Perspectives on Poverty (and other African stories)

I agree, in that many camera lenses focus on ‘poverty’ and the ‘ills’ of a ‘developing’ country instead of focusing on the beauty around them and forgetting that every society has problems of its own.
The dehumanising portrayal of Africans through media is hardly surprising, it is a tactic used against many groups that pose a threat to the social order to the control of the superior white elite; young people are a classic example.
In the late 80′s/early 90′s the house/rave movement had young people belieiving that they had power to change society; today consumerism targets our young people and is a strong contender against freedom and unity.
Having visited Ghana recently, and wanting to be deliberately ignorant in my knowledge of Ghana, i decided to research the country on my return, based on my experiences there. For example, during my time there, Ghana was celebrating its golden jubilee of independence. Yet i experienced much that made me question exactly how independant a country like Ghana really was. I later dicovered that Ghana was one of the richest countries in Africa before its conquest by the British, and whilst it regained its independence it joined the Commonwealth which has Queen Elizabeth II as the Head, and sponsored by BP (the UK’S largest corporation) and Urenco (operators of a nuclear fuel supply chain).
The relevance of this is that neo-colonial masters are continuing to oppress African countries through various ways; through the exploitation of national treasures, resources and attacks on cultural practices to the portrayal of the incapabilities of the people themselves. Yet against all the odds, i witnessed how people in the poorest parts of Ghana had a strong sense of unity, strength and warmth. They seemed to possess the understanding that they actually need and rely on each other to overcome their difficulties, completely exposing the “survival of the fittest” theory as a moral fraud.
Anyway, i took loads of photos which i hope captured the beauty of the county and its people, and I also attach a link to a very quick article i wrote 10 minutes before the deadline was due, so you will have to excuse its simpleness:

http://www.plymouthghanalink.org/My-Community-Xchange-Experience.aspx

I’ve been thinking about the Perspectives on Poverty project a lot in light of the recent Postcards from Hell photo essay on Foreign Policy. For example, the first photo (link) basically looks “poor” because of the lighting used. The focus of the photo is on the dust and the gray skies, but you can’t see the faces of any of the people in the photographs. What if the man looking at the camera was smiling? What is the boy was laughing? The photo could tell a completely different story with a change as simple as how light is used in the photo.