Looking back over 150 years of humanitarian action: the photographic archives of the ICRC (original) (raw)
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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.
Introduction The Morality of Sight : Humanitarian Photography in History
2015
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 genealogies, evolution, and epistemologies of what today we call “humanitarian photography”: the mobilization of photography in the service of humanitarian initiatives across state boundaries. The term itself is of recent origin, in use only since the 1990s. Yet over the last two decades, prizes and fellowships – such as the Care International Award for Humanitarian Photojournalism , the Luis Valtueña International Humanitarian Photography Award , UNICEF’s Photo of the Year Award , and the Photocrati Fellowships – have been endowed in its name. 1
For more than half a century, the Fundamental Principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity and universality have underpinned the global humanitarian work of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. But how have these principles evolved since their codification in 1965, and to what extent have they been adapted for modern day conflict and emergency contexts? Are certain principles more 'valuable' than others, and what can the successes, failures and controversies of the past teach us about the future of humanitarian work? These are just some of the thought-provoking questions raised in a new report: Connecting with the Past: The Fundamental Principles in Critical Historical Perspective. The report, a collaboration between the ICRC, Exeter University and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, reflects the debates and key points raised by eminent academics, historians and humanitarians who attended a symposium at ICRC headquarters in Geneva in September, 2015. The event and related report, examine five significant periods of history, starting with the founding of the Red Cross in 1865 and ending with the post 9/11 era and the many unprecedented and complex humanitarian challenges that have arisen throughout. (see also https://www.icrc.org/en/document/new-report-connecting-past)
Humanitarian Emotions Through History: Imaging Suffering and Performing Aid
Emotional Bodies: The Historical Performativity of Emotions, edited by Dolores Martín-Moruno and Beatriz Pichel, 2020
The emotional dimensions of witnessing human hardship and suffering through images are key to ensuing humanitarianism. Yet while images of suffering have historically evoked a range of ‘humanitarian emotions’, contemporary commentators lament that a ‘politics of pity’ now commonly fuels western humanitarian practices. While this is often highlighted as a more recent phenomenon, emotions evoked in response to suffering have deeply historical origins. Scholars speak, for instance, of the guilt, sympathy, ‘irresistible compassion’ and again pity, which so moved people in the 17-18th century to act and alleviate other’s pain. This chapter therefore seeks to explore these historical linkages. It examines the historical emergence of humanitarian emotions and sensibilities through tracing how early humanitarian representations bear out in those in the present day. Analyzing early modern and contemporary media images of suffering, the chapter focuses on how the history of representing distant suffering has contributed the proliferation of a ‘politics of pity’ through which humanitarian actions are performed and practiced. Exposing the historical and cultural contingency of such emotions, the chapter concludes by emphasizing how bodily feelings and affects hold immanent possibilities for political - and humanitarian - transformations.