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The problem with photographing 'poor whites'
28 Jun 2010
On Friday 25 June 2010, the New York Times published a photo essay by award-winning Canadian photographer Finbarr O'Reilly on white poverty in South Africa. Neither O'Reilly nor America's paper of record seemed to appreciate the intractable paradoxes involved.
The driving idea behind Finbarr O'Reilly's photographic essay on white poverty in South Africa, published last Friday in the New York Times, is that race shouldn't have a voice in the conversation. In some of the photographs he manages to achieve the ideal: the barefoot schoolchildren walking past a pile of litter; the woman living with her family in a wooden toolshed; the caravan park with its tragic flower gardens
But it's in the image of the long queue at the food truck that O'Reilly's ambition comes unstuck - the people handing out the food are black, the supplicants, with their weather-beaten faces and ill-fitting clothes, are white.
It's this reversal of stereotypes that is by definition where O'Reilly's essay finds its power, and while the goal of subverting race in South Africa is a noble one, there's a sense in which it appears disingenuous and naïve.
Continue reading the full story on www.thedailymaverick.co.za.
Source: Daily Maverick
Daily Maverick is a unique blend of news, information, analysis and opinion delivered from our newsrooms in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa. There are many ways to describe exactly what we do (and for the price of a cup of coffee we’re capable of talking your ears off about it), but the best way to understand the end result is to experience it. Every part of Daily Maverick is free-to-air and no payment is required, although free registration is required for a small subset of functions and pages.
Daily Maverick is run by an independently owned, private company with no affiliation to any other media group (or political party or religious organisation.) Follow Daily Maverick on Twitter at @dailymaverick.
Go to: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/
About Kevin Bloom
Kevin Bloom, associate editor of www.thedailymaverick.co.za, is an award-winning journalist, editor and author who has written for a wide array of South African and international publications. In his magazine career, he was the founding editor of The Media, editor-at-large of Maverick and joint editor of Empire. Email him at az.oc.kcirevamyliadeht@nivek.
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