"Enjoy Poverty": humanitarianism and the testimonial function of images

The overlap between production of humanitarian imagesand interventions in contexts of natural and man-madecatastrophes is growing on a global scale. An increasingly close relationship exists between image production, news production and humanitarian industry. In this article, weargue that this process is transforming the meaning of thesocial, political and ethical act of bearing witness. We analyse the epistemic and political implications of visual humanitarian testimony through the documentary film Enjoy Poverty (2008), shot in Congo by the Dutch artist Renzo Martens. Examining some of the key scenes of the film, we undertake an analysis of the visual culture of humanitarianism within which the contemporary production of sensational images of strong emotional impact is inscribed and justified. We maintain that rethinking testimonial debt in light of contemporary visual humanitarianism fundamentally means toacknowledge and explore the hierarchical relationshipthat visual humanitarianism creates between thewitnesses, the victims and the spectators. We conclude by arguing that Enjoy Poverty constitutes an attempt to generate a new visual, discursive and political horizonwithin which one can prevent the transformation of thetestimonial relationship into a relationship of power.