Photographing the Homeless. What's Your Ethics On this?

slackercrurster · Oct 4, 2018

If it is legal... and you like it...shoot it. Plenty of time to delete at home.

Shot though my rental car windshield while driving to the airport.

In the shadow of City Hall L.A 2015

benjiboy · Oct 7, 2018

My ethics are I don't do it.

michaelfoto · Oct 7, 2018

I only did it once. It was a homeless woman i photographed at at distance. She was not happy about it, and i felt really bad afterward, so i payed her a small modelling fee and everything ended i smiles.
I will never do it again, unless after common agreement.
Michael.

Berkeley Mike · Oct 7, 2018

Think public domain, unless otherwise stated in a context. Anything after that is between one's ears.

jim10219 · Oct 7, 2018

It’s legal (in the U.S.), but that doesn’t mean it’s ethical. Unlike most Americans, the homeless have no access to a private place. There is no where that they can go that is their own. You are basically coming into their living room and photographing them without any warning. I’m sure most of you wouldn’t like that. It’s not like photographing most people who have the opportunity to clean themselves up before going out into public. For many, this may be a low point in their life, one they’d rather not be known by.

That being said, most just want to be treated like the human beings that they are. I bet if you ask and talk to them for a while, most will be happy to oblige. And they may want a few bucks in return, but you’ll likely pay them a small fraction of the price of a professional model.

Berkeley Mike · Oct 7, 2018

Like I said, between the ear; that is the point of discussion.

Ko.Fe. · Oct 7, 2018

One of the significant parts of photography in NA (at least they are saying so) is collection of photos taken across USA. Then author of this photos put them in the book, he mentioned this book most be viewed only in start to end order. Only one scene is repeated twice in this book. Homeless photo taken from distance and one of those homeless taken close.
Walker Evans american photographs.

I take pictures of people whom I'm finding interesting or in interesting (to me situation). In public spaces. It is allowed by law.

The talks about homeless to have more privacy doesn't make sense to me. People are cheating and walking with someone else. If some of you cares so much, you should never take pictures of two people together. Wait, this person supposed to be at work, but he is having drink. This is also intrusion in his privacy. Isn't it? So, no pictures of people should be taken if we follow this privacy logic applied for homeless.

Svenedin · Oct 7, 2018

Personally I've never taken a picture of folks who live on the streets. Not once. I don't necessarily think it's unethical to do so if you ask but it doesn't sit comfortably with me. That may be more to do with my unease at the situation of these people than anything else. Certainly it would be ridiculous to say there is a carte blanche ethical ban on such photos. To do so would be almost an attempt to erase this fact of life in many countries, disturbing as it may be.

Colin Corneau · Oct 7, 2018

No problem, just ask them first

GLS · Oct 16, 2018

I think unless it is handled in just the right way, and is done for a very good reason, it merely ends up being cheap and exploitative.

Wallendo · Oct 16, 2018

I don't believe that "the homeless" is really a discrete homogeneous group. There are many individuals who end up "homeless" for quite different reasons. For many of them, their problems are related to mental illness, alcoholism or drug abuse - so consent to photograph may not be straight forward.

I don't apply any special privileges or stigmata to the homeless and apply a variation of the golden rule - if this were me, would I be OK with someone taking a photograph? I personally do not enjoy photographs of mentally ill or intoxicated homeless persons or drunken college students, but I would approach both groups with the same ethical mindset.

faberryman · Oct 16, 2018

I have no interest in taking photographs of homeless people.

Ste_S · Oct 16, 2018

Homelessness is part of the world, and to ignore it in photographs (in so called street or social documentary at that) is plain weird.

As with anything, don't exploit your subject and do it with empathy

trendland · Oct 16, 2018

momus said:
I was talking to an attorney today about this subject (so take that into consideration), and he stated that when he retired he would be interested in taking some B&W photos of our city's homeless population. I told him that I thought it was not a good idea and told him why.

My thinking is quite simple....everyone is someone's son or daughter. No one would want to see their children, or their mom or dad, portrayed at such a point in their lives. I always make a conscious effort not to photograph people in a demeaning or compromising manner. Catch them at their best is my motto, not their worst. I told the guy that there was certainly a lot of character in some of the faces, and he said yes, that was what he was talking about. Somehow though he never made the connection about making a good shot and portraying someone in an unfavorable light.

Now I'm not talking about a situation where you ask someone if you could take their photo, and explain that once it was taken who knows where it might appear. There's no ethical issue there. But taking candid shots of people when they're down and then exhibiting them or posting them online seems way out of bounds. How do other photographers see this? I think we have a moral and ethical responsibility to our photos and the people portrayed in them after they're made. Once an image is made, control over it often gets away from us. I think it's better to err on the side of good taste and ethical behavior. Or, how would I like to be presented if my life came to this?

Spending money isn't correct too. Best way is to ASK :"What happened to you" and to listen about is spending time what they more need.
But to photograph is indeed a worste case of failure.
with regards

Saganich · Oct 16, 2018

Photographing people is not wrong. Photographing people in particular circumstances isn't wrong either. Photographing people because they are being defined as a particular group starts to feel like trouble. There is a movement away from the individual into broad cultural or social constructs that is problematic under most circumstances. Working with an individual narrative opens up space for complexity while treating people as poorly defined groups levels humanity down to fodder for sound bites. I think we all can tell the difference after the fact but it's more difficult to see it in the approach. The Eugene Richards show at ICP brings this idea home IMO. To do it right requires a ton of work and forethought.

Ste_S · Oct 16, 2018

Saganich said:
To do it right requires a ton of work and forethought.

I think any photographic project done right needs that.
I remember reading one quote from a photographer (Colin O'Brien ?) when asked how he photographs outsiders, he said something like they're not outsiders to me.
Likewise someone like Salgado will invest large amount of time getting to know a group of people before even producing a camera.

MontanaJay · Oct 17, 2018

Homelessness is a moral obscenity in any so-called "wealthy" society and should be photographed relentlessly in order to confront that society.
Pair those images with ones displaying unchained greed and you might get somewhere.

summicron1 · Oct 17, 2018

I have found, with age, my feelings on this changing. As a journalist I used to be pretty blatant about it, but now in my dotage I find it invasive -- if you are a working journalist or social worker or researcher, working to document and solve societal ills, it is OK, since they are in public, but even then it never hurts to ask permission first.

If you are just doing it for amusement ... well, as i said, it's legal, but being rude to people is bad karma. And even the homeless appreciate it when you ask first.

jonasfj · Oct 17, 2018

Settings morals aside for a little while. I have lived in Bangkok for a number of years and other countries with large differences in income.

What I see all the time is that amateur photographers arrive and they go about shooting street portraits of people with "character" in their faces. Many do no really mind to be photographed.

The problem I have is that 99.9% of these photographs are cliché and outright boring.

If you want to shoot homeless, think about what you want to say, how you can say it so people understand and try to find an angle that shows it a little bit differently than what we see all the time.

I had this idea that never happened. I was living in an apartment complex with many very wealthy people. From my balcony I could look down on people living in corrugated sheds. Those were probably illegal immigrants coming in to work in construction. My idea was to capture the contrast somehow. Think a Japanese executive pulling out of the driveway in his Porsche Cayenne in his golf outfit, while the construction workers walking to work on the side of the street. Never happened, but not because of any moral considerations.

RalphLambrecht · Oct 17, 2018

momus said:
I was talking to an attorney today about this subject (so take that into consideration), and he stated that when he retired he would be interested in taking some B&W photos of our city's homeless population. I told him that I thought it was not a good idea and told him why.

My thinking is quite simple....everyone is someone's son or daughter. No one would want to see their children, or their mom or dad, portrayed at such a point in their lives. I always make a conscious effort not to photograph people in a demeaning or compromising manner. Catch them at their best is my motto, not their worst. I told the guy that there was certainly a lot of character in some of the faces, and he said yes, that was what he was talking about. Somehow though he never made the connection about making a good shot and portraying someone in an unfavorable light.

Now I'm not talking about a situation where you ask someone if you could take their photo, and explain that once it was taken who knows where it might appear. There's no ethical issue there. But taking candid shots of people when they're down and then exhibiting them or posting them online seems way out of bounds. How do other photographers see this? I think we have a moral and ethical responsibility to our photos and the people portrayed in them after they're made. Once an image is made, control over it often gets away from us. I think it's better to err on the side of good taste and ethical behavior. Or, how would I like to be presented if my life came to this?

not without their consent; they deserve some respect like everybody else!

Berkeley Mike · Oct 17, 2018

Taking images of people has to address how they feel about showing their state in life. The ubiquitous broadcast of images has effected that strongly. From the ego-centricity of selfies on the internet, to the peeping-tom voyeurism of small automated capturing devices, the issue is the same; permission.

And then there is this:

"Hawthorne effect, a form of reactivity in which subjects modify an aspect of their behavior, in response to their knowing that they are being studied."

Berkeley Mike · Oct 19, 2018

Concerning permission...Snapchat Video Glasses Failure:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/28/why-snapchat-spectacles-failed/

Out of 17 paragraphs on why these glasses failed only 1/2 paragraph was devoted to how people felt around them, both wearing them and being looked at by them. I find that curious.

warden · Oct 19, 2018

I wouldn't make an image of someone else's sufferings no matter what they are, unless I thought the image could somehow help them.

I occasionally like to take pictures of city life and often times the poorer and gentrifying neighborhoods have the most interesting signage, buildings and local flavor. But recently I was walking in the area of my town that the NYT recently described as "The WalMart of Heroin" and I just had to leave. The suffering was quite obvious, and though I wasn't taking pictures of the homeless or addicted they were certainly there, and I felt it best to leave unless I was helping them somehow, which I clearly wasn't.

Photographing the Homeless. What's Your Ethics On this?

Privacy & Transparency

Privacy & Transparency