In Teju Cole’s June 13th article titled “Getting Others Right” he contrasts photographers who have judiciously captured the lives of others, in this case Native Peoples, despite being outsiders and those who have appropriated these stories. Cole praises Daniella Zalcman’s work “Signs of Your Identity” in which she conveys the experiences of First Nations Canadians who were forced to attend Canada’s Indian Residential Schools where they suffered assault and forced assimilation. Through the use of double exposures (as depicted below) and quotations from the subjects, their memories are visualized and the subject relays their own stories.  On the other hand, Jimmy Nelson’s “Before They Pass Away” features archetypes of populations he believes are on the verge of disappearing- these images  place the subjects in “a permanent anthropological past, erasing their present material and political realities.” Nelson’s work uses these people to tell his story, effectively erasing theirs. He even goes so far as to hide away aspects of their contemporary life, such as phones, televisions, and engines. This creates a dangerous sympathy with these “primitive” peoples.

Cole ends this article with the lines, “Capturing how things look fools us into thinking that we’ve captured their truth. But appearance is bare fact. Combined with intuition, scrupulous context and moral intelligence, it has a chance to become truth. Unalloyed, it is worse than nothing.” I enjoyed this article and this line most because it captures the duty all artists have to tell the story of their subjects truthfully and to use their platform to raise the voices of others, not to paraphrase their experiences to fit their personal narrative.

“Glen Ewenin, Gordon Indian Residential School (1970-1973), Muskowekwan Indian Residential School (1973-1975),” from “Signs of Your Identity” project, supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Daniella Zalcman.