The Projection of Poverty: Tracing the History of the Photographic Slideshow in Humanitarian Campaigning

This paper begins with a discussion of contemporary ‘multimedia slideshows’ or ‘photofilms’ increasingly used in campaigns by the humanitarian/NGO sector. One reason for the popularity of this means of communication is its particular power in combining photographs and words to tell individual’s stories. While there is a tendency within the sector to see these tools as highly innovative and even radical, the roots of multimedia slideshows in fact lie in projection apparatuses dating back as far as the seventeenth century; specifically the ‘magic lantern’.