May 6th last year, saw seven judges gather in a small circular room in the Siamsa Tíre gallery in Tralee. Marking sheets were distributed. They sat in darkness as over 170 images flashed on the projection screen before them. The aim of the day was to select 30 images for the ‘Visions of Africa 2008’ photography exhibition which would take place as part of nationwide Africa Day celebrations.

Africa Day is celebrated on the 25th of May worldwide to commemorate the 1963 founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).  This body  was succeeded in 2002 by the present African Union, while amalgamating with the African Economic Community (AEC). The aim of Africa Day is to challenge perceptions of Africa and promote a more comprehensive understanding of the diverse culture that springs from this vast continent; the emphasis is on celebrating the positive. The ‘Visions of Africa’ exhibition was shaped by this desire to celebrate the positive, but what exactly constitutes a positive portrayal of Africa?

It was deemed vital from the very day of conceptio to have Africans as a majority on the selecting panel for the exhibition. After all, who best to identify positive images of Africa than Africans? What the organisers didn’t realise was how much opinions would vary, judge by judge, and how much the concept of a ‘positive’ African message would be dismissed, debated, and deconstructed.

 The final judging panel comprised of three Irish and four Africans in the end. The Irish judges were Michael Diggin, one of Ireland’s premier landscape photographers, Ciarán Walsh, the visual arts director of Siamsa Tire, Tralee and Paraic O’ Carroll, a third year multimedia student in the Tralee Institute of Technology. The African judges were IT Tralee students Makibiti Moeketsi and Lerato Molise, originally from Lesotho, Louise Kasongo from Nigeria and Alinoor Ahmed from Somalia.

The selection process was deeply informed by the guiding principles outlined in the Dóchas Code of Conduct on Images and Messages which was introduced at the start of the selection process. The Code was written by a number of NGOs working in the areas of emergency relief, long term development and development education. Its guiding principles respect the dignity and equality of all people and accept the need to promote justice. All signatories to the Code are guided by seven basic principles in relation to the images and messages they employ while designing and implementing their public communications strategy. Three of the seven principles had particular relevance to the selection process. ‘Choose images and related messages based on values of respect equality, solidarity and justice.’ ‘Truthfully represent any image or depicted situation both in its immediate and in its wider context so as to improve public understanding of the realities and complexities of development.’ ‘Avoid images and messages that potentially stereotype, sensationalise or discriminate against people, situations or places’.

 The Code, initiated in 2006, was a response to the increasing number of ‘development porn’ images in circulation. What is development porn? It’s the image of a starving black baby being held by a white aid worker; the image of an Ethiopian woman and her children being fed by an NGO; the image of desperate Africans fighting for the grain being thrown off the back of an NGO truck. We’re all familiar with them. Images, in short, that perpetuate the colonial image of black Africa, on its knees and waiting for help to come from the developed world. The Western media is full of undignified images of Africans, naked, starving, hopeless and helpless. It’s estimated that in fact over 90% of photographs of developing nations that appear in the Western media come from American or European photographers, usually with an agenda to raise money, shock or incite sympathy.

The 1980’s coverage of the Ethiopian famine first brought the concept of development porn to the table for discussion. As Nikki Van Der Gaag, a freelance writer and editor points out, "Part of the Live Aid legacy has been the equation of famine with Africa and Africa with famine, reducing a continent of 57 countries, nearly 900 million people and numerous disparate cultures to a single, impoverished place." Pete Davis of Oxfam's education department said the repetition of certain types of images helped shape public assumptions. "The idea that pervades is that Africa is a broken, dusty place without food or hope," he said. "Many children in the UK simply don't believe there are cars, cities or mobile phones in Africa."

It was exactly these types of misconceptions that the ‘Visions of Africa’ exhibition set out to challenge. The judges were asked to mark each entry according to two main criteria. The first was the technical merit of the image. This criterion related to the expertise of the photographer. Was the image in focus? How well was it composed? The second criterion related to the content. Was the image engaging and communicative? Was it truthful? Did it respect the dignity of its subjects? Was it a positive portrayal of Africa? Obviously, this criterion was far less objective then its technical counterpoint. Throughout the selection process, any details relating to the context, origin or originator of the image remained anonymous. Admittedly this approach, for better or worse, ensured that several photographers have more than one image in the exhibition, often from the same country. This approach allowed each image to be freed from any context and judged on its own merit and visual message. It was important for the each image to stand alone.

The debates that followed proved both constructive and insightful. There are four images accompanying this article. The first three are those images that incited the most debate. The fourth image is the winning entry. The first is an image of two blond tourists in a boat navigated by an African woman. The image aesthetics are pleasing to the eye – the blue sky, the red skirt, the movement of the water through the centre of the frame – but the content itself caused some debate. When an Irish judge suggested the image could be perceived as a positive portrayal of Africa as a tourist destination, his suggestion was passionately contested by an African judge who asked him, “Cannot you not see the echoes of slavery in this image?” to which another Irish judge then responded, “If this was taken in Venice the gondolier would inevitably be Italian”. They all had a point.

The second image features a woman using a pestle and mortar whilst her washing hangs drying in the sun. Again, the image was not technically inept. It showed good use of light and composition, on some level it courts a romantic vision of a woman going about her daily chores with dignity. The image was instantly dismissed for portraying Africa as a backward continent, incapable of moving forward. The third image is a classic example of what we came to affectionately refer to as the ‘seventeen Africans around a well’ shot. It features no less that eleven Africans watering a newly planted tree. It is ill-conceived but well-intentioned at best, condescending, damaging and conceited at worst. It propagates the notion that Africans are like children and must be treated as such. No one disputed this image but it opened up the debate about development imaging in general.

The winning image also proves insightful in its own way. It received the most points in the marking system utilised. The image features two acacia trees on the horizon of the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania and was taken by a friend of mine during a holiday in Africa. He’s not a professional photographer. He’ll be the first to tell you how surprised he was to win the competition. He’ll agree too that it’s a nice shot but not a great shot. It’s not challenging or thought-provoking or powerful. Rather, it’s the opposite. It simply lacks the content to offend. This winning image does not represent the other 29 images that were selected that day in the dark, circular room in Siamsa Tire gallery in Tralee, but it does tell us volumes about the issues facing development imaging today. It’s indicative that the winning entry was taken by a non-African. In fact, over forty photographers entered the competition, professional and amateurs, aid-workers and tourists, but not one African. This fact highlights both the problem and the solution. There needs to be more indigenous photographers at work in the developing world if a more truthful portrayal is to surface in the Western media.

We all agree the truth must be told. Inevitably some of these truths will be shocking, ugly and negative but these developing-world issues must be balanced with a counter view of truths that are hopeful, challenging and positive. All truths must be told with the respect, dignity and equality of its subject firmly in focus, but to compromise this guiding principle puts us at risk of blurring the lines between cultural truths that serve global justice and cultural stereotypes that serve only to stymie it.