World Portraits: reason & criticism

The idea for World Portraits came to Bas van Beek years ago, when an Indian man who had posed for a Benelux photographer but received no compensation, saw his image in an advertisement.  Van Beek recognized the unfairness of the situation for that model and countless others. Simultaneously, the micro-banking phenomenon began to take hold in the international community providing a practical solution to the difficulty of finding and paying models in remote places with no banking infrastructure.  According to van Beek, the models will receive 20% of the license fee, the photographers, 40% and World Portraits, the remaining 40%.  “It may not seem like a lot, but to someone in Bangladesh, Nairobi or Mongolia, it can be quite a lot of money.  It’s far better than the usual situation where the model would sign a release and then never hear from the photographer again, or even know whether the image was used anywhere,” he says.  In addition, the increasing global awareness of fair trade issues makes World Portraits appealing to art-buyers. [source: ANP]

Ricky Singh helps me explaining the release (Delhi)

Karmail Singh, age 71 | New Delhi

Some people criticize the concept blaming it to stimulate inequality in poor communities. Suppose a beautiful young woman in an Indian slum earns a lot because her photo sells well, but her friend, who posed as well, never sells. This could lead to poignant situations in an already poor and inequal environment. In my case, I try to avoid this by working in the context of Duniya Foundation. All the people portrayed, are aware of the fact that we will use the money we may earn, to set up a (women’s) savings group (India), to educate the children from their poor neighbourhood (India), for medical care in remote areas (Vietnam) and we will start a medical emergency fund (India & Vietnam). I will write about the practice of this later. In any case, I try to avoid inequality as much as possible. Meeting individual persons in the street, however, often means an individual contract. My collegue (also World Portraits) photographer Robin Utrecht searched for similar solutions. He captured some beautiful shots of tribes  in the lower Omo Valley region of southern Ethiopia. Several photos of the collection are already sold. A part of the amount that has been received for these images was donated to Survival, an international human rights organization, supporting tribal groups worldwide. But what exactly happens with the money? Nellie Werner of Survival International explains: “The money supports our campaign for the indigenous people of the Omo Valley. They are currently being threatened by the construction of Gibe 111, a massive hydroelectronic dam in the Omo river. This dam will end the annual floods of the Omo river, where fertile silt is being deposited on the river banks. The indigenous tribes grow crops in the Omo river, when the water of the river is withdrawn. It will have devastating effects for the food supply in an area that is known for its drought. We therefore urge the government of Ethiopia to stop the construction and highly recommend an independent investigation into the social and environmental impacts of the project.” [source, World Portraits Blog]

World Portrait Rajasthan | India

In the case of a series World Portraits I shot in Rajasthan, I also worked in the context of a local NGO, ensuring not only that we could trace the ‘models’ whenever a photo would sell, but also we agreed that the sales would be used for installing handpumps and cleaning traditional water sources, thus helping the whole community and not just a single individual. All models were explained this by local translators and willingly agreed: water is of great importance in this dry area.

Positive news!

Selling images via this World Portraits concept, is still difficult. But Margot de Koning, care-manager in Medical Centre Haaglanden (MCH Westeinde) carefully selected a number of photos from the World Portraits archive to put up in their oncology section. By doing this, Margot hopes her patients will forget about their illness for a moment. Her initiative proves to be successful. Margot: “The immediate response was: ‘This is what makes one happy!’, which was just what we wanted to achieve.” The series of photos in the MCH reveals numerous cultures, nationalities and backgrounds. “Our patients are multicultural themselves, we wanted the photos to reflect that. This is three beautiful charities in one actually”, says Margot. “Roparun donates money to care-organizations to ease the patients’ lives. The hospital put up the photos, making the patients feel better. And the people on the pictures themselves, who usually aren’t very wealthy themselves, also get better lives.[source: World Portraits Blog]

Your hospital, company, restaurant, office, wellness centre, hotel, reception… could do the same!

This entry was posted on zondag, juni 13th, 2010 at 13:22. It is filed under India, World Portraits and tagged with Duniya Foundation, Ethiopia, fairtrade, India, Mirjam Letsch, Robin Utrecht, Survival, World Portraits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.