That Naughty Thing

“I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do… when I first did it I felt very perverse.”

— Diane Arbus

I picked up this quote from an Article in the Guardian on Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera. Since I got wasted by that sobering experience that is reading Susan Sontag’s “On Photography, I seem to be stumbling every so often on articles on the ethics and the perceived emptiness of Photography.

There is this interview on Bruce Gilden’s series “Two Days in Appalachia”, for which he got flamed big time as superficial and exploitative and violating the ethics of documentary and photojournalism. Like he’d care…

And then there is this article in the Huffington Post that bemoans the emptiness of what we got used to call streetphotography. Philipp Lorca diCorcia has his own, mostly indifferent, views on the genre.

And finally I stumbled upon this this disgusting video of Jason Lanier walking through an ethiopian church:

I cannot really tell you, what I found so disgusting about it: His arrogance, his ignorance off his surrounding, his bragging, his entourage waltzing through the church, the fact that he does not know anything about the oppressive system of the churches, that has hauntedEthiopia for centuries now, his gear-whoring. It probably isn’t that bad, and it only appears like it in the light of this black-clothed, ill-tempered woman Susan Sontag, who just seems to be disgusted with most of human endeavours. And rightfully so.

And to top it all off, I yesterday killed what’s left of my good, well-meaning, optimistic mood with watching Amy, the film that depicts the short life of Amy Whinehouse. It’s not like the paparrazzi actually killed her, she obviously did this on her own, but they certainly presented themselves here again as some of the more disgusting members of the human species.

Ethics – in photography or otherwise – is a continuum, with all lines blurry and no clear answers: but there are days, when it feels like the scale between making a picture or letting it be tips heavily into the direction of putting the camera down for good…

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