Stealing the Souls of Babies

This picture is worth a thousand words yes? (Taken from a stock photo website)

The last time I went to Zimbabwe, my whole available family, minus the grandparents all took a trip to Victoria Falls and I remember the maddest I ever got on that trip and in a very long time was when some tourists tried IT. Out of the 14 or so cousins that were there, one of them was a baby. He's very young and wasn't walking yet. As such, we were all carrying him in turns and keeping him giggling and generally taken care of. Although that time of the year was not the busiest at the Falls, there was no shortage of tourists, black and white, navigating the trail. Most people were following it in the same direction so it happened quite frequently that we would end up at the same vantage points as other groups of visitors. Now! There was this elderly couple with a serious British accent and they looked like the fairly well-to-do pensioners or retirees enjoying their empty nests and seeing the world yadi yadi yada...

Most people, myself included, had cameras and were snapping away all the amazing shots of this breathtaking place. Yes - I too, a Zimbabwean, was in awe of this wonder of the world. We were all taking pictures of each other and as you can see in the pictures below my baby cousin featured quite frequently.

This elderly couple we kept seeing were taking a picture of each other and at a point turned their attention to my baby cousin and started cooing and aahing how cute he was and pointed their camera at him. Lord! (It is Grace alone that stopped me from smacking that camera into the Zambezi River meters below. The nerve! The bile! The gall!! To 1. NOT ask and 2. feel entitled to taking a picture of someone who is not consenting when there are ADULTS in his presence that you decide are not capable or worthy of an ASK. 

This is how these foreigners come and take pictures of what i'll call the Stock African Baby and apply it to the narrative of all those pictures we see on this end about babies in Africa.  He or she must be poor and starving or sick and oh pity him/her. To those who take the picture it's wow they REALLY really experienced not only the nature, through the Falls, but they saw "real" Africans complete with a baby [who must be all the negative things]. That picture, for those who do not know Africa nor have ever been, represents what you are supposed to see. That retiree would have gotten their full "authentic" African experience with that picture. Since they themselves didn't interact with us they could make up anything they wanted. After all it was sunny, there were the falls, a variety of wildlife (baboons, warthogs, elephants and hippos), the cherry on top would be that picture of a baby. It wouldn't matter what else they saw on their trip because those types of travelers only see what they are expected to see so they really see very little. 

Every time I see those pictures in NGO or travel brochures or what have you I always wonder who consented to this picture and even if the person was asked were they, or someone on their behalf, given full disclosure as to how that image would be used? I certainly do not have the power to be on site every time one of those pictures are taken, but gosh darnit that day it was not going to happen on my watch! Are they mad?! I said NO! If I went to England and took a picture of them in their nursing home and brought it back to show how miserable and abandoned the Europeans treat their elderly it would be disrespectful, dishonest and exploitative.

See the point isn't that my baby cousin looked good or bad, rich or poor, but that those types of pictures are taken primarily for the purposes of propagation of the same dark struggling continent narrative about Africa. It is an industry, like that of celebrity gossip, where images sell. Because people outside of Africans have already decided what narrative is, we have to actively prevent those types of images from being the only source of showing Africa, whilst we simultaneously work at recreating an image of OUR real Africa. We are the ones that KNOW the continent best.

I say all this to say that, much like the Aboriginals believed, pictures are capable of stealing souls. Many indigenous cultures are exploited through imagery and primarily pictures and narratives are created about them outside of them. Although they are the objects, they become subjects without consenting. My baby cousin's image would have had a story created and possibly reproduced and distributed somewhere where we have no control. Imagine seeing an organization's brochure featuring your baby cousin, niece/nephew and you have no control what happens to it? 

It's kind of the same reason, in this age of the internet, that I am not on instagram and facebook and do not agree to be photographed at public events. I am not being a diva or stuck up, I am simply preventing and [self] curating how I am portrayed out there. There is a lot that we cannot control, but what we can we must.

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*@afropolitaine*