In the Darkroom: International Development Photography and the Naturalistic Enthymeme

Abstract

This paper compares the darkroom as a transformative space where film photographers developnegative images to international development organizations that aim to bring light to the nearly 1.2 billion people who live without access to electricity worldwide. Through a visual rhetorical analysis of the uses of light, shadow and nostalgia imbued in two photography collections published by an Indian NGO that trains poor, illiterate grandmothers from villages across developing countries to become solar engineers, I extend the literature on the use of visual arguments by NGOs, a literature that largely focuses on how international development agencies based in the Global North portray development in the Global South. Largely fraught with the violent colonial trope of bringing “light” to the “darkness” and “naive innocence” of the rural poor, these artifacts are not that different from standard NGO visual arguments. This paper points to ways in which such NGOs might better adapt their visual arguments to align with their mission for postcolonial development.