a question of ethics

dozer · Post by **dozer** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 5:14 pm

So, as some of you may know, for a living I am a photographer. On the day to day, I shoot news assignments for a bunch of local papers, which mostly means portraits, sports events and community stuff; small town journalism, if you will. I absolutely love what I do, because you never know what's going to happen. Today, however, the run of the mill assignment became something else entirely, and I need to get it off my chest.

The shoot gave no indication of being any different from the rest, it was a girls field hockey game at a local high school. I show up maybe 10 minutes early, and the JV game is still happening, so I decide to pull out my camera and make a few frames to test the light and get into the groove. No sooner have I grabbed the camera out and started to look through the viewfinder though and I notice a girl on the ground, face first. At first I thought she tripped, but immediately my brain said that her position didn't look natural. Her arm was crooked and her face was literally buried in the grass, and she wasn't moving. People around me also start to notice this, and the coaches and some of her teammates run over. Someone screams to call 911, and I put down my camera and go to grab my phone. I see that other people are already on it, so I put my phone in my pocket and, thinking that I can't possibly be of much help, I grab my camera again and start snapping frames. Her mother runs across the field screaming, and I shoot. The girl isn't breathing, and she's blue in the face. Her teammates are crying, the coaches are giving her mouth to mouth and pumping her chest, and I shoot. I shot quietly, and as discreetly as I could, coming close to tears myself as I watched this girl hover between life and death. I could hear her groaning after coughing up blood, but then I heard them say that she had no pulse, and through this whole ordeal she was unresponsive. Things went between " it's ok, she's breathing" and TELL THE FUCKING AMBULANCE TO HURRY THE FUCK UP SHE'S NOT BREATHING. Things looked grim, but I kept shooting. I have these fucking frames of her mother going through the worst moment of her life, and of her father being held back, telling her that it's ok, Daddy was there, and I felt sad and helpless, but I wanted to capture what was happening. I shot a few more frames from farther away, to get more of the scene, and then one of the coaches that had been performing CPR saw me shooting, and I shot a frame of her seeing me, and she immediately came over to me yelling. She had a bloody rag in her hand that had been down cleaning the girls face off just moments before, and while screaming about how I had to leave, asked me "is this what you want?!" while thrusting the rag at me? I quietly said "no", and I agreed to back off a bit, thinking at the time that it wasn't worth getting into an argument about it, both of us being on the verge of tears. I called my editor, who called the big boss editors, convened them in his office and told me to get there as soon as I could. I raced back, and we all looked at the pictures together. The big editor immediately vetoed any depicting the girl, the frames of the mother, and vaguer pictures showing only the team huddling with the ambulance in the background. Still strong shots, I think, but I don't think that's the point. In fact, I'm not sure what the fucking point is, except that I feel conflicted about shooting this, though I ultimately think that it is a good thing that the pictures now exist. I hope that the girl survives, and last I heard she was at the hospital and had a pulse, but more than that I don't know.

piccini9 · Post by **piccini9** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 5:25 pm

You are a photographer.

sun rat · Post by **sun rat** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 5:37 pm

actually, having a photographer take pictures is a good thing, in case anything inopportune happened.

sure, you won't publish what you shot. but it might come to pass that your photos of such an event could be important to others.

don't stop what you do.

Rench · Post by **Rench** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 5:45 pm

To expand on what Piccinni is saying (I think), your job is to do what you did. Now, if you did it from the immediate thought of "holy shit, TMZ will pay MONEY for this!!" then yeah, time to recalibrate the old moral compass.

As it stands though, it sounds like you've really just found your niche. Something was worthy of recording, so you had an impulse, a drive, to record it in your medium. A writer would go home and hammer out lines of prose or couplets; you had a camera.

While this would depend a lot on how things turn out and the vibe you got from the family, I would consider, in a few weeks, after everything has calmed down, offering the more personal photos to the family, with a personal assurance that they won't be used for your profit. Explain your reasoning if you like, but I would think the act would clear your conscience, and maybe theirs as well.

Fuck the bitch with the rag. Drama queens don't help shit in those scenarios.

-Rench

MagnusTheBuilder · Post by **MagnusTheBuilder** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 5:49 pm

My only question after reading every word of that is: How did the boss editor NOT give you a permanent position on the spot?

What would have been unethical is if you had run onto the field, shoved everyone out of the way and tried to help. It makes the same amount of sense as an EMT walking over and taking your camera only to start taking pictures of the shoelaces of the onlookers.

Also, I hope you got a picture of the person who threw the bloody rag at you... throwing the bloody rag at you... the real question of ethics is if you should take legal action against this person who, out of anger, potentially exposed you to bodily harm in the form of life threatening blood-born pathogens. I believe that is assault. As a precedent, blood has been treated as a deadly weapon in several cases and has carried a penalty as such. Yes, even uninfected blood as all blood must be treated as infected blood when it comes to the general public. So, the real question is, were you in fear of your safety as a result of the actions of this person? If so that is menacing and attempted assault with a deadly weapon.

Right or wrong, we live in a very strange world.

Not that it matters, but I think you did the right thing. A photographer's job is, to be in the right spot, to document the events of the world as they appear in front of them. You did that. Well done.

Click, Click, Click...

piccini9 · Post by **piccini9** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 6:15 pm

Yeah, that's exactly what I meant.
Keep up the good work. Call me tomorrow if you have the time.

Sisyphus · Post by **Sisyphus** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 6:54 pm

Tough call. The editor's job is to decide whether or not to publish. Your job is to compose and shoot. How images are used is a complex subject; similar images are used in wartime to portray a human interest in conflict. This was an accident, and in the grand scheme of things is unfortunate for everyone involved, including yourself. Witnessing someone else's hardship is difficult and awkward, no doubt.
I suppose you could look again at the images and critique them yourself, be your own worst critic. Look at them and try to look past the content, see if they're really good images or not.

Aggroton · Post by **Aggroton** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 7:59 pm

Fucking paparazzi.

Bigshankhank · Post by **Bigshankhank** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 3:25 am

Not to over dramatize, but the photographer who shot the vietnamese girl on fire thought the same thing yet created an iconic image depicting the horror of war. You were there to do a job, and sometimes that job isn't as pleasant as everyone may like it to be but you did it and did it well. Congratulate yourself on having nerves of steel. And don't blame the woman who came at you with the rag, she was stressed and scared and took her rage out on the nearest irritant she could find. You'll probably face that problem on a regular basis.

Post by **DerGolgo** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 3:40 am

You're a photographer. You document what happens. That is never a bad thing.
Also, you work for people who seem to be trustworthy on such questions. I can think of a number of publications hereabouts that would have run those pics in a heartbeat.

roadmissile · Post by **roadmissile** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 5:25 am

Speaking as someone who admires the work of good war correspondents I don't think you crossed any lines at all, it's not like you killed Princess Di.

/RM

Toonce(s) · Post by **Toonce(s)** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 5:51 am

Dozer actually DID kill Princess Di, but that is a long story.

Dozer, as much as you were entitled to take the pictures, people at the scene were also entitled to tell you to FOAD. Imagine if a loved one were critically injured and a bystander was going Click Click Click, how would you feel? Just keep that in mind when trying to find balance.

Rock · Post by **Rock** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 6:53 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Carter

calamari kid · Post by **calamari kid** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 10:03 am

Perhaps the conflict you're feeling is based in a bit of post traumatic stress. In the midst of a life or death situation you had to suppress your fear for the girl and the overpowering urge to do something, anything, and do your job. And to top it off a person who was in there doing what your instincts were screaming at you to do waves a bloody rag in your face and implies that you were somehow the bad guy in the situation.

I don't think you need to question your ethics here. Other people, who were perhaps better qualified, were already rendering first aid. You only put down your phone when you saw that need was being covered. Then you did your job, in an emotionally stressful situation. That's commendable in my opinion.

xtian · Post by **xtian** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 11:29 am

Not only did you do your job and reason to be there but taking pictures might have been a way to keep yourself emotionally out of the moment and a survival reflex ?
i just saw a debate on TV (was a german photo exhibition but I can't find the link) about the horrors in news photographies, and all proportions aside, they said that photographers doing their jobs just might end wars by confronting the public to the cold brutality of the conflicts.

Now, as a picture producer (aka "artist") is it wrong to use your emotional stamina to enhance your production? - I don't know, I am just asking the question in personal troubled times.

or is it wrong to counter balance your personal discomfort by expressing it thought an articulated work? - probably not.

wzm · Post by **wzm** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 3:41 pm

I feel like there's a pretty big difference between having assignments like Roger Fenton or Robert Capa and taking pictures of a JV field hockey game.

If I had a loved one killed during a war, and pictures of it were taken, I'd be upset, but not at the photographer, they were just documenting an event that was larger then the person who had died. On the other hand, if someone I cared about was killed in a car accident on a public street, and someone I'd never met before was taking pictures of their body while people performed first aid and called an ambulance, I'd be furious. There is no grand narrative surrounding JV field hockey that requires you to document someone's personal pain.

There is a gray area to everything, but photographing a family dealing with their child being badly injured or killed during a routine amateur sporting event seems pretty rude to me. It is rubber necking and getting a thrill out of someone else's misfortune; there was no chance that the weekly county paper would be interested in publishing shots of a dying child, and it wasn't even from the event you were there to photograph.

stiles · Post by **stiles** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 8:19 pm

Well said, Rev.

Jaeger · Post by **Jaeger** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 9:49 am

Rev wrote: Photographing a family dealing with their child being badly injured or killed during a routine amateur sporting event is exactly what a news photographer does. Ditto documenting someone else's personal pain. It's the job and it's always been the job. Being hated is also part of the job....

Agreed 100%. Dozer's story reminded me at least partly why I got out of the journalism biz. My time as a reported taught me why the stereotypical reporter is a grumpy, miserable, tweed-wearing drunk. (Yes, Rev, I realize you don't wear tweed very often, but...)

It's really, really hard to be exposed to that sort of stuff on a daily basis -- death, injury, tragedy, destruction, blood & guts, pain (and sometimes danger) -- while dealing with very tight deadlines AND the knowledge that your'e getting paid peanuts to do it.

I had a moment of clarity in 1998 while confronted with a very large, very drunk, and very distraught hillbilly out in WV whose mother had just had her head blown off by the neighbor. He didn't want to talk to me and I don't blame him, but that was my job. After he basically threatened to go Wookie on me I decided I wasn't getting paid enough to put up with the shit ($6.25/hr).

Every so often you'll find someone who impresses you under adverse circumstances like that, but most of the time they're just miserable (and rightly so) and don't want to talk to some ambulance chaser. YMMV.

--Jaeger

Zer0 · Post by **Zer0** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 10:26 pm

Dozer, you are right to question yourself. That means you're still human. But like everyone else is saying, you are a photographer. You couldn't have helped anyone, so you did what you were supposed to.

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a question of ethics

a question of ethics