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Contribution short abstract

Focusing on photography in development advocacy, this paper asks how images can reveal forms of change that escape metrics and policy logics, while interrogating the ethical tensions of representation, affect, and the risk of turning suffering into spectacle.

Contribution long abstract

Photography has become a central tool in development and advocacy work, widely used by NGOs, independent media, and social movements to educate publics, mobilise attention, and generate urgency around social and environmental injustices. In Indonesia, visual storytelling is frequently deployed to convey harms that policy briefs and technical reports struggle to communicate, particularly in contexts of environmental destruction and structural violence. This contribution reflects on how photography enables affective and relational forms of knowing that exceed dominant development metrics, shaping how harm, responsibility, and care are felt rather than merely understood.

At the same time, the paper interrogates the ethical risks embedded in visual advocacy. The affective power of images can slide into the aestheticisation of suffering, emotional manipulation, and extractive circulation, especially when urgency overrides consent, context, and accountability. Images that succeed in moving audiences may simultaneously reproduce spectacle, flatten complex histories, or reduce communities to symbols of crisis. These tensions raise critical questions about what kinds of visual practices are considered successful within development frameworks, and what forms of impact remain invisible or uncounted.

Drawing on examples from advocacy photography and documentary practices, this contribution explores how photography operates within a double bind: as a tool capable of fostering ethical attention and solidarity, yet also one that risks reproducing harm through its circulation. The paper asks what it would mean to value visual practices that prioritise relationship, dignity, and ethical restraint over measurable outcomes.