viz. - ethics

Struggling with the Ethics of Image-making: Sontag, Arbus, Snapshots, and Portraits

Andi — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:21:00 +0000

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.

One of my students seized on Sontag’s argument about Arbus’ awkward depictions of her subject and suggested that feeling awkward while having a portrait made is common to all of us but that looking awkward in a portrait is seldom the goal of the sitter. This comment led us to consider whether Arbus might be exploiting her subjects or, at the very least, seeking their least flattering image amongst many shots in a series. As a class, we discussed the photograph of the child above with respect to the issue of consent from the people we photograph. The question of consent, however, brought us to question what it might mean to depict our subjects in a manner at odds from their own desired self-presentation—we looked at the contact sheet that shows the many portraits from which Arbus might have chosen and compared these to the one she did select.

Image credit: Diane Arbus

The relationship between the intentions of the person photographed and the photographer is a sticky one for documentary filmmakers and my students grappled with how to balance the ethics of taking someone’s picture (or mercilessly editing someone’s interview—we looked at some Michael Moore footage) with the goal of making an argument about a social issue. Sontag reminds us that the camera can function as “a kind of passport that annihilates moral boundaries and social inhibitions, freeing the photographer from any responsibility toward the people photographed”—a claim that my students really struggled with in our discussion of ethical image-making.

Posing for a photographic portrait is always uncomfortable. Barthes notes the anxiety that accompanies this experience and argues that in the act of posing, before the photograph is even taken, "subjects transform [themselves] in advance into an image" (Camera Lucida, 10). As a class, we considered the differences between posed portraits and snapshots and the possibilities for accounting for the goals and preferences of our subjects. Arbus’ snapshot portraits seem as uncomfortable as her static posed compositions. There seems no guarantee that the photographic genre will protect the wishes of those photographed. In fact, in many cases of social documentary the larger argument is in direct conflict with the desired self-representation of the subjects. Tricky territory here for my students and I am looking forward to watching them craft their larger rhetorical claims while keeping in mind the ethics of image-making.

Ethics in the Abortion Debate

Rachel Schneider — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:30:23 +0000

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.

I happened to find Nate’s blog on here from February when several billboards were displayed in front of Gregory Gym with graphic pictures of fetuses. I also remember seeing such images, and feeling that their presentation seemed to lack enough context for me to judge whether or not the photos were credible evidence of the claim that they attempted to present: namely, that since fetuses look human, they are humans, and so that ending their lives via abortion is murder.

What impressed me in the article was the interview with Monica Migliorino Miller, the professor whose photographs are featured in the Times’ photo review. She claims in producing her images, she has “precisely documented each fetus she photographed, by date, location and — with the help of a doctor — gestational age.” It’s then important to note that all of the photographs presented by the NYT in their review are all of fetuses at least fourteen weeks or older, almost three months along, and thus are more fully formed than others earlier in the first trimester. What isn’t addressed is how the fetuses were obtained for her to photograph in the first place: does the mother have the right to decide whether or not her fetus should or could be so photographed?

Like Nate, I’m not sure what role such photographs should or can play in an ethical debate about abortion. The more the photograph’s context is described, the more it can usefully contribute. However, as pointed out to me by my colleague Sarah Orem, such images threaten to preclude debate by claiming an authenticity that cannot be easily disputed. What might also make these images especially fraught is how the photographic lens in these cases seeks to penetrate the intimate interiors of a woman’s body. I know that Andi has already discussed the ethics of war photography, but these images seem to hold a different status. Photographs make claims to presented “reality” which many of the images on this blog itself seem to disprove. How much responsibility does a responsible rhetor have to take on in using and arguing against such images?

Love For The Ruins?

Rachel Schneider — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:32:22 +0000

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.

I think Morton makes a really interesting point about the nature of visual rhetoric, and how easily it can be abused, to his interviewer, Bob Garfield, in the NPR piece: “I think when you’re presented with a photo and then a little bit of description of it, the image stands so strongly that it’s almost hard to argue it; you’re throwing what seem like minor quibbles at this shot of utter desolation.” He’s specifically addressing photographers illustrating stories about contemporary urban blight with photos of buildings abandoned in the 1950s, but he also raises the larger ethics of photographing urban blight for aesthetic purposes.

When pictures like these from Vice Magazine, which are included in a story about abandoned schools in Detroit, work to argue for the reader to move beyond the pictures to agitate on behalf of Detroit’s schoolchildren, this seems to be non-exploitative. Morton points at articles and photo series like these from Time Magazine as examples of stories that edit out positive developments in favor of focusing on the bad. However, this isn't the only example of the phenomenon. Websites like Abandoned focus on ruined buildings exclusively for aesthetic purposes. What are the ethics of enjoying looking at ruins for the sake of looking at ruins?

I’m particularly interested in this question as a student of eighteenth-century British literature, as ruins came up again and again as a trope for arguments about lost religious values (focusing on ruined abbeys), and for arguments about rural redevelopment as discussed in Raymond Williams’ Country and the City (epitomized by Oliver Goldsmith’s 1770 poem, “The Deserted Village”), but also as a trope for aesthetic enjoyment. Lord Elgin argued that he had the right to take the Elgin Marbles to Britain because Greece could not care for them appropriately, but this was at the service of cultural appropriation. Ruins seem to serve certain cultural purposes both in England and America today, but for what ends?

Digital Manipulation and the Ethics of Representation

micklethwait — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:15:16 +0000

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.

The ethical question of representation in these cases branches out beyond simple questions of technique. My gut reaction is that these questions of authenticity in reportage only seem to crop up in depictions of 'the Other'--realities of Haiti, Lebanon, and Iran being the examples I've chosen--but other cases come to mind as well, such as the indignation over unretouched portraits of Gov. Palin (for the cover of Newsweek) and Sen. McCain (for the cover of Atlantic Monthly).

As far as pedagogy is concerned, these cases of photographic manipulation provide an object lesson in the subtleties of plagiarism that are harder to convey than taking credit for another's work. Digital media and tools of manipulation have already deposited this comfortable academic principle in a vague, soupy ethical context. Still, how one represents the works (or realities) of another person opens the door to the specter of plagiarism. A careful exposition and discussion of these cases of manipulation and reportage might help to elucidate these vague or complicated situations for the average undergraduate student.

Poverty as poetry

kathrynjeanhamilton — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:35:11 +0000

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

The blurb about Bendiksen on Slate describes his work: "Between 2005 and 2007, photographer Jonas Bendiksen spent many months in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya; Mumbai, India; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Caracas, Venezuela, studying the daily lives of their occupants. The neighborhoods pictured in the book and exhibition of the same name (on view at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway) are some of the most densely populated places on earth. Cramped homes, often just a single room, provide little privacy yet contain complete domestic universes—everything a family owns. The book is a collection of voices and reflections on living in the world's fastest-growing human habitats—the slums."

Like much of the best art out there, Bendiksen's photographs find beauty in the forgotten places of the world. His lens transforms an empoverished landscape, like this slum in Mumbai, into a startlingly vibrant patchwork of color. The water pipe running down the center of the photograph provides balance and symmetry; the path the girl follows grows dim in the distance, but the viewer can see it continuing on through the stands and aside the wreckage.

This next photograph, of the Kibera slum in Nairobi, also takes an industrial fixture -- this time not a water pipe, but a railroad -- as its visual focal point. It is nighttime here, but light glimmers off of the wet ground, and passersby with their bright umbrellas provides specks of color against the blue-black night.

Do Bendiksen's photographs exoticize poverty? In turning urban blights into poetic expressions with the help of his camera lens, does the photographer minimize the tragedy of the scenes he's depicting? An alternative point of view would be to say that drawing the Western world's attention to forgotten slums in huge, developing cities in places like Kenya and India is a service, no matter what.

Responsibility Project

kathrynjeanhamilton — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:38:26 +0000

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.