Humanitarian Photography: A History

Human Rights in History

by Heide Fehrenbach (Editor), Davide Rodogno (Editor)

For well over a century, humanitarians and their organizations have used photographic imagery and the latest media technologies to raise public awareness and funds to alleviate human suffering. This volume examines the historical evolution of what we today call “humanitarian photography” – the mobilization of photography in the service of humanitarian initiatives across state boundaries – and asks how we can account for the shift from the fitful and debated use of photography for humanitarian purposes in the late nineteenth century to our current situation in which photographers market themselves as “humanitarian photographers.” This book is the first to investigate how humanitarian photography emerged and how it operated in diverse political, institutional, and social contexts, bringing together more than a dozen scholars working on the history of humanitarianism, international organizations and nongovernmental organizations, and visual culture in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Based on original archival research and informed by current historical and theoretical approaches, the chapters explore the history of the mobilization of images and emotions in the globalization of humanitarian agendas up to the present.

366 pages, Hardcover

First published January 31, 2015

Reviews

[SpaceBear · Rating 3 out of 5]

An edited volume with a number of separately written chapters on very specific topics. The topics range from photography of the early Japanese Red Cross, to photography of early UN institutions in the 1940s, to British development organizations in the 1980s. But each chapter is very narrow in scope and subject, and there's no overarching analysis about humanitarian photography across time periods. For someone who wants to study humanitarian photography and read a dozen or so very specific case studies, then this is the book for you. If not, then its hard to imagine the book having much of an appeal beyond this.

[Dianita Caballero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cuál fue el rol de la fotografía en causas humanitarias a través de la historia?
Me gustó bastante leer estos ensayos. Disfruté ver los ejemplos y de ahí, analizar el contexto de cada campaña. Recomendado para fotógrafos/as, sociólogos/as, trabajadores de ONGs y comunicadores.

[Hannah Gallacher · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 STARS