‘Photographic art should not be concerned with moral or ethical issues, but rather the work of art itself’.

Rohan Patel 2020

The title of this essay presents two opposing choices for photographers to consider when producing photographic art. In doing this, it is accepted that there are two simple binary choices for photographers, between moral or ethical concerns or between pure art, free from any moral concerns. In this essay, I will first consider whether we must accept these two choices as a place to start, if photography can ever be pure art, since, unlike painting, sculpture, or other forms of art, it is not simply made through the creative mind and hands of an artist, it is partly also a science, formed through light, chemicals, and now digital computers. Then by drawing from the ideas of Susan Sontag’s (1979) collection of essays ‘On Photography’, I will argue that there are more than two choices. Photographers must examine their work with consideration to a range of different factors, including the type of photography, the relationship between the photography, their subject and broader society, and finally, the role of the actual photograph as a material object which has a life separate from the photographer.  

Firstly, it is important to consider whether photography is an art or a science. Often Art is seen as beauty, whereas science is based on evidence (Bullot et al. 2017). Ideas of pure art came from a period in which society was solely governed by religious values, and so aesthetic standards were rooted in faith (Shusterman, 2008). Paintings, and art, were rooted in depicting religion, not the common people (Wallert et al,1995).  However, over the past two hundred years, as aesthetic values have included ordinary men, as initially, it was simply privileged white men and later other groups, then how you judge pure art becomes more subjective and less pure (Berger, 2008). Art has often been evaluated based on its ability to transform new ways of thinking and new techniques (Baird, 2008). Photography does not easily fall into either category; it was born after a secular world order had replaced the religious order, during the industrial expansions in the 1840s, as a technical tool, with roots in science and at first was seen as an aid for art rather than a tool for creating art (Baird, 2008). The camera was designed to recreate the eye by scientists, and therefore, it attempted to capture the world as it was seen (Forster, 2008). The artists adapted the camera and used light and chemicals and references to art from previous decades, such as Julia Margaret Cameron's (1868) portraits. However, it is not a simple process to move from a technical craft to an artistic craft since one aspect of the debate stems from art being subjective, with an element of subjectivity that only educated, enlightened people, can understand (Wilder, 2009). In contrast, science is objective, and provable to anyone (Baird, 2008). I am arguing here that by its very nature, photography does not have a clear position in the debate around whether art should be pure, totally unique and separate from society, and which does not need to consider any moral or ethical implications in society.  

Sontag’s (1979) ‘On Photography’, explores a wide of issues related to the camera and how it is used. Sontag reflects on how images affect modern societies, stating, “the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its exquisite mood (Sontag, 1979). This shows the camera is a tool and becomes a way for a photographer can express their thoughts and beliefs about the world (Forster, 2008). However, there is also a darker side since photographers can also use the camera in an exploitative manner, whether consciously or not, because “to photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves” (Sontag, 1979). The camera can be used in unethical ways, by photographing people without their consent it prohibits the person to define how they wish to be represented. Many newspapers, publications and academic institutions manage this issue by getting consent forms signed in photographs for individuals who appear in their publications showing positive, willing consent, and often this now means they must trace people retrospectively (Conger, 2011). The question which follows from photographs being taken without consent is then they are ‘true’ and ethical. This led Sontag (1979) to critique photography as a truthful reality, as people are not allowed to define how they wish to be represented. Further, there is a desire from both the photographer to present a story and the viewer to impose their own emotive pretences consciousness into the viewing of an image (Langmann and Pink, 2014). This shows that the world seen through the lens of a camera can twist the reality of the world (Forster, 2008). Therefore, if the photographer wants to claim authenticity to a portrait, then there should be an obligation to show some engagement with the subject to avoid a claim of unethical conduct (Murray and Nash, 2017). 

Despite this, not all photography has the same social and political concerns, there are various degrees of debate in the ethical evaluation of art. Carroll (2000), argues that the debate on the ethical production of art has taken over the intended artistic meaning itself, and some art simply is not created to facilitate ethics. This separates art from the morality it holds, finding that art should not have to be ethically defined. This leads to a debate about whether art should be pure, unique, and separate from society, which does not need to consider any moral or ethical implications of society. Gaut (2007) is useful here because he lists three levels of ethical concerns in art; ‘Moralism’: the belief that ethics are intrinsic when valuing art, ‘Radial autonomism’; which states art should not be measured by ethic, and, ‘Immoralism’; which explores moral problems and aesthetics equally (Gaut, 2007). These distinctions are useful since different photography projects will have different levels of ethical responsibility. Suppose a photographer goes and takes photographs of trees in the park. In that case, the moral issues are different from if it is taken of a homeless person on the street without consent, and therefore the parameters of how we judge art is relative to the piece itself, and moral judgements vary. In the case of landscape photography, the responsibility may not be present in the actual photography, but in how the photograph was taken, for example, the scale of damage caused to the environment in taking photographs (Gass, 1987). In this way, we can see that there are broader things to consider, and this is useful since it provides a more precise hierarchy of ethical and moral considerations rather than the either/or posed by the essay title, and if we are to properly evaluate art with the need to look at production or how it is made (Giovannelli, 2007). However, Kieran (2006), argues that creative ‘instructional’ intention and the viewer’s intrinsic response are separate from the ethical reviewal of art. This distinguishes art from ethics, emphasising artists to define how it should be perceived rather than investigated by viewers. The issue with this is that often photographers are acting alone within their practice and there has to be some belief given to the ethical procedure (Karpov and Kryuchkov, 2005). 

Another factor which affects the conditions in which work is done is money since financial inducements can corrupt aesthetics. This is present in all photographic genres since photographs are so often bought and sold within the world of advertising images of women, different racial groups, and social issues that can be led by marketing perspectives rather than ethics (Schroeder and Borgerson, 1988). This can apply to both to individual images and also editorial decisions around a sequence of images in publications. For example, in 2020 Martin Parr was accused of racism because of the juxtaposing of an image of a black woman next to one a gorilla (Morris, 2020). This raises a related issue of who tells the story, whose voice is listened to and whose voice is left out of the story (Gazi, 2014). Galleries are full of portraits of subjects whose viewpoints are nowhere on the gallery's walls. The famous image of Florence Owens Thompson, her name still does not appear in most books. She is known as ‘Migrant Mother,’ looking sad with one poor child, when we actually seven children. Sontag (1979) was deeply provoked by Diane Arbus’s work with ‘Freaks’. Dianne Arbus stated, “Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first things I photographed, and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me. I just used to adore them. I still do adore some of them” (Wender, 2014).Sontag critiqued Arbus’s work due to a lack of understanding of consent, power dynamics, and the projected harmful representations (Nicolas, 2014). For Sontag, the artist is powerful, and their role should be to create work that will not harm, whereas Arbus saw the camera as a reality we all live within (Ridge, 2018). Artists need to understand that the work created about the present has a future, whereby the legacy will be examined by the ethical standard, which might shift over time (Macneill, 2014). For example, in 2011, Boris Mikhailov’s pictures were exhibited at MoMA and came under criticism for ‘aestheticizing suffering’ as the work constructed a ‘political reality for pleasures’ (Choi, 2018). Woodward (2011) stated that it was exploitative as Mikhailov made the people within the pictures ‘strip and perform for his camera’. Further, the prints were presented as ‘life-size,’ unethically overemphasising the pieces to make a statement (Woodward, 2011). There needs to be consideration of how the ethical examination of work changes when it is presented in a gallery (Gagen, 2021). Here we see that the curation of the work can also alter the ethical context (Gazi, 2014). Woodward (2011) argued that galleries provide platforms to artists who ‘exaggerated the ills of the world... while their subjects look like fools’. Artistic galleries need to accept that they have immense power over whom they platform, and therefore the ethical responsibility is within their scope, as much as the gallery (Gazi, 2014).  

The boundaries on ethical practice when working with people are shifting into new grounds, whereby there is critical analysis about how the photographer took the image and how the photographer treats the person (Hadley, 2022). For example, Sontag criticised Arbus’s not just for her approach to working with the subjects but also for the harm it has on society (Baird, 2008). It is also essential to understand that there are ethical considerations for the relationship between a photographer and the societal context they are within. Photographs are used to construct ideas of the world as they are shown on the news to present life outside the viewers’ own reality (Benlahbib, 2019). Therefore, there must be a constant critique of the people who photograph and document the world to ensure a truthful representation of reality (Karpov and Kryuchkov, 2005). Sontag's ethics analysis explores how capitalism provides power to image producers (Baird, 2008). For example, Sontag critiques Salgado’s migration pictures due to their homogenous grouping of separate individual atrocities that have occurred, leading the audience to have a stronger emotive response to the work due to it being presented collectively (Nair, 2012). Further, Sontag critiqued the western viewers from accepting the photographers' images of atrocities as truths due to it ‘aestheticizing’ horror due to manipulating the reality through choices of how images were shot, which fits a narrative (Carrabine, 2012). 

Sontag has been praised for her forward-thinking views on ethical practice in photography. However, we can also criticise her for her lack of attention to racialised issues (Carsons and Robbins, 2020), and the over-emphasis on work made in the west, usually the US and Britain. Charania (2020), argues that the west often creates a paradox whereby art is created about people of colour to celebrate them rather than letting people of colour define their own story in what they call ‘ethical whiteness’. Sontag states the ‘aestheticizing,’ but only as far as critiquing the photographers who create work in other countries; she lacks the critique of stating the people who create the art should be part of the community itself and is found guilty of speaking on behalf of people of colour voices (Carsons and Robbins, 2020). This is surprising given the long history of photographs made by people of colour from across the globe since photography was created. For example, in 1900, WEB Du Bois exhibited a whole collection of work in collaboration with middle-class Black subjects specifically to highlight the joyous lives of Black subjects, despite the scale of discrimination they faced in the US at the time. The work was exhibited at the 1900 Paris Exhibition to the leaders of the colonial empires (Du Bois et al. 2019). Sontag understood how photography had become a ‘tool for alienation’ and argued that we could move towards it becoming a ‘tool of participation’ (Sentilles, 2010). Recently there has been a movement from academia towards more participatory photography (Murray and Nash, 2017).  

Although we accept socially the normalisation of being monitored by the state and private security cameras (Baird, 2008), the rules of photographing in the street can be ambiguous. Although some acts of covert photography could be legal, they are now seen as socially irresponsible (Hadley, 2022). Its invasive nature creates contention for the individual's autonomy (Sontag, 1979). However, some acts of covert photography may be ethical. For example, the filming of the death of George Floyd, and other acts of abuse by people in authority, was important to highlight, and the images are used in a court setting to prosecute misconduct (Christián et al. 2022).  

The final issue I wish to consider is the role of a photograph as a document. Sontag considered the role of documents to enact an emotion within us driven by political and social context. Even if the context is outside the frame, it is within the messaging of the picture, as there is an “inextricable link between knowledge and emotion demonstrated by our reactions to photographs.” (Parsons, 2009). Photographs can help retrieve memories and moments within our lives; they are compelling objects of nostalgia (Benlahbib, 2019). Therefore, there needs to be an understanding of how public perception can be affected by photography, especially politically, when paired with text (Rossner and Yamada, 2004). For example, during the Brexit Campaign, Nigel Farage stood with a poster stating ‘breaking point the EU has failed us all’ with the image behind displaying lines of refugees queuing at a border (Reid, 2019). This can be seen as photographic manipulation that misleads viewers into a political agenda (Fox and Saunders, 2015). Therefore, the photographer needs to understand how image meaning can shift towards harmful depictions to falsely portray truth when presented as a document (Sontag, 1979).  

Another approach can be seen in the work of Ariella Azoulay in her book ‘Potential History’ (Azoulay 2019). She argues that although images can be re-examined years after the event, both to look at what we see in the images and what is not in the image, and from this close reading, we can reread history from different perspectives. This work is important because she argues that this can be processed to reread an image of potential abuse to bring people closer together through reconsidering the event. This is particularly important for reconsidering the moment of state or colonial violence (Bishop, 2018). The work of Forensic Architecture takes a moment of violence, and through image technology and examining the split second and even breaking time into smaller moments, we can examine how people in authority abuse power (Azoulay 2019). In both cases, we can see that the ethical aspect of images can be read differently over time through skilful work.  

This essay argues that photographic art should care about moral or ethical issues, though this means taking more consideration of a range of different factors. It began by examining where ideas of pure art came from, finding that photographic-based art has been rooted in scientific practice. It argues that ethical examinations depend on a range of considerations such as the type of photography, the subject, wider society, and the photograph as an object. It concludes by arguing that art it must interact with both moral and ethical thinking before, during and after its practice to ensure it can withstand critique and stands the test of time. 

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