Italian Photographer Alessio Mamo Tries to Showcase India’s Poverty With Fake Food in Front of Real People, Gets Slammed

A series of photos posted showcasing India's poverty is being criticised on social media. The photos posted on World Press Photo's Instagram handle has attracted the wrath of netizens. The pictures showing people including malnourished children was clicked by Italian photographer Alessio Mamo. In the photos, people can be seen standing in front of a table of food with their hands over their eyes.

Titled 'Dreaming Food' the award-winning freelance photographer in the photo series focuses on undernourished people from villages from Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Describing the photo, the photographer in the caption says, "I brought with me a table and some fake food, and I told people to dream about some food that they would like to find on their table."

Here are the photos that sparked social media outrage:

However, the photos did not go down well with social media users who hit out at the photographer for his lookout on poverty. Many called the photographer 'arrogant', 'ignorant', 'insensitive' and the pictures as a reflection of what west thinks about the rest of the world. People also stated that photos showed irresponsible photojournalism.

And here is how social media users responded:

As the reproval continued on social media, World Press Photo responded in a Medium post saying, "Being a platform we do not limit photographer's choices beyond the guidelines provided, and we ask the photographers to respond directly to the audience when questions arise." They also shared their guidelines on Twitter.

Mamo won the second prize at the World Press Photo of the Year Awards 2018 in the People category for a photo of an 11-year-old victim of a missile explosion in Iraq's Kirkuk. Here is the photo:

On July 16, World Press Photo had tweeted that Mamo would be taking over their Instagram feed. The organisation selects photographers who regularly handle their account for a certain period of time.

Following the backlash, Mamo said that the photos were not shot with the involvement of World Press Photo but with a local humanitarian organisation. Defending himself in one of the responses, he said, "My intention was exactly to represent in a stereotyped way these Indian landscapes in order to reinforce the concept. This was the idea behind, maybe I did it wrong, or maybe just you don’t like or you think it’s unethical, but the concept was to problematize food waste in front of the hunger in this area of the world."

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 24, 2018 01:30 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).