Pieter Hugo spent a year taking photographs.
Photograph after photograph shows practically no volume at all of used electronics. None of MELTWATER of Accra. None of internet cafes. He was out to make money.
Photo after photo shows heartbreaking eye shots of people scrounging and scavenging.
Pieter Hugo will make a lot of money on his photos of these people. And then he'll leave.
Based on the ratio of his photos to the actual geek/scavenger ratio in Accra, Hugo apparently has no moral compunction about that major, detailed study which was released, specifically about Ghana, showing that 85% of used electric and electronics products imported were good, only 15% waste. If he is advertising himself as someone with a year of experience in the field, and he does not fairly show what is happening, he loses the qualifier "accidental" in my book. He will destroy people.
I urge you all to look at his slide show on Newsweek. Have you never seen so few electronics and so many pictures of desperate black people?
Fareed Zakaria, stop this madness. Please Fareed, I am BEGGING you. Stop this madness. I realize you are not editor there any longer, but you are one of the journalists I hoped would weigh how planned obsolescence in hindsight is trying to take the internet away from geeks of color, by taking a small percentage of the fallout and casting it, in racially charged photography, as indicative of the norm.
God in heaven... why do we ignore mining and criminalize recycling? I can think of no other reason other than that we feel guilt over poor people. Pieter Hugo didn't go to the OK Tedi Copper Mine in Papua New Guinea, he photographs people of color recycling, and we are left to deduce that recycling is bad, or these people would be white and speak English.
In that case, because they recycle, they would be Heroes.
Cover tune by aptly named Los Mecanicos of David Bowie's classic. In Spanish, like the 9 people sharing my house.
[addendum - The photo I used of Pieter Hugo's was removed by google. I considered an editorial specifically criticizing a picture to be fair use, if the picture is not used to promote, monetize, etc. If I am accusing Leonardo da Vinci of painting a racist painting, and I put (in small format) a painting as an example, I believe that the fact I'm referring to the painting and criticizing it is recognized as fair use. If Mr. Hugo wants to correct me, he could contact me. The picture showed 3 black men in dirty clothes, walking on a barren landscape, with barely a piece of e-waste visible.]
Photograph after photograph shows practically no volume at all of used electronics. None of MELTWATER of Accra. None of internet cafes. He was out to make money.
Photo after photo shows heartbreaking eye shots of people scrounging and scavenging.
Pieter Hugo will make a lot of money on his photos of these people. And then he'll leave.
Based on the ratio of his photos to the actual geek/scavenger ratio in Accra, Hugo apparently has no moral compunction about that major, detailed study which was released, specifically about Ghana, showing that 85% of used electric and electronics products imported were good, only 15% waste. If he is advertising himself as someone with a year of experience in the field, and he does not fairly show what is happening, he loses the qualifier "accidental" in my book. He will destroy people.
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| Confirmation bias |
Fareed Zakaria, stop this madness. Please Fareed, I am BEGGING you. Stop this madness. I realize you are not editor there any longer, but you are one of the journalists I hoped would weigh how planned obsolescence in hindsight is trying to take the internet away from geeks of color, by taking a small percentage of the fallout and casting it, in racially charged photography, as indicative of the norm.
Confirmation Bias [wikipedia.org] = "a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true".
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| Tech in Ghana fixing used copiers 2011 |
In that case, because they recycle, they would be Heroes.
Cover tune by aptly named Los Mecanicos of David Bowie's classic. In Spanish, like the 9 people sharing my house.
[addendum - The photo I used of Pieter Hugo's was removed by google. I considered an editorial specifically criticizing a picture to be fair use, if the picture is not used to promote, monetize, etc. If I am accusing Leonardo da Vinci of painting a racist painting, and I put (in small format) a painting as an example, I believe that the fact I'm referring to the painting and criticizing it is recognized as fair use. If Mr. Hugo wants to correct me, he could contact me. The picture showed 3 black men in dirty clothes, walking on a barren landscape, with barely a piece of e-waste visible.]
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