Leslie Dodson's TEDxBOULDER talk: relate to discussion on visual documentation

This talk reminded me about our discussion on visual
documentation and how they tend to intensify suffering, generalize suffering,
and “present subjects as passive and viewers as comparatively active.” These are
actually evident when the speaker showed pictures of “the utterly distressed
[…] the displaced, [and] the hungry.” These are indeed real ethical dilemmas
surrounding the ways in which poverty is portrayed in media and or in research.
While these issues are serious, I personally find it hard to deny the fact that
somehow there is also good that we can get out of them. For one it raises
awareness and educates other people who may have never neither encountered nor heard
about poverty in X country. And while yes they might be limited to a single
snapshot or 2D image that the photographer thought was “the” representation of
poverty but it is still something, in fact maybe that was what it all takes to
spark motivation for poverty (or any kind of) action.

Nonetheless, I am still left asking what then IS the right
way to depict poverty so that it is not intensifying/romanticizing it, or
generalizing, or present subjects as passive (and viewers active)? Is it even
possible?

Thoughts?