Photographing the down and out

[faberryman]

I cant see anything ethically wrong with taking photos of people in public (the laws take care of what you shouldn't do). The course of homelessness is unrelated and if anything would benefit by more exposure.
I do think people who demonize people with their own weird ethics to be a huge problem and I will challenge anyone who does so.....and I do.

Speaking of weird ethics, who decides whose ethics are weird?

 

[KerrKid]

Speaking of own weird ethics, who decides weirdness?

People in Austin.

 

[GregY]

People in Austin.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Interesting topic. Taking photos of the down and out. Has anyone factored in "selfies" yet?

 

[foc]

I have watched the thread from the side and I noticed that when posters said they had taken a photo in public and got some grief from the subject, it was resolved by talking to the person and gaining their trust.

Maybe show a bit of courtesy to the subject and chat and explain rather than snap and be gone.

None of us here will ever be as good as Gordon Parks, Kevin Carter or Don McCullin.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

I cant see anything ethically wrong with taking photos of people in public (the laws take care of what you shouldn't do).

Nope. The laws take care of what you can't do.

Your personal ethics take care of what you shouldn't do.

Whether you can or cannot kill someone is a legal matter; whether you should or shouldn't kill that person is an ethical matter.

 

[Brendan Quirk]

I confess I have not read the whole thread.

A. D. Coleman had much to say on this. I think that the gist was not to use people. And if you wish to expose issues, commit to trying to do something about them.

I suspect these sentiments are expressed in various forms throughout this thread.

 

[awty]

People in Austin.

I have seen Footlose....although after seeing Kevin dancing, it may be justified.

 

[xkaes]

Like I said before, taking a picture of anything if you are on public property (or your own) is legal -- even if what you are seeing is on private property. It's what you can do with the image that has some limitations/considerations/restrictions.

But it any event, you should not be surprised at all if someone -- whether homeless or not -- has a problem with what you are doing. And that can get you into trouble regardless of any legal or ethical issues.

 

[Eric Rose]

No but photographing the poor is morally insensitive unless you are taking the photos with the intention to somehow help raise awareness of their situation. The are out in the open and don’t necessarily have the privacy afforded to those who are better off. Taking their pictures like some sort of deviant or animal on display is offensive.

Exactly how I feel. When I did PJ work I felt it was doing some good. Now that I am retired I don't take photos of beggars etc.

To put then on Instagram etc. is just exploitation when no context is given is just exploitation imho.

 

[awty]

Nope. The laws take care of what you can't do.

Your personal ethics take care of what you shouldn't do.

Whether you can or cannot kill someone is a legal matter; whether you should or shouldn't kill that person is an ethical matter.

Your argument is being alarmist, one extreme to another.
Photographing what you see is proof of what is happening. Governments and some people would like to hide it.
When my wife visited Paris she was shocked at the level of begging, she was very active on Instagram and was friends with a number of people who lived in Paris, but they only take nice photos of their city.
You may not know that their is a huge amount of homelessness in Australia, but there is and it's very evident.
Not Photographing it is hiding the truth.

 

[BrianShaw]

Since you thought it morally wrong, you have no (moral) dilemma.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Your argument is being alarmist, one extreme to another.
Photographing what you see is proof of what is happening. Governments and some people would like to hide it.
When my wife visited Paris she was shocked at the level of begging, she was very active on Instagram and was friends with a number of people who lived in Paris, but they only take nice photos of their city.
You may not know that their is a huge amount of homelessness in Australia, but there is and it's very evident.
Not Photographing it is hiding the truth.

Nothing is hidden. Everybody knows there is immense poverty, everywhere. Everybody at every level of government knows it. The public knows it. There's no conspiracy to hide poverty. The problem is not knowledge. The problem is nobody wants to do anything about it. Especially the people who could do something about it.

The solution is not to have people see poverty. The solution is to have people care about the poor. Not you, not me, not anybody on Instagram. The people who can actually do something about it. Those who don't give a damn about whether or not you take a picture of a beggar on a street corner.

Will stop here. Getting close to being political—unavoidable if talking about poverty.

 

[Moose22]

rmission. Treatises have been written on this, and I am not equipped to try to summarize it all in a few sentences here.

In the US, if you sell a photograph -- put it "in commerce," in legalese -- the circumstances matter. A lot. Selling a photograph taken in a public place of another for use in a Chanel ad, probably requires consent. Selling a photograph at Gagosian as a work of art, probably not.

That's precisely what I said and meant. I tried to be simple because, frankly, this thread isn't about legality, it's about ethics.

The celebrity bit is merely an example of why the law is as such, but you don't have to be a celebrity to not want to endorse or be related to something. This is not the law, this is WHY the law was passed.

Funny side note, model who I went to high school with ended up on a pregnancy/free-clinic advertisement focused on high school aged girls. She'd signed a release, but of course we ALL got to see it because we were the demographic. She was embarrassed at first, but got over it realizing that's the life of a model.

In addition to selling a photograph to hang on a wall, news has very regularly shown photos and video of public places. Everything from setting a scene to covering an event might appear above the fold, full of people who were not consulted about their image being published. News is very much an "If you're in public you can have your image taken" thing, and news is definitely commerce.

If I was writing a story for news about the down and out, I'd not think twice about using photos of the down and out. But I'd probably follow the same ethical guidelines I'd follow for just about anything else, and I'm not one to use people's image if they DON'T want me to do so, so I'd likely find people who consented and/or find images where the people aren't prominent. Not a legal thing, I'm just not as ruthless as old-school news photographers often had to be.

 

[Moose22]

Interesting topic. Taking photos of the down and out. Has anyone factored in "selfies" yet?

I wouldn't dare.

Not ethical, though. Aesthetic. I have a face made for radio. There's never been a good photograph taken of me.

 

[Pieter12]

Your argument is being alarmist, one extreme to another.
Photographing what you see is proof of what is happening. Governments and some people would like to hide it.
When my wife visited Paris she was shocked at the level of begging, she was very active on Instagram and was friends with a number of people who lived in Paris, but they only take nice photos of their city.
You may not know that their is a huge amount of homelessness in Australia, but there is and it's very evident.
Not Photographing it is hiding the truth.

There are photos and stories galore about homelessness and poverty around the world. Many people choose to ignore it anyway. Taking a photo of someone who is down and out, as a freak or curiosity, without knowing anything about them or their situation or their story is callous.

And your comment about not photographing them being hiding the truth is nonsensical. Who am I hiding it from? My photos are not widely distributed, the overwhelming majority never get more than 50 feet from the darkroom.

 

[guangong]

Some beggars do quite well. Some years ago the New York Times did a feature story with photographs of someone who lived in an apartment overlooking the East River. Everything in his apartment...furniture, rugs, bed,...was white, and he only wore white suits, white shoes, etc., because it was necessary for him to dress in dirty clothes while working/begging. He made a nice tax free income.
When I was teaching at a lower Manhattan university, a lady worked the area around the subway entrance for years claiming she had no money for subway to get home.
On the other hand, there are tragic figures suffering from all kinds of calamities often not of their own making. Look at NYC, Chicago, SF, Baltimore, LA...all of these cities have one thing in common. Guess?

 

[Philippe-Georges]

In your example, the picture was sold for commercial purposes and the women never got paid or signed a consent agreement. Woold tn have been a problem if posted on social media in France?

I'm curious about what the definition of carrier is?

"Carrier" might be a wrong transition of the (French-) expression 'support'(*) due to my lack of good knowledge of you language.

By carrier I mean all kinds of (industrial) support, or vehicle, where the image is put on so it can be reached by the public: TV, internet site, Film, billboard, advertising, any public channel, magazine, newspaper, published book, brochure, report, anything where the user/publisher/customer have payed for (or not), even by the gouvernement or public services.
In this case, all things are very 'wide'...

So, in the OP's example, the homeless person, when that picture would have been published, and even could be 'consulted' for free, then the regulations about the "le droit a l'image" would apply...
Actually, every individual has "le droit a l'image", no exceptions! And particularly vulnerable people should be protected...

I still couldn't find an full covering translation for this French concept...

BTW, in my example, the woman could not have been asked for her consent as we, the art director, the account executive, the client's representative and me didn't see her as we were so focussed on the belfry...

(*) Élément matériel qui sert de base à une œuvre graphique. Le support d'un dessin (d'une photographie), le papier sur lequel il est fait.
Informatique: élément matériel sur lequel sont enregistrées, véhiculées et stockées des informations (images), dans un système électronique.

 

[koraks]

Seems like the very legitimate, and very compassionate, concern towards the beggar—"should I do it?"—has been obliterated in favor of the concern towards the photographer—"Am I allowed to do it?"

It seems that way, indeed, and thank you for signaling this interesting and perhaps worrying phenomenon of ethical issues being confounded with legal ones. Taking perhaps a little more optimistic view, I'd wager that people resort to a legal distinction because that one has at least a small probability of approaching something objective or absolute (but in the end of course fails, due to the inherent complexities involved). So perhaps it's just sidestepping the issue, because the actual ethical perspective it just so damn inconsistent and subjective once you start unraveling it. Had this been not the case, the entire field of philosophy would likely have been completed by around 400BC at the latest.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

As a US lawyer who practiced extensively in trademark law, and dabbled in privacy issues, I will say that the law is a good deal more nuanced, and confused, than this. People (not just celebrities) have a right to their likeness and it is infringed when their likeness is used without their permission. Treatises have been written on this, and I am not equipped to try to summarize it all in a few sentences here.

In the US, if you sell a photograph -- put it "in commerce," in legalese -- the circumstances matter. A lot. Selling a photograph taken in a public place of another for use in a Chanel ad, probably requires consent. Selling a photograph at Gagosian as a work of art, probably not.

This is an evolving area of the law -- more so on the privacy side, than on the trademark side. And the rules change not only from nation to nation, but also (at least as to the laws of privacy) from state to state in the US. YMMV.

Just as an example, in New York a photographer was found not to have invaded his neighbor's statutory privacy interests under New York law, when he photographed them through their window and presented the photographs as art. See Foster v. Svenson, 128 A.D. 3d 150 (1st Dept. 2015), which may be read here:

Foster v. Svenson, 128 A.D.3d 150 | Casetext Search + Citator

Read Foster v. Svenson, 128 A.D.3d 150, see flags on bad law, and search Casetext’s comprehensive legal database

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The court held that a work of art is protected speech, and that profiting by its sale does not constitute a violation of the plaintiff's privacy interests.

At least, that was true in New York. In 2015. The usual disclaimers apply.

I think that's the problem with copyright laws that they just aren't black and white. That might be why the Supreme Court seems to have fallen back on their commercial aspect to guide them. Money trading hands is pretty clear as opposed to what's transformative or not, which is more the eye of the beholder type of opinion. What's transformative to one critic might be just plagiarism to another. MAybe Congress should revisit the law.

 

[baachitraka]

poor, suffering and perpetual poverty. if they ask anything give them something to fill their stomach...once the stomach is full and ask for taking photographs.

 

[MattKing]

I think that's the problem with copyright laws that they just aren't black and white. That might be why the Supreme Court seems to have fallen back on their commercial aspect to guide them.

Copyright is solely about commercial interests - it is a legal concept intended to create and protect a monetary interest.
No more, and no less.

 

[Rolleiflexible]

Copyright is solely about commercial interests - it is a legal concept intended to create and protect a monetary interest.
No more, and no less.

To state the obvious: The creator's commercial interests, not the subject's. Ages ago, I photographed a model who insisted that she sign a release before the shoot to protect her rights. It was a general release. I tried to explain to her that a release protects the photographer, not the model. She was adamant none the less.

 

[Sirius Glass]

To state the obvious: The creator's commercial interests, not the subject's. Ages ago, I photographed a model who insisted that she sign a release before the shoot to protect her rights. It was a general release. I tried to explain to her that a release protects the photographer, not the model. She was adamant none the less.

Perhaps she had a crush on you.

 

[cliveh]

Not being American, can someone enlighten me as to the relevance of Austin in this discussion?