I had written a decent text for my first blog entry, and as I edited and spun my words, I wondered how to make it sound less analytical and more human. My entry was good, but something I couldn’t put my finger on was missing. Something warmer and softer.
I was writing about the need for a more robust protection of human rights in Uganda, particularly for women and children. The persistent poverty and limited means, consequences of the rampant corruption, are causing incredible harm to vulnerable groups. It is a deeply important subject, but also a dense one, and I was left wondering how to make people care.
Then suddenly, in the middle of my intellectual wrestling, the answer came to me in a flash: images.
Pictures create immediacy; they make distant realities feel familiar. To give a visage to this suffering would call for a recognition, a connection. I had taken many beautiful pictures of my surroundings, but none that could be the poster child of my article. Nonetheless, poverty is omnipresent here. Little would have been easier than stepping outside and capturing a compelling image of vulnerability to accompany my words.
I recoiled at the thought. Absolutely not.
The truth is that I rarely take pictures of people, and even less so of children. The only photographs I share of children are of my own family, and only when they are healthy and happy. Anything else makes me deeply uncomfortable. Perhaps that discomfort stems in part from my professional background as a nurse, where photography of people, especially vulnerable people, was not only strongly discouraged but often outright prohibited. Yet I think it goes deeper than that.
As I sat there considering the concept, I reflected on a simple question: who would this picture really serve?
Would it benefit the person in the photograph? Would it restore their dignity or improve their circumstances? Or would it rather primarily benefit me, helping me tell a more persuasive story, write a more engaging blog post, or appear more compassionate?
We often speak about human rights as universal. I do, and I want to believe it. But we all have biases and constructs that influence our perspectives and actions, myself included. If we truly believe that every person possesses the same inherent dignity, then that principle cannot stop at borders or circumstances. The privacy and dignity I expect for a child in Canada or in the United States should not suddenly become optional simply because a child is born in Uganda. From my experience, many Western societies do not take kindly to their children being photographed or filmed in the streets by strangers. Why would it be different here?
Beyond children, would I myself agree to a stranger photographing me during a vulnerable moment? Would I consent to that image being shared with thousands of people outside my community so they might – or not – have a better understanding of social injustices? Or more broadly, would I want any of my pictures, even ones I do not personally consider as showing vulnerability, to be associated with a concept carrying stigma and to be shared in a foreign culture?
No, I wouldn’t; and I suspect most of us would hesitate.
I even have an issue with consent. Because what is consent without a proper understanding? Can we be sure that a person, especially a child, especially from a vulnerable background, with a different culture and language, really understands not only the act of taking a photograph, but also how it might be used, what it could convey, and what could be done with it? Maybe. But in this digital era of endless data, AI, and deepfakes, do we even know what happens to our own pictures once they are shared?
There is another question that troubles me. When we repeatedly photograph and expose people in moments of hardship, what story are we telling about them? What presumptions are we perpetuating? Are we helping others see their humanity, or are we reducing them to a single dimension of their lives? A child is never just poverty. A woman is never just suffering. Yet a photograph can easily become a box that confines an entire community to a single aspect of their existence.
Perhaps this is where my discomfort comes from.
I don’t believe there is a shortage of representation of what is going on in East Africa. If people do not feel empathy, it is hard to attribute that simply to a lack of visual exposure to human vulnerability. But even then, I am neither a journalist nor a photographer, and most importantly, I am not a member of this community. I am a visitor, coming from a place of privilege that necessarily shapes my perspective. That reality does not prevent me from sharing about what I observe, but it does place a responsibility on me to think carefully about how I choose to represent these people I have grown to love. There is undeniable value in documentary photography, especially when it exposes harm or supports accountability. Images can serve as witnesses to abuse, horror or grief. They can mobilize nations and rally support. But there is something to be said about the people we instrumentalize to achieve those goals.
People are not collectibles. Their stories are not souvenirs. Their hardship is not a backdrop for personal growth or a tool to strengthen arguments.
Visibility has a cost, and that cost needs to be taken seriously.
As for me, for now, I keep them in my memories.
Memories fade. They change shape over time and eventually disappear with us. Perhaps that is how it should be. Not every encounter needs to become a permanent record, nor does every visual need to be shared. There is a distinction between documenting inequities and sharing someone’s intimate vulnerability.
I want to share the pride and beauty of Africa, while discussing its challenges. The absence of people’s photographs may make my writing less immediate. It may even make it less persuasive. But if I am writing about human dignity, then respecting that dignity cannot be something I advocate only in theory. It must also shape the choices I make, including the images I decide to capture – or not. This is what I owe to the people I write about.
