Category: Ethics

  • The Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock (Part 1) – Errol Morris

    The Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock (Part 1) – Errol Morris

    The Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock (Part 1) In the 1930s, a photo of a cow skull leads to charges of photo-fakery and involves FDR, the Farm Services Administration and an enormous amount of press. via Opinionator: http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/the-case-of-the-inappropriate-alarm-clock-part-1/ Three different photographs. Three accusations of photo-fakery. Of the three, only one appeared to be an…

  • Photography and Race Conference « Prison Photography

    Photography and Race Conference Arrest 1 (1965) by Bridget Riley I’d like to propose an alternative method to discuss issues of race in visual culture and the photographic industry, but first some preliminaries. HUGO AND TH… via Prison Photography: http://prisonphotography.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/photography-and-race-conference/ I am sure most photographers have a lot of common ground to stake. But unfortunately,…

  • Ralph Lauren fires photo-chopped model for being too big – Boing Boing

    Ralph Lauren fires photo-chopped model for being too big – Boing Boing

    Ralph Lauren fires photo-chopped model for being too big Ralph Lauren fires model via Boing Boing: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/14/ralph-lauren-fires-p.html “These are sick, sick individuals,” Ridell added. “God bless them for saving our industry.”

  • What is Time magazine thinking? | dvafoto

    Link: What is Time magazine thinking? | dvafoto: for a magazine such as Time, which I still believe has journalistic importance and merit, this photo essay of illustrations denigrating Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize in such a ham-handed and childish and poorly-executed way…I’m at a loss for words

  • Beauty in the eye of the retailer | Marianne Kirby

    Beauty in the eye of the retailer | Marianne Kirby

    Beauty in the eye of the retailer | Marianne Kirby Marianne Kirby: It’s a sad commentary on the magazine industry when even the most attractive women in the world are retouched in Photoshop via the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/09/magazine-industry-retouched-photoshop It’s a sad commentary on the magazine industry when even the most attractive women in the world are…

  • Sugar and Spice and all things not so nice – The Guardian

    Sugar and Spice and all things not so nice Garry Gross, Richard Prince and the story behind the Brooke Shields photograph via the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/oct/03/brooke-shields-nude-child-photograph The Richard Prince photograph of Brooke Shields that Tate Modern recently withdrew from the exhibition Pop Life, after Scotland Yard suggested it might break obscenity laws, travelled across the Atlantic carrying a long…

  • Children of the revolution – The Guardian

    Children of the revolution This week a photograph of a nude 10-year-old Brooke Shields was removed from Tate Modern on police advice. But when the image first appeared in Playboy in the 70s there wasn’t even a ripple of shock via the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/oct/03/attitude-to-children-in-seventies This week a photograph of a nude 10-year-old Brooke Shields was…

  • Lifting the Veil of Mere Pixel Perfection – NYTimes.com

    Link: Lifting the Veil of Mere Pixel Perfection – NYTimes.com: Concerned that girls and women feel excessive pressure to live up to the digitally botoxed and liposuctioned images of human perfection they see in glossy magazines, lawmakers in Britain and France are trying to get marketers to acknowledge the tweaking done to the photos. Under…

  • PDNPulse: TIME's Detroit Cover: How Much Toning is Too Much?

    Link: PDNPulse: TIME’s Detroit Cover: How Much Toning is Too Much?: Does the version of the photo on TIME’s cover go too far with photo manipulation?

  • From the Archive: Not New, Never Easy – Lens Blog

    Link: From the Archive: Not New, Never Easy – Lens Blog – NYTimes.com: In two years of global warfare, America had yet to see almost any pictures of dead Americans. Then, in September 1943, an issue of Life magazine arrived in people’s homes and at their corner newsstands. It forced them to confront a stark,…

  • Readers’ Voices: Public and Private Trauma

    Link: Readers’ Voices: Public and Private Trauma – Lens Blog – NYTimes.com: No subject we’ve tackled in the first four months of the Lens blog has touched quite so raw a nerve as our Sept. 4 post (”Behind the Scenes: To Publish or Not?“) about a decision by The Associated Press to distribute a photograph…

  • A Photo Editor – Is Photo Manipulation Bad For Photography?

    Link: A Photo Editor – Is Photo Manipulation Bad For Photography?: Grayson and Mike at Outside Magazine asked me to write an essay for their photography issue and we settled on the topic of photo manipulation. It’s certainly a hot button issue these days not only because of how easy it’s gotten to make realistic…

  • Mostly True: Kennerly: Chop Crop in the Lens

    Link: Mostly True: Kennerly: Chop Crop in the Lens: I felt really compelled to try to answer a few questions on the David Hume Kennerly piece (controversy?) today.

  • Essay: Chop and Crop – Lens Blog

    Link: Essay: Chop and Crop – Lens Blog – NYTimes.com: However, Newsweek’s objective in running the cropped version was to illustrate its editorial point of view, which could only have been done by shifting the content of the image so that readers just saw what the editors wanted them to see. This radical alteration is…

  • AP Defends Photo Release – The Digital Journalist

    Link: E-Bits – The Lens Cap Comes Off: AP Defends Photo Release – The Digital Journalist: In her journal, Ms. Jacobson expresses consideration, compassion and concern for the families of soldiers shown in conflict. Her mission as she states it: “Then, there’s the journalism side of things, which is what I am and why I…

  • At Toronto Film Festival, Cautions on Documentaries

    Link: At Toronto Film Festival, Cautions on Documentaries – NYTimes.com: The report found that documentarians, while they generally aspire to act honorably, often operate under ad hoc ethical codes. The craft tends to see itself as being bound less by the need to be accurate and fair than by a desire for social justice, to…

  • Journal entries of AP photographer embedded with US Marines in Afghanistan

    Link: Journal entries of AP photographer embedded with US Marines in Afghanistan – The Digital Journalist: To publish or not is the question. The image is not the most technically sound, but his face is visible as are his wounds. Many factors come into play. There’s the form we signed agreeing to how and what…

  • Telling the Whole Story – The Digital Journalist

    Link: Ethics: Telling the Whole Story – The Digital Journalist: The controversy has always involved the conflicting interests of two cultural titans, a military charged with protecting the nation and a free press that has the task of informing the citizenry. The military has historically favored less war-related information for public consumption while the journalists…

  • John Burns Discusses Sultan Munadi – At War Blog

    Link: John Burns Discusses Sultan Munadi – At War Blog – NYTimes.com: Sultan Munadi is dead, and a British paratrooper whose name we may never know. There may also have been Afghan casualties, perhaps Taliban, perhaps not; that we also don’t know yet, for sure. But from where I am writing this, on a sunny…

  • POV: To Publish or Not?

    ::: The Travel Photographer :::: POV: To Publish or Not?: Every day we see photographs of Iraqi corpses, Palestinians horribly maimed, Afghan women with horrific burns, Congolese civilians beheaded, and many others. They are also loved ones and have families too, yet we show them in our publications without even thinking twice. Yes, sometimes, a…