit, Miriam Romais, the executive director of En Foco, at Photo District News, and Jim at (Notes on) Politics, Theory, and Photography.

Australian photographer Lisa Hogben at Duckrabbit has been particularly eloquent on the importance of including photographic visions that have been ignored and excluded.

The conversation on this issue at Lightstalkers has been largely civil. Some contributors seem to think that people who advocate greater diversity are unconcerned with quality. Nothing could be further from the truth, as I have made clear in this and other posts. (And as every other serious proponent of diversity has also done.) Others claim that sufficient number of qualified people of color simply doesn’t exist. That’s a reflection of their own ignorance, rather than a statement of reality. I invite them to educate themselves. They might want to begin by finding out who Deborah Willis and Okwui Enwezor are and why the exhibitions that they curated, respectively, at the Smithsonian Institution and the International Center of Photography are so important. (Doing that, by the way, will bring them up to speed only on African-American and African photography. They’ll still have a lot of learning to do to cover other cultures and communities.)

DVAfoto has very conveniently provided links to many of the most important contributions to this debate.

I like to think that in urging the Festival to change its ways I'm pushing on a open door.  Time will tell.

Look 3, the Festival of the Photograph: Afterthoughts, Part 2, James Nachtwey and George Steinmetz

N.B.:  I've updated this post with a new final paragraph.

Hang out with African artists or activists long enough and sooner or later the conversation will turn to the ways in which Africa is represented in the western media. The last time that I had this conversation was with the South African photographer Paul Weinberg. We decided, in a Vietnamese-owned sushi joint in Cape Town, that the top three Africas in the western media’s style book are Romantic Africa, Exotic Africa, and Broken Africa, with the last one being the most popular.

I was thinking about this when I was watching a slideshow of George Steinmetz’s aerial photos of Africa at Look 3, the Festival of the Photograph. You could squeeze many, even most, of Steinmetz’s photos into a box labeled Romantic or Exotic Africa. Or you might want to invent a new box called Wondrous Africa. You could do it, but you’d be doing Steinmetz’s photos (and yourself) a real disservice. No ten categories could contain the all nuances in these surprisingly complex images.

I look at a lot of photos. It’s a professional obligation; one of my courses is in the history of photography. And I tend to have one of three reactions to photos that I really like: I wish I’d made it; I wish it were hanging on my wall; or it taught me something that I didn’t know. All of these apply to Steinmetz’s photos. (Well, mostly. I’m not sure that I want to have made the ones that he shot from a motorized paraglider.)

The photos are beautiful--light, shape, color, all gorgeous. But, for me, that’s just a starting point. A large part of my life revolves around Africa. I’ve been traveling there once or twice a year for 20 years and lived there for two. Nevertheless, in that Look 3 slideshow, Steinmetz explained things about the continent that I had never fully understood.

Two quick examples... An aerial photo of shanties ringing apartment blocks in a poor township outside of Cape Town showed me just how densely packed with human habitations every square inch is. I visit friends in that township every time I’m in Cape Town, and I’ve been in those shanties. But I didn’t appreciate the shanties’ tremendous extent and density until I saw that photo.

Steinmetz’s aerial photos of Rwanda taught me something else about density. The soil is rich and the rain is plentiful, but the relatively large population strains those resources. In the photos, it seemed as though every possible square inch of the country is given over to farming or herding. Population density and competition for land are two of the things that I always talk with my students about when they’re learning about the Rwandan genocide. But, once again, visual information deepened my understanding. I hadn’t appreciated the creativity of the Rwandan people, nor had I realized how intense the competition must be. And, yes, I’ll show Steinmetz’s photos to my students.

I’m about to moan and groan about James Nachtwey’s Look 3 exhibit, "Struggle to Live -- The Fight Against TB." This strikes even me as an insanely heartless thing to do. Extensively [sometimes, Extremely] Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (XDR-TB) is a grave health crisis, especially in the developing world and in poor and marginalized communities in wealthier nations. As for Nachtwey, his accomplishments speak for themselves. No one can doubt his commitment to bettering the lives of the poor and the oppressed or question his consummate skills as a photographer.

And, yet, I left the exhibit troubled by the photographic decisions that he made in telling this story.

Conjure in your mind a Nachtwey photograph. It will be in black and white, even though he often shoots in color. The subject will be a suffering person, usually black or brown, with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes, naked or clothed in rags, clearly on death’s door, and just as clearly unable to help himself or herself. It's true that not every photo in the exhibit fits this description. A few show whites with XDR-TB. A few show black and brown people as care givers. But the great majority do.

So, what’s the problem?

The story is incomplete in a couple of different ways.

First, the overwhelming majority of these photos depict people with XDR-TB as abject and helpless victims. They barely have the strength to lift their heads, let alone confront the disease that’s killing them. Many people with XDR-TB fit this description. But many others do not. Many are struggling valiantly against the disease, fighting to secure access to treatment, not waiting for outsiders to save them. They are the heroes of their own lives, to use Linda Gordon’s marvelous phrase.

It’s not clear to me why Nachtwey has only chosen subjects who are powerless, defenseless, and dependent. Yes, the photos can evoke pity, and pity can lead to the writing of checks, which is certainly one of the responses that Nachtwey and his sponsors hoped to achieve. But this story deserves more nuance and greater complexity.

Aid alone cannot solve this crisis. Nations, communities, and individuals need to be empowered to fight for themselves. Outsiders will only understand that this is possible if they see it beginning to happen. Checkbooks would surely open for people with XDR-TB and care givers who are battling bravely--as they are right now--in the face of overwhelming odds.

In addition, photos that show people with XDR-TB, most of whom are black or brown, solely as helpless victims reinforce stereotypes about the inability of Africans and Asians to solve their own problems. Sadly, many foreign governments, corporations and NGOs have a vested interest in perpetuating this stereotype. As many Africans point out, it’s easier for the West to offer aid than to open its borders to African trade.

Second, I was also troubled by what Nachtwey’s photos don’t show. XDR-TB is a preventable disease of poverty, as is well known and as the pamphlet that accompanied the exhibit makes clear. That is, the root cause of XDR-TB is poverty. In his photos, however, Nachtwey takes poverty for granted, as something that simply exists and is as natural as the sun rising in the east. But poverty is by no means natural.

Poverty is man-made. People make decisions that shape the way in which power and wealth are distributed within societies and across the globe. For instance, neo-liberal economic policies foisted on developing countries by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have exacerbated poverty in many African countries while enriching western corporations and financial institutions. Farm subsidies often allow American producers, including giant agricultural corporations, to undercut African farmers, father impoverishing them.

The point is this: XDR-TB isn’t just happening "over there." It’s happening here. We--you and I--are implicated.

Addressing root causes of XDR-TB requires an understanding of the ways in which particular histories, institutions, and ideologies have created poverty in particular places. Yet Nachtwey hasn’t applied his undoubted gifts to finding a visual language that would link illness and death at a local level to decisions made by government officials and corporate executives in Washington, New York, London, and Paris.

What I’m asking for isn’t easy, but people have done it.

Consider Ed Kashi’s work on the terrible effects of oil production on the people of the Niger delta, in Nigeria. His images to create a panoramic view of what oil has done to the delta. Yes, he shows viewers the poisoning of its environment and the impoverishment of its people. But he doesn’t stop there. He shows the efforts of the delta people to make things right. Crucially, he also demonstrates ways in which Americans and other westerners are involved.

We see that western corporations, such as Shell, and their partners within the Nigerian political elite are principally responsible for having created this situation. But ordinary Americans’ insatiable demand for cheap gas is part of the problem, too. Kashi’s words, and those of the Nigerians and American academics and human rights activists with whom he worked, complete the picture.

It’s disappointing that Nachtwey, who had significant resources at his command, didn’t seize the chance to do equally compelling and comprehensive work.

Update:  I urge everyone to read duckrabbit's comments on this post and to follow the links he provides.  They'll take you to some thoughtful and well-informed remarks on the way Africa (and, by extension, the developing world as a whole) is represented in the western media.  On one of the pages, I was especially intrigued to find a link to this gallery of portraits of refugees that the photographer Rankin made in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Sending someone best known as a high-end fashion and celebrity photographer to the DRC might seem silly, but, as duckrabbit says, what Rankin produced is "in many ways a hell of a lot more real then most of the cliched misery guts photography that comes out of Africa.  There’s no doubt that Rankin’s photos have a great humanizing effect, these people, despite their circumstances, are clearly a part of the world, not apart from it."