Source A: The meal before the photograph

An original contemporary non-fiction-style practice text, written for this question.

The kitchen occupied a school sports hall after the river crossed its banks. I had come to photograph its work for an appeal. The coordinator asked me to wait until lunch was served, but the light through the high windows was already fading. I could see the picture I wanted: a steaming bowl, a tired face, the volunteers blurred behind. It would explain our need quickly. That, I told myself, was my job.

A woman in a damp green coat sat down with soup. I introduced myself and explained where the photograph might appear. She nodded. I moved a packet of tissues out of the frame and asked whether she could turn slightly towards the window. Then I asked her to pause with the spoon just above the bowl. She held it there while I adjusted the exposure. A drop fell back into the soup. I asked her to do it once more.

“Could I eat it first?” she said.

She spoke without anger, which made my embarrassment less easy to defend against. I lowered the camera. In arranging an image of hunger, I had become the person delaying lunch. Behind her, a volunteer was trying to find a smaller spoon for a child. The hall contained dozens of needs that did not become more real when I could fit them inside a rectangle. I went to the serving table and asked where I could leave my bag.

After she had eaten, the woman asked about the appeal. I showed her the draft caption. She corrected the name of her street and asked me not to photograph the patch on her coat: her sister had sewn it, badly, and would recognise her immediately. We both laughed. She agreed to a picture of her hands around a cup, but said she did not want her face used. This was a smaller picture than the one I had imagined, and it told less of the story. Those were reasons to explain its limits, not reasons to take more.

Before leaving, I wrote the restrictions beside the file number and checked them with the coordinator. The appeal still needed photographs. The kitchen still needed money. I could not solve that tension by deciding that all cameras were cruel. I could begin by remembering that a useful image was something I might be permitted to make after a meal, rather than something for which a meal existed.

Source B: From A Passage to Africa — George Alagiah

Read Source B in the official Pearson anthology (printed pages 4–5).

Compare how the writers present their ideas and perspectives about the responsibilities of people who witness others’ suffering.

Support your answer with detailed examples from both texts, including brief quotations.