Category: Ethics

  • Photojournalist Controversially Turns to AI to Illustrate ‘Inaccessible’ Stories | PetaPixel

    Photojournalist Controversially Turns to AI to Illustrate 'Inaccessible' Stories

    Photojournalist Controversially Turns to AI to Illustrate ‘Inaccessible’ Stories

    His Instagram account has been flooded with angry comments.

    via PetaPixel: https://petapixel.com/2023/05/15/photojournalist-controversially-turns-to-ai-to-illustrate-inaccessible-stories/

    Michael Christopher Brown used the artificial intelligence (AI) image generator Midjourney to produce a series of images that explores historical Cuban events and the realities of Cubans attempting to cross the 90 miles of ocean that separate Havana from Florida.

  • How AI Imagery is Shaking Photojournalism — Blind Magazine

    How AI Imagery is Shaking Photojournalism — Blind Magazine

    How AI Imagery is Shaking Photojournalism — Blind Magazine

    In this Op-ed, independent photography director Amber Terranova discusses one of the most controversial AI imagery projects in recent weeks.

    via Blind Magazine: https://www.blind-magazine.com/stories/how-ai-imagery-is-shaking-photojournalism/

    In this Op-ed, independent photography director and educator Amber Terranova discusses one of the most controversial AI imagery projects in recent weeks.

  • Sony World Photography Awards 2023 | boris eldagsen

    Link:

    I applied as a cheeky monkey, to find out, if the comeptitions are prepared for AI images to enter. They are not. We, the photo world, need an open discussion. A discussion about what we want to consider photography and what not. Is the umbrella of photography large enough to invite AI images to enter – or would this be a mistake? With my refusal of the award I hope to speed up this debate.

  • On ‘Exploitation’ in Photography | PetaPixel

    On 'Exploitation' in Photography

    On ‘Exploitation’ in Photography

    Street photographer Simon King offers thoughts on the concept of “exploitation” in the world of photography.

    via PetaPixel: https://petapixel.com/2023/04/02/on-exploitation-in-photography/

    The problem of exploitation in photography is a topic I see trending particularly toward dogmatic and cyclical patterns. Exploitation in photography is broadly the photographers’ “unfair” use of depictions they include in their photographs (people, places, events, etc) for their selfish benefit or at least a benefit that does not reach their subjects.

  • Why Discourse on Ethical Photography Matters | PetaPixel

    Why Discourse on Ethical Photography Matters

    Why Discourse on Ethical Photography Matters

    Street photographer Simon King shares thoughts about why it is important to have a healthy discourse on ethical photography.

    via PetaPixel: https://petapixel.com/2023/03/18/why-discourse-on-ethical-photography-matters/

    With this understanding, the common tendency to fault discussions about ethics in photography is quite odd. Why wouldn’t you want to understand the possible obligations that come with powerful photography? What is the mindset behind arguing against taking responsibility for what you are creating?

  • Q&A: Fred Ritchin on AI and the threat to photojournalism no one is talking about – Columbia Journalism Review

    Q&A: Fred Ritchin on AI and the threat to photojournalism no one is talking about

    Q&A: Fred Ritchin on AI and the threat to photojournalism no one is talking about

    In recent years, artificial intelligence engineers have used millions of real photographs—taken by journalists all over the world, and without those journalists’ permission—to train new imaging software to create synthetic photojournalism. Now anyone can prompt AI software like OpenAI’s DALL-E to generate convincing images of people or places that never existed, and of events that […]

    via Columbia Journalism Review: https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/fred_ritchin_ai_photojournalism.php

    The other thing to add to the puzzle is, if you start making millions of synthetic images, then the new AI will be training on those images as well. The concept of history will become more and more distorted, because they’ll be training on the images that are not made by cameras, but made according to the way people want to see the world. What happens if people have five million images of World War II according to the way they want the war to look, and they look like photographs, so that’s what the AI is going to be training on in the future?

  • Doc Filmmakers Reckon With the Industry’s Murky Ethics

    The Documentary World’s Identity Crisis

    The Documentary World’s Identity Crisis

    The boom — or glut — in streaming documentaries has sparked a reckoning among filmmakers and their subjects.

    via Vulture: https://www.vulture.com/article/tv-documentaries-ethical-standards.html

    Documentary-making has never been ethically pure or entirely subjective. (“I’m working on a project that is the kind of documentary where you do six takes of the person putting a boat in the water to get the right one,” one editor told me.) Every shot and every cut is a choice, and even its practitioners have never agreed on whether the medium is closer to journalism or to cinema. One of the earliest popular documentaries, Robert Flaherty’s 1922 film, Nanook of the North, was about a man supposedly living in the Canadian tundra, untouched by the wider world — and it was full of lies. Nanook’s real name was Allakariallak. His wife in the film wasn’t his wife. (She was, according to another local, one of Flaherty’s multiple wives.) Allakariallak hunted with a gun, but that didn’t fit the story Flaherty wanted to tell, so the director asked him to use a harpoon. In defense of his methods, Flaherty said, “One often has to distort a thing in order to catch its true spirit.”

  • Behind the LA Times’ decision to run a controversial photo with its coverage of the mass shooting in Monterey Park – Poynter

    Behind the LA Times’ decision to run a controversial photo with its coverage of the mass shooting in Monterey Park - Poynter

    Behind the LA Times’ decision to run a controversial photo with its coverage of the mass shooting in Monterey Park – Poynter

    The front page of Monday’s Los Angeles Times featured a photo of the shooter dead in his van.

    via Poynter: https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2023/los-angeles-times-front-page-newspaper-photo-mass-shooter/

    The photo, taken by Times staff photographer Allen J. Schaben, is not gory, and was taken from a distance. But the shooter is dead and the caption reads, “Officials investigate after the suspect died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Torrance on Sunday.” (If you want to see the front page of the Times, click here.)

  • LensCulture’s Street Photography Awards Spark Questions of Bias | PetaPixel

    LensCulture's Street Photography Awards Spark Questions of Bias

    LensCulture’s Street Photography Awards Spark Questions of Bias

    It raises questions of bias or impropriety.

    via PetaPixel: https://petapixel.com/2022/09/01/lenscultures-street-photography-awards-spark-questions-of-bias/

    Last week, LensCulture revealed the winners of its 2022 Street Photography Awards, including the top three series and top three single image winners. The competition is widely seen as the most prestigious street photography competition in the world. But less than a week later, the results of the awards have continued to instigate chatter, though not for the quality of the photos.

  • About those Ketanji Brown Jackson photos—what if the problem isn’t Annie Leibovitz? – TheGrio

    About those Ketanji Brown Jackson photos—what if the problem isn’t Annie Leibovitz?

    About those Ketanji Brown Jackson photos—what if the problem isn’t Annie Leibovitz?

    Images of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in Vogue’s September 2022 issue revived criticism of veteran photographer Leibovitz

    via TheGrio: https://thegrio.com/2022/08/19/ketanji-brown-jackson-photos-annie-leibovitz/

    OPINION: Images of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in Vogue’s September 2022 issue revived criticism of the veteran photographer—but is she solely to blame?

  • Would Showing Graphic Images of Mass Shootings Spur Action to Stop Them? | The New Yorker

    Would Showing Graphic Images of Mass Shootings Spur Action to Stop Them?

    Would Showing Graphic Images of Mass Shootings Spur Action to Stop Them?

    Returning to an old debate after the horrific killings in Uvalde, Texas.

    via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/would-showing-graphic-images-of-mass-shootings-spur-action-to-stop-them

    The root of their pain lay in the photographs’ gruesome specificity and its capacity to answer in precise detail questions that were too lurid to have occurred otherwise: how the bodies lay; how the dead faces were contorted; how the spatters of blood patterned the walls. Many in the courtroom, journalists and family members alike, averted their eyes. It seemed that the cumulative detail of those images could tell them little that they did not already know: nine people were dead for no other reason than the color of their skin.

  • From Sandy Hook to Uvalde, the Violent Images Never Seen – The New York Times

    From Sandy Hook to Uvalde, the Violent Images Never Seen

    From Sandy Hook to Uvalde, the Violent Images Never Seen

    Frustrated Americans ask whether the release of graphic photos of gun violence would lead to better policy. But which photos, and who decides?

    Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/30/us/politics/photos-uvalde.html

    “What makes this a challenging ethics call is that when you’re a photo editor, you never really do know which is the photograph that is going to seem exploitative, and what image will touch the conscience of people and move the needle on the debate.”

  • Magnum photographer defends images of teenage gang rape victim after humanitarian organisation removes them from website

    Magnum photographer defends images of teenage gang rape victim after humanitarian organisation removes them from website

    Magnum photographer defends images of teenage gang rape victim after humanitarian organisation removes them from website

    After controversy on social media surrounding Newsha Tavakolian’s photographs of East Congo, Médecins Sans Frontières announces internal review

    via The Art Newspaper – International art news and events: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/05/20/magnum-photographer-defends-images-of-teenage-gang-rape-victim-after-humanitarian-organisation-removes-them-from-website

    The celebrated Iranian photographer Newsha Tavakolian has defended herself against accusations of unethical practice after publishing a series of identifiable images of African teenage rape survivors made while on assignment for the international humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

  • AP Cancels NFT Sale Amid Criticisms it Would Be Profiting From Suffering | PetaPixel

    AP Cancels NFT Sale Amid Criticisms it Would Be Profiting From Suffering

    AP Cancels NFT Sale Amid Criticisms it Would Be Profiting From Suffering

    “Profiting from suffering”

    via PetaPixel: https://petapixel.com/2022/02/25/ap-cancels-nft-sale-amid-criticisms-it-would-be-profiting-from-suffering/

    After significant backlash, the Associated Press pulled plans to offer a video of a boat overcrowded with migrants as an NFT. The situation has called into question the ethics of selling photojournalism at all.

  • On the Depiction of Africans in Photo Contests – PhotoShelter Blog

    On the Depiction of Africans in Photo Contests
    For many years, the photo contest industry has contended with accusations of racism and classism for awarding and promoting “poverty porn.” Although many contests have worked to diversify their juries and tried to attract a broader field of entrants, barely a year goes by without a major issue or scandal.
  • Italian photographer dropped from prize after accusations he identified rape survivors in India without consent

    https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/10/19/photographer-dropped-from-prize-for-identifying-child-rape-victims
    By publishing full names alongside images, Marco Gualazzini stands accused of breaking child protection laws and putting his subjects in danger
  • More on Consent | Conscientious Photography Magazine

    https://cphmag.com/more-on-consent/
    There obviously is a topic here that extends beyond this particular case in question. Last year, I wrote an article about consent that focused on what I see as photographers’ obligations. It might be worthwhile, though, to approach the subject matter from the other side: from the vantage point of those find themselves on the other side of the camera.
  • Dancing with the gods of deception – Thoughts of a Bohemian

    Dancing with the gods of deception
    The latest and probably most potent existential rain dance is Magnum’s own Jonas Bendiksen Veles experiment. Using a mixture of AI, computer-generated content, real photos, and GPT 3, he put together what he hoped would be a self-destroying fake photo essay
  • Photojournalist Quits Canon Philippines Ambassadorship After Backlash | PetaPixel

    https://petapixel.com/2021/07/22/photojournalist-quits-canon-philippines-ambassadorship-after-backlash/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+petapixel+%28PetaPixel%29
    Photojournalist and new addition to the Canon Philippines “Crusaders of Light” ambassador program Jilson Tiu has called it quits after Canon failed to apologize for what he and many others viewed as a lack of diversity within its program.
  • The Ethics of Documenting Your Own Family | by Savannah Dodd | May, 2021 | Witness

    https://witness.worldpressphoto.org/the-ethics-of-documenting-your-own-family-7225ca8bd59a
    While turning the camera inward may alleviate ethical qualms about positionality, the influence of one’s identity on the way that we see (and thus represent) the world, photographing the people closest to us is not without ethical considerations of its own. As photojournalist and filmmaker, Amanda Mustard explains: “It’s a gift to have the perspective and personal experiences that allow access to important stories that may not be told with depth otherwise. But with greater depth comes the need for greater ethical care.”