Group Work Book
Further Research Page 4
Morality in Photo journalsim
It goes with out saying that Photojournalists and Documentry film makers face extreme ethical issues on a daily basis it part of the job. Its a common problem with the job seeing the horrors of the world and its becomes a moral question. wether you can justify taking a photo of someone suffering knowing that friends and family will see it. I think if you know it will create an impact then and affect people you can justfy the photo because its going to a cause. In Grazia Neri's article Ethics of photography, she talks about respecting the photo and how some publishers will disrespect the photo by croping it or printing words over the top. She talk about how where the photo is seen and where it is published have a direct effect on how the photo effects us. she said this about photography "the camera is a different tool from a pen. It can be used to produce an instantaneous masterpiece, to upset society with a scoop, to amaze people with something new. Each of us reacts to the picture on the basis of our own sensitivity, culture, intelligence, mood and passion. What is more, the interpretation of one and the same photograph will be different at different times. A photograph produced today will offer a different impact tomorrow. Even the place where the photograph is seen can dictate our reactions. A photograph published in a gossip weekly cannot have, a priori, the same impact as a photograph on display in a museum or of another printed in a sophisticated book. The environment where the photograph appears may determine our reading of it". She talks about the photograph being a powerful tool that are able to influence whole movements and causes. However though if you see to much of the same media for example poverty charities and other similar organisations on TV you can become desaturated to the subject to the point you get annoyed when you get asked to give money to charity or when you see it on television. Thats why the children in need campaign works well its one day in the year to raise money instead of pestering an audience. The children in the need campaign works because it creates a strong emotional response for the one day it is on.
http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0101/neri.htm : ETHICS AND PHOTOGRAPHYby Grazia Neri
http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/media-poverty-and-public-opinion-uk : The Media, Poverty and Poverty and public opinion in the UK
