Ethics?
Hello again and welcome to another blog.
Well in the last few days you couldn’t have helped but hear the news that the Queen has passed away at the age of 96. This is one of those unique moments in history, no matter where you sit regarding the monarchy.
As it seemed this was one of those historical defining moments, I went out to try and document it in some way, a previous version of NathanPhoto would possibly have travelled to Scotland or London to try and make a defining image, this newer version had settled on making an image local to Manchester.
Think one of the most striking things about this event was the use of advertising screens to project the image of the Queen onto, nearly all the electronic billboards, display screens and information screens shared a portrait with the dates of her life. I’m not sure I’ve seen this level of coverage for any other events that have happened since the billboard’s introduction. Using this as a starting point and while wandering about making images form these signs, I captured an image of the overhead billboard on the Mancunian Way with the events of life going on beneath it.
Initially I believed that I’d ended up making a picture that absolutely told the story of the current state of this country.
The image contains a homeless woman begging along the ring road and as I was making images, a car beeped her, she went over, the people in the car passed her what looked like, and I am guessing here, a half-eaten takeaway meal which she took, then the passenger passed some coins to her, she then returned to her spot at the side of the road to eat the contents of this meal. I was slightly dumbfounded by this whole chain of events and as I captured it all, under the shadow of the Queens billboard, I realised what a truly sad sight it was. I’ve noticed people camping under the overpasses for a while now and hoped that they could find some shelter from the elements, hopefully long enough to cover this winter too but think as they stay, if the rubbish builds up and they continue to beg along the passage of stopped cars, then they’ll be moved on. It is such a sad sight to see, alas quite common and completely indicative of the state of this country which has been led into crisis by decisions made in Government, in my opinion.
Anyway I was a bit too enwrapped in the process to give proper thought as to what I was making and sadly I was in the old adage of ‘get before thought’ that most press/paps go for as an excuse, and which I’ve unfortunately, had to subscribe to in parts of my career to get make a pound or get through things. As well as that, I didn’t follow my usual advice that I have given to students when making images in city centres that you shouldn’t make images of homeless people unless you have their consent, get to know their name, something about them so as to gain informed consent within the image.
Traditionally I think this would be seen as a great image but as I thought further about it further, I realised something. How could I publish this image; how could I dehumanise this person further by showing the photographic evidence to a wider public of doing what she needed to do to survive, without at least talking to her. I then realised that even by talking to her and in her current position she has no power to give thought to ramifications or offer consent, so no matter what I did, an exchange of money etc. She’d still be powerless to the effects of this image going forward and how fair is that? How would anyone feel about that if it was you?
I’ve made the decision not to publish the image, I may show it at talks etc so as to aid discussions around image making but at the moment that’s only a possibility as I’m still considering the whole image, it also brought up so very old feelings about image making in certain circumstances. This feeling is very reminiscent to some parts of my career (career used as a verb) in which I’ve had to make images for many different purposes and in many different ways, that sometimes have not reflected well on me, the subject or the situation, sometimes deserved and sometimes not, it is a chapter of my life that I believed I had closed, or so I thought until I made this image.
Looking back in the early 90’s and beyond in practice the Ethics of image making was somewhat lacking, I think the individual over the many, symbolised by the yuppie ‘loads-of-money’ character sums up to what extent ideas of people were thought about. Little flashback to when I was once asked to try and get a picture of a certain celebrity falling over and it was inferred that if they didn’t do it naturally then I could help them to do that, I never got that picture.
Ethics is somewhat of a new topic, and it really shouldn’t have been, this ties into an idea I had for a piece about the examination of previous prevailing winds about which images are held up to be ‘good’. I have discussed this and aim to discuss again either on here or in my research practice. If you think of the start of this discussion a great example would be thinking about the ‘Afghan Girl’ by Steve McCurry as the example of what the prevailing winds
It's only after you find out about some of the stories behind that picture, that it starts to be seen in less favourable ways. I will say that for me there was always something about it that I didn’t like. The image was taken, proper consent not really sort, all sort of patriarchal, great white hunter vibes about it that made me question what I was looking at but with most voices (especially those driving market forces, another rant of mine) expounding its virtues it was a difficult place to be in, the last seat at the table is not always the best place to start thought practice that may undermine what the people with power are thinking. Again this is only a decision recently realised as for many years it was held up as an example of good photography.
Food for thought.
Again as we’ve discussed the images in this blog via text, I think I’ll leave you with a quote to balance the ship, this from a recent interview in Aperture Summer 2022 magazine guest edited by Alec Soth, where he was in conversation with the writer Siri Hustvedt and in a small piece he says what I’d been thinking around for a while and is evident in this blog too, he answers:
“During the pandemic, I forgot how to approach people and also got so in my head about: Oh, is it right for me to approach someone? What are the ethics of this? The political ramifications?
Alec Soth. Aperture magazine. Summer 2022
Thank you for reading.
Postscript. As I was thinking about this piece and reading about AI image making, I realised that I wasn’t sure I’d explained the two images fully. Here is a full image description text:
1) The first image is in portrait format. The image shows what looks like a homeless woman stood in the middle of a dual laned road holding a white bag with a yellow/orange fast-food container holding her hand out to receive coins from a downward facing hand protruding from a car window which is stopped at a redlight on an urban inner ring road with an overpass looming large over them. A digital billboard is at the top of the frame showing a side portrait image of the late Queen with the royal crest and the dates 1926-2022 in the top corner.
2) A second image is in landscape format. It shows the same homeless woman sitting on a wooden divider rail, her face is pointed upwards while holding her mouth open, dropping the food from the fast-food container, in the background there is a prominent ‘do not turn right’ road sign made clear by the plain concrete of the overpass behind it. A queue of cars with redlights wait at a traffic signal that displays the stop signal. A digital billboard is at the top of the frame showing a side portrait image of the late Queen with the royal crest and the dates 1926-2022 in the top corner.
