More on ethics of photographing the miserable, model release etc.

[emraphoto]

Let us make sure we are not evaluating the situation of other people by our own standards. It is far too easy to assume what is so important to us is also important to them. You and I do not define "normal" for everyone else in the world.

indeed! people are people to me. i photograph people.

they only become 'homeless' or 'miserable' when i start judging. not much into judging folks.

 

[I Love Film]

Let's start a thread of funniest photos of homeless people!

 

[I Love Film]

You have to admit that Joel-Peter Witkin is a psychotic, even though he produces the occasional interesting photo.

 

[Sparrow]

I don't mind what morality people adopt, or how much hand wringing they do to justify their position, it's when they try to get me to adopt their standards I reach for the revolver ...

 

[kbg32]

If it is a story, with a definitive message, I have no problem with perceived ethics. One photo of some poor destitute homeless person shot from behind, posted here, with no relation to your other work, to show your "street photography cred", I have intense problems with your ethics.

 

[Teuthida]

Simple. Treat people as ends, not means. up to you to work out the details.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Simple. Treat people as ends, not means. up to you to work out the details.

Exactly. It's also about growing up. Which of us DIDN'T photograph 'picturesque' tramps, etc., when we were younger? But as we got older, with any luck we learned more about common humanity and human dignity.

Cheers,

R.

 

[AgentX]

Who said people shouldn't be free to take crappy pictures, or that I shouldn't be free to have an opinion on it?

 

[celluloidprop]

There's a Eugene Richards photo that I love that embodies everything that photography can do well regarding 'invisible people.'

It's not online anywhere, unfortunately, but it's 'Sabu's Home' from Americans We - a close shot homeless man on a filthy mattress holding his dog to his chest like that dog is the last good thing on Earth (which, for Sabu, it may well be).

I balance that against a photo that turned me away from RFF years ago - it was shot of a beggar in India, I believe, shot from a great distance, from above (standing while the woman was sitting or kneeling), from the side and just behind. I hated it with a fiery passion, it was the worst kind of poverty tourism. The many comments praising the shot only made me hate it more.

 

[semilog]

This is my starting point: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

 

[semilog]

"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you've not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow." — Woody Guthrie

 

[MCTuomey]

Praise Woody ... and simple respect for dignity.

 

[jsrockit]

This is my starting point: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

That's flawed though since you may like something done to you that other wouldn't like.

 

[semilog]

That's flawed though since you may like something done to you that other wouldn't like.

Hence the phrase "starting point." And I don't necessarily let the opportunity for a good photo prevent me from taking it, or showing it -- even if I might not have wanted to be the subject.

The operative words are respect and mindfulness.