The Sadness of Sensibility

A starting disclosure: I am including images of children in the below article. Most of them I obtained permission to photograph. Some of the images I photographed while on editorial assignment for clients. Other images were shot during the various travels that I have done through the years. 

The world around us seems in the midst of some culture war where conservatism and liberalism take no prisoners in their ridiculous affront against each other. One of the victims in this battlefront is the depiction of the youth of this world. Photographing children is now a threatened pursuit. To be able to photograph the youth in sport requires a string of documents including police clearances, and here in south Africa, proof that your name is not on a nationally held sex-offenders list. Woe betide the parent who wants to photograph their child on the side of the sport’s field lest they be accosted by other parents for photographing their children without explicit consent. 

Both sides have valid, logical arguments when it comes to photographing youth. It makes sense that one should get the permission from a guardian before an image is created. At the same time though, how does one photograph events where there are hundreds of youths taking part? Do you get a consent form from everyone present? What happens when one parent declines? Does that event then not get photographed? Unfortunately the approach that sees anyone with a camera as a sexual predator has had a profound effect on how photographers around the world approach the subject, and I think we have lost something as a result. 

In 1955 Edward Steichen’s ‘Family of Man’ exhibit opened in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. It represented 503 works by 273 photographers from around the world. The exhibition aimed to celebrate the fundamental sameness of human experiences across diverse cultures and peoples. It was broken into a themes that were linked chronologically through the human experience of life. The exhibit went on to be opened in several other major US based art museums, before continuing on with a world tour of thirty seven countries over six continents. The resultant book is still in print and has sold over four million copies. Importantly, the very second chapter in the book, and a major theme in the exhibit was childhood. 

I found myself thinking a lot about the exhibition while on a recent workshop in Madagascar. The Nature’s Light photography workshops to the island are very much travel photography workshops and photographing people is a strong component of any travel photography. As with all of our travel themed workshops, we started with a discussion on the ethics of photographing people during the workshop and in general. Naturally, the issues of photographing children is one of the many things that were discussed. 

the daughters of our guide in Peru's Amazon. We waited for almost three days for the river ferry to arrive, during which time the two young girls were fascinated by us, and kept on peeking out to see what we were doing (waiting).

I generally attempt to avoid photographing children during my travels now, although this wasn’t always the case. Not because I don’t want to, but because of the ethical complexities that swirl around in my head every time that I lift the camera to my eye. Yet, in all my travels it is the youth and children who come running up to me asking for a photograph. The cynical say that it is because they have learned that tourists gift them sweets or cash. In my experience though, I find it is usually that the inquisitiveness of youth is the primary driver behind the interaction. Time and again I have watched as children virtually mob a camera wielding traveler. Now, with the advent of digital photography, children insist on seeing their likeness on the back of the camera, and then break away in peels of laughter as they see themselves and their friends on the screen. This inquisitiveness is not something that is new to digital photography either.

In what seems like another lifetime now, I recall sitting in a family compound on the end of Namibia’s Caprivi Strip where I was starting my fieldwork for what would eventually become my dissertation in cultural anthropology. I was a curiosity to the children of the village who were peeking around the wooden doorway entrance to peer at the odd stranger who was sitting inside chatting to some of the adults that had brought me down from Katima Mulilo. Soon one of the younger kids pointed at the camera that was slung casually over my knee as I sat on a stool. He indicated he wanted me to take a photo. After that the children suddenly poured into the small compound, wanting to see through the viewfinder and hold the camera. This was in 2001. I didn’t own a digital camera for another five years, so there was little chance of the children seeing their faces (they did eventually when I brought back prints for their parents the following year). 

A young teenager playing the shallows at Vohemar on the north-eastern coastline of Madagascar

Fast forward a few years and Jackie (later to become my far more important half) and I were sitting on the wooden deck in front of a hut on the edge of the Yurimaguas River in Peru waiting for a river boat that was two days late. Our guide’s young daughters found us fascinating and would spend many hours ‘spying’ on us, going into fits of laughter if we spotted them. They also wanted to be photographed and would stand all serious as I lifted the camera and focused on them. 

I have countless examples of instances where I have been able to photograph youth and the simple joy of being young. Yet, I am nervous to show these photographs in case they are an affront to someone’s sensibilities. To me they are a depiction of the people I have met, a moment in time imaged as an artistic pursuit and a commentary on the world we experience, both as children and as adults looking in (and back towards our own youth). 

A learner in northern KZN during a Rally to Read event

That’s the point of the Family of Man exhibit. Would this same exhibit still be held in today’s ultra sensitive environment? Would Steichen have had to get permission from each and every parent or guardian of the children depicted (basically impossible). What have we lost by building a wall of sensibility. 

To be sure, and as Susan Sontag has rightly pointed out in here book, On Photography, the act of capturing an image of someone is indeed predatory in a way. It can never not be. What we can try and do is make it less aggressive, less predatory by making it more inclusive with the person being photographed. Some children practically demand this now, yanking on the neck-straps of the camera to be able to see the image. Add to this the complexity of photographing the other - something that many photographic travels aim to do - and the extractive politics of the camera when gazed through by a tourist, who is no doubt wealthier than the person being photographed, and you can see that the arguments against photographing children are indeed strong. 

So who should be allowed to photograph the youth? Do they have to be professional - meaning accredited - photographers before they should be allowed to point the camera towards anyone below the age of adulthood in whatever society we happen to find ourselves in? Do we resolutely refrain from photographing anyone who looks like a child when we travel? 

Thoughout much of the world young children have to grow up fast. These two sisters in Irodo, Madagascar came out to see what we were doing as we traveled through the small village in the north of the Island

I’m going to take this thought a darker step forward. The argument that children shouldn’t be photographed has also been used occasionally against journalists; that children should be left out of the news. With this in mind would these graphically harrowing images have ever been shot (should they have):

Nick Ute’s photograph, Napalm Girl, of Kim Phuc, 
Sam Nzima’s image of Hector Peterson during the Soweto riots, 
Steve McCurry’s iconic image of 12 year old Sharmat Gula
Nilüfer Demir’s photograph of the lifeless form of Alan Kurdi
Kevin Carter’s haunting image of the starving Sudanese child

It is images of children that have galvanised the watching public into action more than any others when advocacy is needed. Their likeness’ have done more to further calls for peace, humanity, help than any other, because they are children. 

Children playing soccer at the edge of Madasgacar's Allee de Baobab.

I don’t have the answers here unfortunately. This is a piece meant to prod at our own sensibilities and get the photographer thinking about why we are taking the photograph in the first place. Some of the most renowned and respected photographers in the world have photographed and published images of unknown children. Many of them have received incomes through those images, albeit usually indirect. What I do feel though is that as we clamp down further on what we can or should be photographing, is the realisation that the photographic image is still powerful in story-telling guise. What do we lose if we stop pointing our cameras at one of the most fundamental experiences of human life; childhood?


As I mention above, I don’t have answers. The camera is extraordinarily ambivalent in it’s nature, with the intent of the image strongly linked to the motivations behind the photographer. As a general guideline then, these are questions that I pose to myself before I try to capture an image, 

1. Do No Harm!
2. What am I trying to depict?
3. What is the purpose of the photograph?

My nephew feeding lambs in the Free State