Do you have a photographic ethic?

<p>I think the ethic I do subscribe to is that anyone who sits on the darkside with ashes and woe is missing half of what life is about just as much as the people who need to have everything be happy happy. All dark is as wrong as all happy/happy).</p>

<p>When I did newspaper stories on various people in our community who had either handicaps from birth or from accidents, I got the impression that people who have handicaps from birth tend to deal rather well and often rather imaginatively with the hands they were given. People who became handicapped later in life tended to be less high spirited in taking advantage of stereotypes and playing off sentimentality. People who don't see how marvelously people adapt to restrictions in their lives miss something wonderful about humans. My father went legally blind in his 70s, and figured out how to deal with this, and connected with the various agencies that send out books on tape and got a reader and had his computer set up for limited vision. </p>

<p>I think what artists owe the world is more generosity and less whining.</p>

<p>Last night, with my little rat-shit pocket camera, I took pictures of a drag show, which I found to be an affirmation of the erotic, gender bending, and proof of the connection of art (music and dance in this case) with the erotic (and the bar was one of those wonderful places where everyone is there -- gay, lesbian, straight, trans, whatever). And I asked if I could take the pictures and I tipped the performers. I'm more sympathetic to things that show joy than things that show woe, not that I don't myself have a strong dark streak. Because I know where the dark leads, I don't want to encourage my own darkness (and I also know how self-indulgent my particular darkness is). And not having the pro gear with me make me more of a participant in the festivities and less of a Heap Big Photographer.</p>

<p>If we forget arts for humans is connected to the erotic and the gustatory (the cave paintings of good things to eat), I think we end up losing our ways. It's the puritanical side of monotheistic cultures that inhibits this and tries to make the arts into something serious and painful (there's also an attempt to make art tedious so it can retain its charms as a status marker rather than risk being popular).</p>

<p>Fred, you do get the connection between photography and the erotic, except with your landscape shots, which kinda suck. And your work is more playful than what I've gotten of your posts here.</p>

<p>Photography is always going to be Janusian -- a recording medium and an artistic one. Art in Western culture also has a post-Renaissance tradition of being Heroic, not a craft. I suspect that much of this is so much silliness and the arts fields where the belief is more common tend to be the fields with the smallest audiences -- like poetry. We have a skill that people value because we can create language, music, and images for them. If we do something other than what they expect, it needs to be something they wanted without recognizing until they experienced what we did. If a thing doesn't get an audience for 60 years, or only has an esoteric one that makes a living off of explaining esoteric art to others, chances are we'd dealing with a non-popular delusion. Art's supposed to get us off, as one Columbia University student drug dealer who catnipped one of my brothers said.</p>

<p>If photographers can do things that surprise and delight others, more power to those photographers, but the ultimate measure is in some audience which has no other personal relationship with us than our work. </p>

<p>I didn't win the Phillip K. Dick for best paperback s.f. original, but my publisher said an old friend came up to her and said that I did get it (gay male sex) and my hero was very hot (she also noticed that straight guys seemed uncomfortable talking about the book). Being able to speak/illustrate for people who aren't us, to understand them, may be one of the other things art does other than connect us to our sensual selves.</p>

<p>It's not that moralizing is intrinsically bad, but it's often a barrier to the sensual. </p>

<p>Art is sensual first, a pleasure. If it fails to be a pleasure, it's not art, but documentation of something non-artistic.</p>

<p><em>"And your work is more playful than what I've gotten of your posts here."</em></p>

<p>For me, philosophy and photography are two very different means of expression. Each allows me to express a different but very real side of myself. I do think there is some overlap and people who know me tend to agree. But I've said before that photography is in some sense my answer to philosophy. You've hit upon the problem with judging anyone based only on one aspect of their expressions, written or visual, intellectual or creative. Most of us are multi-faceted and hard to stereotype or even pin down. That's why I think written autobiographies also have to be taken in context and are better assessed with additional information and alternative 1st-hand sources.</p>

<p>Fred:</p>

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<p>Most of us are multi-faceted and hard to stereotype or even pin down.</p>

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<p>Amen to that.</p>

<p>Fred, I am not trying to offer a trivial answer here, but I think that my own general ethical principles apply to everything that I do--including photography. While it is true that there might be some rather specific corollaries that apply strictly to photography, they are surely derivable from those larger, more general principles--most obviously the Golden Rule, whether stated in the form expressed by Jesus of Nazareth or Rabbi Hilllel, or Lao Tzu, for that matter.</p>

<p>In most practical situations, this approach means that, rather than to ask what my "photographic <em>ethos</em>" is or what my photographic ethic dictates, I simply ask: How would I feel if I were on the receiving end of all this photographic attention?</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>I just noticed the response of Felix Grant above:</p>

 

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<p>I think I see photography (art or not) as one thing, and personal ethics as another ... but that doesn't at all mean that the first is free of the second.</p>

 

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<p>As stated, that position is diametrically opposed to my own. It reminds me of another rather banal distinction that I cannot accept that appears in political matters: a strong distinction between public and private morality. The implication for me is that there are some things that I cannot do as a private citizen (acts of violence, for example) that I would be justified in doing if I were in some formal office. I cannot abide that way of thinking.</p>

<p>Jefferson cautioned against the person who thinks that he may do one thing while acting alone, but do something else when acting in company with others. I think that he quoted Cicero to the effect, "Beware, oh Roman" [of persons who think like that].</p>

<p>What Felix raises is only partially analogous, of course. There is not, after all. any ethic about acting in company with other photographers. There is yet a dual standard of ethics in his words. I am always leary of such. To me being a photographer gives me no special license whatsoever beyond what I could already justify to myself according to my personal ethics.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>Landrum: you've misunderstood me (or, perhaps, I've badly expressed myself).<br>

I was expressing exactly the same position as you, I think.<br>

I do not have a separate photographic ethic <em>because</em> my general ethics are my guide in photography as in everything else.</p>

<p>Sorry, Felix. I did misunderstand.</p>

<p>I guess that your last remark pretty much sums up my position too.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p><strong>Felix/Landrum</strong>, yes, our photographic ethic will be based on our ethics in general. I didn't mean to suggest that we would have a different set of values or a different approach to ethics when we are photographing than in the rest of our lives. But ethics, to me, are significant when they are applied and not just in the abstract. And, just like there are medical ethics and legal ethics, there are photographic ethics. For example, in medical ethics we may face a situation where we can help hundreds of people for the same cost that a very expensive operation to save one person might cost. So the ethical dilemma will involve using limited resources, will involve prognoses, treatment options, etc. In environmental ethics, we may face a situation where allowing certain animals to kill each other off, though seemingly horrendous from an animal rights point of view, could be necessary to the preservation of a portion of the environment. We may look to golden rules and Jesus or rabbis for guidance, but we will have to apply those basic tenets to very individual and nuanced situations.</p>

<p>My question was twofold: 1) What kinds of situations come up in photography where you do have to consider the ethical ramifications of your actions? 2) Do you deal with subjects in your photography that are ethical in nature? For number 1, a situation I can think of is that, though I may have a release from a model for nude photos, if that person changes their mind at a later date, I would not hold them to the contract. I would not show photos that a subject does not wish me to show. That's my own photographic ethics. In business, I might have a very different approach to a contract and might not let someone out of their contractual agreement so readily. For number 2, I photograph middle aged gay guys a lot, partially to give a human face to a group of people that is often discussed in the abstract. I try to treat them as individuals. There is an ethical aspect to my photographic message.</p>

<p>Thanks for your responses so far.</p>

<p>What we think of ethics in the United States is different than that of Europe and Asia. In the United States people are uptight, rude, and disrespectful. If one is like this what do they have the right to judge the work of Jock Sturgis and others that do photography of nude young children? I do not find it unethical at all, because of what I have seen in Europe and Asia. People are open minded and free to express themselves. They are outgoing and nudism is everywhere. Here in the US people worry too much and are to uptight. One does not look at the picture and see the beauty of it. They look at it and see a nude child. Whoopy-do! We are all born nude, so what is wrong with being nude. The pictures are not sexual in anyway and display the beauty of a young body that glimmers in the late summer sun. I find the work beautiful, not unethical.</p>