Photography is important in supporting quality research and publicizing Sonder’s mission to contribute to a fairer world. But photographs can do harm and reproduce unfair power dynamics. This page gives you background on how to think about photography at Sonder and how to ensure your use of images meets Sonder’s ethical criteria.

The main takeaways are:

• When photographing
  • we discourage the use of photographs of people with recognizable features
  • we encourage images of hands, people from behind, shots from far away, colour, movement, play and everyday objects. These can reveal a lot about a place and an ambiance without risking people be identified to a place or activity. They can also demonstrate that the people you meet have full lives beyond the subject matter you are studying
  • be very clear about the consent form before starting your research. DO NOT speed over it. Clearly state the reason for taking the photographs. As a best practice ask them for their contact information or share yours if you decide you might want to publish the images
  • even with the consent form signed, ask before taking photographs
  • attempt, with the best of your ability and with self-examination, to create the space where people are comfortable telling you “no”
• When publishing photographs
  • when you want to use a photograph with identifiable people, ask yourself what message you want to convey and try to find alternatives that convey a similar message
  • write captions that state the reason for using the picture with identifiable people
  • ask yourself who gains from the publication of a photograph with identifiable people, better yet ask the people in the photograph if they consent to being published on certain platforms (and explain why you want to publish it)
  • if you are the publisher of the photograph, you will most likely be the one in the position of power, and gravitate towards your own/project or Sonder’s own interest. Don’t do this, check with those identifiable in the picture before publishing
  • we encourage you to use collage, doodles and illustrations
• When preparing a project including photographs
  • set out time to think about the images you hope to capture; include this thinking in your research protocol, and share it with your team and client
  • ensure that the content collected remains private and unidentifiable

Photography creates implicit messages

There is a long history of those in more powerful positions taking photographs of landscapes and people to create (intentionally or unintentionally) narratives that support their vision of the world.

Famously colonialists/settlers in Australia, America, and Africa, photographed landscapes as wild and empty, for instance, and this helped produce ways of thinking about these territories as places to extract from, dispossess, and transform because “nothing” was there. Similarly photographs of Native Americans did a great deal to present them as “noble savages” to be “civilized” which contributed to their cultural and physical genocide.

Today in a similar fashion the not-for-profit sector is known for using “poverty porn” aesthetics to present a specific way of understanding the world. In similar ways that the colonialists presented this to world to gain support and funding to civilise/ exterminate people and settle and extract resources, non-for-profits today have an interest in representing certain people as needing their services to receive more funding, donations and projects. Intentionally or not the humanitarian sector has an interest in presenting the world as of needing “empowerment.”

The way we visually represent places and people in our work produces ways of thinking about them. At Sonder we must be cognizant of this so as to not create messages that do not respect the context. To counter this you can:

• Capture colour, movement, play and everyday objects that demonstrate that the people you meet have full lives beyond the subject matter you are studying (that can often be grim — poor health, poverty, sanitation, etc.)

The caption reads “A young man who has not come under the influence of progressive methods” clearly suggests the modern project is “progress” and ignores the brutal way Native Americans were being removed from their lands for “progress” to take place.

This landscape from Narok County in Kenya taken in the context of Pathways shows both the beauty of the landscape, and the way the human and animal presence inhabit it.

Colonial landscape photography produced ways of thinking about foreign territories as places empty and wild.

• Ask yourself why you are using this picture and write this clearly in a caption. For instance instead of leaving the audience wondering why you may have photographed a group of 4 women in an informal settlement that may come across as dingy, state clearly in a caption “this is a picture of a co-creation session in Mathare, Kenya where we mapped young women’s pregnancies”.
• After an interview show your pictures to those involved and see if they feel it is representative of how they understand themselves and their environment. At Sonder we aim to establish relations as exchanges in which participants feel empowered to defend their ideas and thoughts, and where we, as investigators, acknowledge the dynamics we create when we enter someone's world in the context of research.

Even when consented to, the user of the photograph generally gains more from the photo than the one in it

Photographs use an immediate and visceral visual language: looking at a photograph you can identify people, feel situations and understand contexts in ways that illustrations or paintings cannot. It is because of this communicative power that we love using photographs; but it is also why we must be very careful with their use. This is the case especially in contexts of unequal power dynamics as photos can cause more unforeseeable harm for those included in the frame and tend to profit the user of the photograph more than the one being photographed.

A good example of this is in the 1985 photo of Gula, a Pashtun girl taken in the Pakistani Nasir Bagh refugee camp by Steve McCurry. While McCurry became world famous and brought awareness to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, it also made Gula into an icon she never agreed to be. This image meant that even as recently as 2021, she had to flee the Taliban to Italy because of her “iconic” status. We never want our photos to impact someone’s personal life, that is not Sonder’s mission.

By being photographed, Gula’s life was radically altered in ways that she never consented to. Steve McCurry, the photographer gained world fame.

Consent forms/talks around photographic practices in field and project use are essential, but they have their limits, especially when power/social dynamics between photographed and user of the photograph are as unequal as in the settings we work in. For instance your research participant or project colleague may have agreed to be photographed for the social capital gained in that moment; Or want to be photographed for the happiness of being seen and for sharing their life experience in the moment. It doesn't mean they fully agree or gain from what happens to the photograph after.

It’s similar to when you consent to a software update: you tend to do it because the short term benefits outweigh the long-term implications of giving up your privacy; you consent to the update, not necessarily to being surveilled by Silicon billionaires. At Sonder we want to imagine an alternative to the way power dynamics play out, so let’s do things differently!

We work in vulnerable settings where consent tends to be given quickly without all the ramifications clearly understood by us or the participants. Because, generally those publishing the photographs have more to gain than those included in them, at Sonder we do not want to reproduce this unfair power dynamic through the images we publish. To counter this you can:

• Ask yourself who gains from the publication of a photograph with identifiable people, better yet ask the people in the photograph if they consent to being published on certain platforms (and explain why you want to publish it). If you are the publisher of the photograph, you will most likely be the one in the position of power, and gravitate towards your own/project or Sonder’s own interest (”this photographs makes our research team look diverse and hard-working”) rather than think about the multitude of other possibilities and consequences those in the pictures might face if you were to publish it (for instance one of your teammates many not want their network to know they were working on the project or where they are).

WIP in Kenya for Vaccine Delivery Insights

Illustrating a Narok interview context during Pathways

• When you want to use a photograph with identifiable people, ask yourself what message you want to convey and try to find alternatives.
• Take and publish photographs of people without recognizable features, such as of hands, people from behind, objects, blurry movement shots, shots from far away. These can reveal a lot about a place and an ambiance without risking people be identified to a place or activity. Some examples of images taken from our projects, Vaccine Delivery Insights and Pathways (to the left), may inspire you, but be creative!
• We encourage you to use collage or illustrations to capture the feeling you are trying to communicate or statement you are trying to make. Below is an example from our publication on the BMGF’s 2020 Goalkeepers report.

We published WIP in the BMGF’s 2020 Goalkeepers report of three women’s stories we met in the context of our work on Pathways. We convinced the publishers to use hand-drawn illustrations of the three women and real photographs without any faces and captions. For more: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/goalkeepers/report/2020-report/#GlobalPerspective