One of the most important features of this course for me so far has been how much it has forced me to question why I take images, what I’m trying to say in those images, and whether they are successful or not in delivering the intended message. But more importantly, its taught me that I’m not the only protagonist in the process – there is also a place, a time, and an audience at the moment the image is viewed, just as there was a place, a time and a photographer at the point of taking the image. And on both occasions, there was a social, historical and cultural overlay (and you could include many others adjectives here to – racial, sexual, emotional, psychological), mostly subconscious and, certainly in my case, woefully under-considered.
I will consider more broadly the notions of “spectator” and “gaze” in a later post, but here I want to consider specifically one aspect of the Author, Subject, Audience triangle, namely the ethical dimension.
Since a lot of my work is about landscape, people do not often figure directly in the images, but they are often there, indirectly, as part of the composition. I am aware that I often use people to provide physical perspective in the images, or to illustrate a particular “use” of the land. The photograph below is a good example of this. It’s a typical beach scene on the promenade at Felixstowe, but it could be almost anywhere, and it’s part of the body of work I’m developing about how people interact with and mould, the land and coast around Felixstowe.
In taking this image, I am aware that I’ve not singled out any individual that might be readily identifiable; it’s a generic scene showing lots of different activity and it’s the collective image that’s important, not any individual in particular. But those choices are deliberate here. Even walking around with a camera you can get noticed quite quickly and I’m conscious that I don’t want to be seen to be voyeuristic. If I do come across someone I really want to photograph individually, I try to engage with them first, even though that can break the spontaneity that I might have wanted to capture. Occasionally I’ll take the image first and make contact afterwards if it appropriate. But there are definitely times when I back off from taking an image if I think it’s too intrusive. In my mind it comes down to a point on a spectrum between empathy and exploitation, and the tricky ones are those on the borderline – and that’s when I think you are bound to speak to someone if you think you have “stolen” something from them, for which you need their permission.
Susan Sontag is right on two counts here and her words sit in the back of my mind on these occasions:
“…. there is something predatory in the act of taking a picture. To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed”. Susan Sontag, On Photography.
“To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed”. Susan Sontag, On Photography.
But what of the audience? Context is everything in the interpretation of an image by a viewer. Often it is ambiguity in an image that makes it interesting and deliberately invites a wide range of interpretations, and in most artistic work, I think that’s perfectly acceptable. But there is a fine divide between an image that purports to show one thing and actually shows something very different, if that difference is deliberate and intended to mislead. The embargo on the alteration of news images is a good example (though even then, cropping can make a big difference even if it doesn’t alter the content of the image itself). More subtlety perhaps, Steve McCurry has come in for criticism for the image of the “Afghan Girl” which, although widely acclaimed at the time, was taken in circumstances that were not necessarily as clear cut as was assumed at the time1. Similarly the image of the “The Falling Soldier” by Robert da Capa has been questioned several times concerning its authenticity (see https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jun/14/robert-capa-spain-photography).
In all these cases, I think that the photographer, in the choice of subject for an image, in taking the image and in displaying it (in whatever form), does have an overriding ethical duty to be truthful in their representation of the image, and, where appropriate, sensitive to the subject matter, not degrading it, patronising it, or misrepresenting it. This approach does not in any way need to curtail creativity, but it should inform it.
Note 1. The story about concerns regarding this image were voiced by Tony Northrup on his youtube channel in March 2019 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuFKpaV_jjo). There followed contact from representatives of Steve McCurry and the video was taken down. The video was reinstated a week later with one correction and a much longer list of sources, together with an explanatory video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q_NAEaiC9M. Northrup essentially confirms the voracity of the original video but with some clarification. It’s an interesting, cautionary tale in its own right about getting sources correct and providing the references for those sources.