Ethics In Photojournalism

Ethics and the role of the ‘victim’ in Photojournalism

Photography is extremely powerful, it has the ability to show us the world, or a version of it, and allows us to bear witness to events that we wouldn’t normally have access too, it feeds us information about the ‘other’ from the comfort of our own sitting rooms, encourages us to feel emotion and provides us with a visual ‘truth’. There is much debate surrounding the role of the photographer when it comes to capturing suffering, and photographing conflict, or vulnerable groups particularly the poor can lead to discussion around the ethics of photography and whether or not certain photographers are in fact exploiting their subjects by not giving the viewer a true account of the situation.

Lesley Jamison talks about the different ways that people experience empathy Jamison, Lesley. (2014). Pain Tours (I)' & 'Pain Tours (II). The empathy exams: essays. 1 (1), p79-90,151-159. She talks about and reflects upon the subject of 'empathy' whilst looking at other people’s pain and suffering, how we interpret or look at another person’s pain and suffering as well as how we view our own. She raises important questions in regard to the ethics of photography and the way in which we as the viewer perceive and react to an image or a situation. For example, 'poverty porn' elevates us as the viewer into a position or power and forces us to look at the subjects as victims, this may misrepresent the poor and only allows us to view them one way, when in fact their lives are

Kennedy, S. (2012). Framing Compassion. History of Photography. 36:3 (1), p306-314. In this article Kennedy talks about the act of framing compassion, Photojournalism is a way that photographers can communicate situations happening across the world such as acts of violence, atrocities, corruption, conflict and poverty and force them to the attention of the viewer. B, S Howard. (1974). Photography and Sociology. Studies in Visual Communication. 1 (3), p1-26 ‘At first, some photographers used the camera to record far-off societies that their contemporaries would otherwise never see and, later, aspects of their own society their contemporaries had no wish to see’ Kennedy presents the idea that 'Photojournalism' is seen by some as a western invention used to transport stories of horror across the globe with the intention of creating response from the west 'in particular the promotion of compassion as a commensurate response to the suffering of distant others'. His ideas raise questions about the authenticity of such imagery and indeed the intention of it and lead us to question if photographers own politics come into play when they are documenting something from across the globe, therefore significantly impacting on the message being