[Leica] Photojournalists and permission

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

>>fine if you want posed photos...
>>
>>Karen, are all of your photos posed ?
>
>Do I direct my subjects? No. Do I ask for permission? Yes. Do I ask 
>for consent forms. No.
>
>Everyone on the high holy horse of posing, my response is FINE. 
>But if you want to be ethical, you should ask permission before you 
>post their photos on the web. It's common decency as well as the law 
>in many places.
>
>But as I've said repeatedly, I hold myself to a pretty high 
>standard. You don't have to do so if you don't want to.
>
>Karen
>
>Karen Nakamura
>http://www.photoethnography.com/ClassicCameras/
>http://www.photoethnography.com/blog/

Karen, I think many of us believe we hold ourselves to a very high 
standard. Just because they are not your standards doesn't make them 
of lower value.

Sometimes it is held that there are universal ethics, and that from 
these subsets can be derived which are true under all circumstances 
and cultures. In my experience all these arguments fall apart at some 
point, and we are left to decide ourselves what standards we feel we 
have to live by. Demanding others live by the same standards as ours, 
or denigrating their standards (often well thought out) leads to a 
lot of the problems we have in the world today, even if the standards 
were developed with the best of intentions.

The ethics of taking pictures of strangers, or sometimes even family 
members, is a very complex subject that doesn't lend itself to simple 
rules and solutions. The motivations of the photographer, the purpose 
or use of the photos, the cultural context of both the photographer 
and the subject, the cultural moment as separate from the overall 
cultural context, the economic relationship as well as other factors 
in the relationship of the photographer and the subject, even the 
photo equipment all play a part in helping to determine what may be 
acceptable to a photographer ethically. And even if the phtotographer 
holds him/herself to the highest ethical standards, that may well not 
be good enough for the subject.

There is no absolute answer.

-- 
    *            Henning J. Wulff
   /|\      Wulff Photography & Design
  /###\   mailto:henningw@archiphoto.com
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