Smita Sharma: On empathy in storytelling
In this episode, we talk with Smita Sharma about how she approaches difficult and sensitive stories by first connecting to people with empathy. She stresses the importance of considering safety, both for herself and for the people she photographs, and she shares some creative strategies that she has used to protect people’s identities. Smita describes how she makes decisions about what information to reveal about a person, and what information to withhold, and how she takes time to ensure that she has informed consent from the people she photographs.
What you’ll find inside:
“I did not start asking them: how were you raped? I think that’s really wrong and very insensitive. It takes time to work on something sensitive and something which is so difficult, and you don’t want to re-victimise them by asking them difficult questions.” (6:00)
A technique for ensuring confidentiality (8:40)
A description of informed consent (16:35)
“I think the person that we photograph, that person does us a favour by sharing their story. We are not doing a favour, they are doing a favour to us. So we have to respect that.” (22:30)
“I don’t think any experiences goes for a waste, even my work that I did as a journalist, I think it has come very handy even now because I know how to navigate through things, difficult things because I already had that kind of experience working as a correspondent.” (27:30)
“Don’t be in a hurry to get recognition, to get your work published. Because I see a lot of people they who want to take up work because it’s the hot topic. … I don’t know how invested can one be in something that you don’t really care about. At some point you are going to get bored of it. So I think you should only invest your energy into something that you really like, that you really care about. And then you should follow it.” (32:40)
What does photo ethics mean to Smita?
“I think photojournalism cannot sustain itself without having ethics as a backbone. And I call it a backbone because you cannot create things which are not real, you cannot distort facts, you cannot stage scenes, you cannot do that.” (35:15)
Links:
Sexual Slavery in Central African Republic for Human Rights Watch
Stolen Lives: The harrowing story of two girls sold into sexual slavery for National Geographic
Recording of Photography Ethics Symposium: On gender, power, and documenting vulnerability with Smita Sharma and Laura Saunders
Smita Sharma is an independent photojournalist and visual storyteller based in Delhi. Her work primarily focusses on human rights, gender, crime and social issues. Her work has been published in various places like National Geographic Magazine, The New York Times, BBC World, TIME, Channel 4 amongst many others. Smita has exhibited and shown her work across the globe including the UN Headquarters in New York. She is a Getty Images grantee and an IWMF Fellow. She received the One World Media Awards for the short film Rebels With a Cause in the Popular Features Category at BAFTA, London in 2019.
Other than her home country India, she has also worked in other countries highlighting difficult and sensitive issues such as child marriage in Nepal, teenage pregnancy in Kenya, sexual slavery in Central African Republic and murdered transport workers of Guatemala.
You can see her work at http://www.smitasharma.com