viz.

Image credit: Diane Arbus

As part of the final project for our “Rhetoric of Social Documentary” class my students will be completing a brief documentary film on a local issue and so we spent this week talking about the ethics of documentary filmmaking and the discomfort many people feel in having their picture taken.  We began the class with a discussion of Susan Sontag’s chapter “America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly” from On Photography in which she considers the work of Diane Arbus and the shift in photography away from lyrical subjects toward material that is “plain, tawdry, or even vapid” (Sontag, 28).  Sontag explores the artist’s decision to focuses on people she terms “victims” or “freaks” and argues that Arbus attempts to suggest a world in which we are all isolated and awkward.

Credit:  New York Times

H/T:  Jezebel

I found an interesting article posted on Jezebel today about a New York Times story, with an accompanying video report, about anti-abortion protestors rallying together after the death of an anti-abortion activist, James Pouillon, in Michigan last month.  The article specifically discusses the ethics of using such images within the debate, which is a particularly vexed question.

Image Credit:  Vice Magazine

I couldn’t resist covering this piece that Tim brought to my attention.  NPR did a segment covering the evolving phenomenon of “ruin porn” by interviewing a writer, Thomas Morton, who wrote an attack on this phenomenon for Vice Magazine.  Morton argues against these images because he says they mislead audiences about the actual economic state of Detroit.

An article this week on Stinky Journalism, Danielle Mastropiero's "Photoshopped Images Booted from Press Photo Contest," calls to mind a couple of other similar incidents in recent memory: first, Adnan Hajj's laughably bad Photoshop manipulations of smoke plumes over Beirut during Israel's summer '06 bombing campaign; and second, Iran's equally laughable manipulation of publicity photos from their summer '08 test missile test launch.

Image source: Stinky Journalism.org

Click on 'voteringen' in the menu of this Flash-animated comparison of Christensen's submitted photographs, their RAW files, and the Photoshop auto-corrections.

On Tuesday, November 18, Slate featured pictures by photographer Jonas Bendiksen in "Today's Pictures."

Liberty Mutual, the insurance company, is the sponsor of "The Responsibility Project," a multimedia effort to get people to consider what it means to do the right thing. The project was spawned by the overwhelming public response to a Liberty Mutual commercial -- you've probably seen it -- in which a chain of strangers in some urban setting do nice things for each other without recognition. The "nice things" are mostly small acts of courtesy -- we're talking moving a stranger's coffee cup away from the edge of a table so that it doesn't fall off, opening a door, keeping a van from backing into a motorcycle. Not world-changing acts here. Yet the argument of the commercial, apart from "buy Liberty Mutual," is that these chains of small acts of kindness have big results. With Hem's weepy song "Half an Acre" playing in the background and city-dwellers pausing in contemplation of an unexpected kindness, wistful looks in their eyes, the commercial probably elicits a groan from the cynical and a tear from the sentimental. Or, if you're like me, a tear followed by a groan.

That was the seed. The flower is a website with numerous short films exploring the issues of responsibility, obligation, community, and, yes, serendipity. The website reads, "We believe that the more people think and talk about responsibility, and even debate what it means, the more it can affect how we live our daily lives. And perhaps, in this small way, together, we can make the world just a little better." I watched one of the short films, "The Lighthouse," which was all about the way a community comes together to keep the lighthouse lit and prevent a ship from foundering disastrously on the rocky shore. It was sweet. Inspirational. Manipulative?

Now, it's not that I don't think that discussion of these issues is important. It is. And it's not even that I object to pathos-laden appeals to duty. But something about an insurance company sponsoring this discussion really bothers me, probably because these short films, while interesting statements on their own, are being used in the service of promoting Liberty Mutual. "The Responsibility Project" is an ethos-builder for the company. But is that a bad thing? Check out the website; I'm interested to know what others think.