as small as a world and as large as alone

6:40pm August 21, 2014

mellivory:

youneedacat:

STAFF AND CLIENT

That has always been my title for this photograph, and it’s the only reason I have kept the photograph for so long over the years.  I don’t even remember who she was.  I just remember she was a staff person in an afterschool program I went to, for kids who were in the system.  And that this photo is the perfect embodiment of the difference between staff and clients — in power, in body language, in facial expression, in everything.

I swear I’ve seen dozens of photos like this.  With staff smiling radiantly at the camera, trying to look happy and pleasing and helpful.  And the client just kind of sitting there maybe trying to look at the camera but not a whole lot else.

I don’t know how many of you know the body language differences I’m describing here.  I don’t know how many of you can pick up on the social dynamic I’m trying to describe.  But I’m hoping that some people will, because this is one of those things I’ve seen over and over — I’ve seen entire walls at agencies plastered with this kind of picture — but I’ve never seen anyone say “Hey this is kind of weird” or “Don’t you find that a bit unsettling?”

I’m the “client” in this picture, if that’s not obvious.  The one with the long dark hair and the light brown dress.  The staff person has impossibly light blonde hair and a white shirt.

I really, really hope other people can see what I see in this picture, because so often I get blank looks when I try to show people offline what I mean.  Then again most of the people I show offline are staff…

I wish staff wouldn’t do this, in pictures, but I don’t know how to tell them what they should be doing.  Other than not putting on an artificially cheery facade that says “look how well I take care of these people” without ever saying it.

I knew two people who were ABA therapists who would take selfies with the children they worked with and caption them about how *great* and *improved* the children are since they started working with them.

They even went so far as to talk about the children’s specific behaviors in an attempt to contrast how GREAT they are now that they don’t do them anymore.

That was exploitative and invasive. It was wrong.

I’ve seen “staff and client” pictures in the past that have deeply disturbed me. I know what you mean by that and I agree absolutely. It happens.

People take pictures with their clients for the purpose of bragging about what fantastic people they are.

That said, I don’t really understand what’s wrong with her body language.

I didn’t know her and you have a much more intimate experience of what’s happening here than I do. Perhaps I can’t understand the subtleties.

I just know I have about a million pictures like this in my house with my family and friends that I cherish.

Perhaps someone could suggest some tips on taking pictures with clients? That way people can be proactive about their decisions instead of potentially causing pain for their client. Just an idea that would certainly help me, if anyone ever has the time / interest / energy!

I think the questions I keep getting “tips on taking pictures with clients” and repetitive “what should they be doing differently?” are not the right questions to even be asking.  And I can’t explain why they’re the wrong questions, but they’re the wrong questions and there’s something wrong with just the focus there.  What’s happening in these pictures is an entire dynamic between different kinds of people, and you can’t solve an entire dynamic by finding one superficial thing you can do differently, or worse, finding a way to make it look different in a photograph.

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