The CAP (Coordinated Arts Program) Conference today was anything but dull. Incorporating the various streams into one conference offered up different approaches to many of the presentations. However, the presentations I watched all had several things in common. They either touched upon a social issue, a political debate or a public perception that needs to be changed. One presentation that I found particularly striking was Helen Wagner’s, who’s topic was ‘National Geographic and the Photographic Gaze: Commodification of Indigenous Peoples in Consumer Culture’. Her presentation focused on the January 2014 issue of the National Geographic, which featured a face close-up of a Brazilian Kapayo Tribe woman on the cover, photographed by Martin Schoeller.

What Helen argued is that National Geographic may be one of the most prominent sources  and windows to the Indigenous world in the Western World. In fact, without the magazine, we might not have knowledge about the lives and cultures of Indigenous people. However, a thought crossed my mind whilst listening to Helen’s presentation. I am a white, European, privileged young woman, who delves into any National Geographic magazine whenever I get the chance. I absolutely love reading it and particularly enjoy the photographs. Although I thoroughly enjoy the wilderness and landscape aspects of the magazine, I am admittedly always drawn to articles featuring previously unknown groups of Indigenous people, or tribes in remote parts of the earth. But why? Because I see it as exotic, as something I may only ever get to see in photos, so therefore I make the most of it when I have access to those images. I find it fascinating because it is so different to what I know and encounter in my everyday life. It almost dehumanises such groups, because they are seen as rare and different by consumers, particularly to the typical white person who may have a monthly subscription just because it’s a “cool” magazine to have on the coffee table.

So is the “exotic” nature of the subjects of many National Geographic magazines what makes it sell so well? Is this a marketing ploy for the consumerist Western world, or does the magazine truly wish to educate the world and feed our curiosity? Whatever its purposes are, the stereotypes associated with Indigenous people, should not be a feature, and the way the magazine represents them and the way we see them should also change.