Underdeveloped: Nature, Naked, Children and Poverty (Onderontwikkeld: Natuur, Naakt, Kinderen en Armoede) (2024)

Overseas, the photographers went in search of situations, scenes and people that they considered representative of the countries, places, peoples and lifestyles that they encountered. Whether they were actually representative was not a question. And those photos have taught us here what the world looks like there. The people from there had no say, no voice, no agency. They themselves had no say in the image formation. Together, these photos now form collections that function as a visual cultural archive, a kind of collective image bank from which we consciously and unconsciously draw. These images form our world view. From an early age, they are fed to us because they are used for educational material and in museums, media or advertising. They are the photos that supposedly say something about the world around us.

When it comes to people of color, we mainly see nature, nudity, children and poverty. The photographs show underdeveloped primitive lifestyles without mechanization or modern means of production, people depicted as part of the natural environment – often partially naked and without shoes -, children who embody the underdeveloped metaphor of peoples to be educated and simply poverty. These images influence how we are taught to look at the world and what we expect to see when we travel ourselves. It also influences the way we relate to the world. We the developed western world versus the underdeveloped rest of the world.