Perceiving Suffering: Ethical Implications of Photographic Transparency

by
Maia R. Falconi-Sachs

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
BACHELOR OF ARTS

Accepted

_______________________________
Samuel G. Ruhmkorff, Thesis Advisor

_______________________________
Arthur Hillman, Second Reader

_______________________________
Tanya Marcuse, Third Reader

_______________________________
Mary B. Marcy, Provost and Vice President

Simon’s Rock College of Bard

Great Barrington, Massachusetts

2006
Abstract

There has been a long standing debate in the fields of both philosophy and photography over the
ethics of photographing people who are suffering. Up until now the ethical debates about
documentary photography depicting human suffering have failed to consider the philosophical
debate on photographic transparency and the consequences it has for these ethical dilemmas,
which I believe to be an oversight of serious consequence.

This debate on photographic transparency focuses on the question of what it is that makes us
consider photographs to have a superior status as a medium of visual representation. and the
transparency theory states that photographs give us actual visual access to their depicta. I have
found that the transparency thesis has considerable implications for ethical disputes on the
representation and viewing of human suffering through photography.
In this thesis I draw the connection between photographic transparency and the ethics of
documentary photography and examine some of the fundamental ethical debates in photography
with the assumption of photographic transparency. Due largely to the fact that it often seems to
be the situations in which there is human suffering being photographed and displayed that spark
the most ethical debate, this thesis focuses primarily on the ethical dilemmas that come up in
relation to photographs which depict human suffering.
For my Grandmothers, Harriet Sachs and Amada Falconi, whom always believed in me and
lovingly pushed me to take many of the paths which have led me here.
Acknowledgments

I would first and foremost like to thank my brilliant, exceptionally wise and incredibly tolerant
advisors, Sam Ruhmkorff and Anita Gallers. You two have seen me through everything during
my time here and have been extraordinarily supportive of me and everything I have wanted to
do. You got me through the times when I collapsed in your offices and (oh so dramatically)
insisted that my world was definitely going to fall apart, as well as the times when I just needed
people to bounce excitement off of. You have inspired me to explore new fields and opened
doors that have changed my life, from studying philosophy at all, to staying at Simon’s Rock for
the B.A.
I am forever in your debt for so wonderfully guiding me through my college career, from the day
Sam graded the very first draft of my very first college paper, to my moderation meeting, to my
final thesis meeting.
Anita, you were right. I made it.
Sam, I put five on it.

Arthur Hillman, my honorary advisor, who has directed my artistic life at Simon’s Rock since
my first week. He taught me everything from how to make a black and white photograph, to how
to design my resume, to how to properly space stuff and always laughed at my freak-outs and
told me to just breathe and chill out when I really bounced off the wall. Thank you for your
guidance, warmth, patience and honesty.

Tanya Marcuse, my wonderfully energetic and enthusiastic reader. Thank you for your support,
for directing me to so many thought-provoking texts and for always challenging me to make this
thesis better.

Dan Miller, who has put up with all of my digital work attempts throughout the last 4 years,
fixed everything I’ve managed to break, and who has also occasionally scraped me off of the
computer lab floor when the printers just refused to print anything without a red hue. Thank you
for all the support, good nature and humor.

My parents, Betti and Diego, and my baby sister Sofia, who have given me everything I needed
to make this happen and have done it all with all the love in the world. Thank you for giving me
a life surrounded by an incredible array of brilliant people and for ensuring right from the very
beginning that I would be shaped by them and by the extraordinary, diverse and always
challenging life you were brave enough to choose for our family.

Jim, Pat, Elizabeth, and Clare, who have given me a wonderful home and family and without
whom I know I could not have made it through the last four years.

Special thanks to Joel, for initially coming up with the concept of an “ethical economy” and to
Blake, for his absolutely invaluable assistance, support and input.

Okey Ndibe, James King, Bob Schmidt, Anne O’Dwyre, Peter Cocks and Barbara Resnik, who
gave me the incredible honor of studying with them.
Additional thanks to Asma Abbas, Karen Bockner, Anne Clark, Jennifer Clark, Peonia D’Amico,
Joan DelPlato, Rochelle Duffy, Pat Fitzpatrick, Margaret Grant, Nick Jahr, Stephanie Ogeneski,
John Snyder, Judith Win, and Waker von Berg, who, intentionally or not, inspired me to get
started on half of this stuff in the first place and then spent enough time arguing with me about
the “uselessness” and inadequacies of philosophy to make me completely determined to write a
good, and I hope somewhat useful, thesis in it. Either he knew I was just headstrong enough to
need to prove him wrong or I just got lucky.

I would particularly like to thank Lucy Rubin whom I am certain has been the most defining
educational influence in my life.
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................................2

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..........................................................................................................................................4

CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................8

CHAPTER 2 - ON PHOTOGRAPHIC TRANSPARENCY ................................................................................12

CHAPTER 3 - ETHICAL CONSEQUENCES OF PHOTOGRAPHIC TRANSPARENCY ...........................22

THE ETHICS OF VISION ...............................................................................................................................................22
THE ETHICAL CONSEQUENCES OF VISION ......................................................................................................................28
IGNORING THE ETHICAL CONSEQUENCES OF VISION ........................................................................................................29
THE ETHICS OF VISION IN PHOTOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................31
The Ethical Consequences of Vision through Photography .............................................................................31
CHAPTER 4 - HUMAN SUFFERING, DEMONIC CURIOSITY AND AESTHETICS .................................37
THE VALUE OF AESTHETICS IN DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY ........................................................................................41
FRIDAY ON SUFFERING AS ART ....................................................................................................................................43
CHAPTER 5 - ICONS AND THE ECONOMY OF ETHICAL ACTS AND FEELINGS ...............................47
SYMBOLS, ICONS AND THE CONCEPT OF AWARENESS ......................................................................................................50
AWARENESS AS A MOTIVATOR AND THE ECONOMY OF ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY ................................................................52
CONTEXT, INTENT AND THE ILLUSION OF NON-TRANSPARENCY ........................................................................................56
CHAPTER 6 - CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................58

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES ..............................................................................................................62

 "The best writing on photography has always been by moralists--hooked on photographs but
troubled by the way photography inexorably beautifies.”
-Susan Sontag

“-in looking at others’ pain we rightly wonder whether knowledge of their suffering is a
restorative act, or in fact complicit with the violence witnessed. Can the tiny faces in the pictures
see us doing nothing to help them? Of course not, but this painful labour of attending to others’
suffering, might be the very beginning of responsibility itself.”
–Sharon Sliwinski

“I think if people see this footage, they'll say ‘Oh, my God, that's horrible.’ And then they'll go
on eating their dinners.”
–Hotel Rwanda
Chapter 1 - Introduction

Imagine yourself sitting at a bar with a group of friends, drinking beer, chatting, and

watching a live baseball game on the television that sits in the corner of the room. What you are

getting through this live television feed is a direct visual connection to the baseball game and all

the players in it. Chances are that later, when you go home and get asked by your housemate

what you did that evening, you will say you “saw” the baseball game.

Replace the idea of a direct visual connection to a baseball game with one to a small

house in a third world country, in which there are seven children sleeping in the same bed, on the

verge of starvation. You have a closed circuit camera transmitting images from that house

directly to the television in the bar. This is not news coverage. It is simply a channel that has a

constant direct feed from the interior of this house to the television in your local bar. Would you

deem it ethically permissible to tune in to that channel and watch these children as they suffered

while you drank beer with your friends? I expect that you almost certainly would not.

Now imagine that you are sitting at a friend’s apartment having coffee and you pick up a

book of documentary photographs that is lying on the coffee table in front of you. It is a large,

expensive book that consists almost entirely of images printed on high quality, glossy paper, and

almost no text. The photographs are of various places, peoples and situations, and as you flip

through the book you see that many of them are photographs of intense human suffering; a war

scene with a man crying over the body of his dead child, a baby infected with AIDS, a battered

woman and child huddled in a corner attempting to hide from invading soldiers. You sit and

drink coffee and examine the images in this book, turning from one glossy image to the next,
turning from one image of suffering, sadness and terror to another. You feel your heart go out to

the people in the images you see; then you close the book, set it down, and return to your

conversation with your friend about how you recently had your ex-boyfriend whom you hadn’t

spoken to in six months show up at your door for no reason at all. For the most part you have

forgotten about the images you have just seen in the book and you have become reabsorbed in

your own life and trying to figure out whether it was a smart idea to let your ex-boyfriend in the

door at all rather than just slam it in his face. This seems like a fairly typical event in the lives of

many educated and privileged individuals in western nations, and one which is seldom

questioned in terms of its ethical permissibility.

I would now like to return to my previous example and ask that you imagine that the live

television connection—the one to the house where the seven children are on the verge of death—

freezes and the screen gets stuck on one frame of these children for several minutes. This is

equivalent to a still photograph. Given this, has your sense of the ethical permissibility of tuning

in and watching changed at all? I am going to hypothesize that if you thought it was unethical to

view an active live television feed of this scene, you will also find it impermissible to do so with

a frozen image. There seems to be something quite intuitively wrong with turning on the

television to watch kids dying as you try to unwind from a long day with your friends, even if all

you can see is one frame that is frozen on the screen.

Counter to such intuitions, there are many theorists in the realms of both photography and

philosophy who hold that a photograph is merely a disconnected representation of someone (or

something,) and therefore that viewing a photograph is not at all like seeing the actual depicta.
Under this theory, there would seem to be no ethical dilemma in participating in the previously

stated example. It is this conflict between the previously stated theories and intuitions about what

is morally appropriate that has led to a long standing debate over the ethics of photographing

people who are suffering, when and where it is ethical to do so, as well as what purpose it

actually serves.

Up until now, the ethical debates about documentary photography depicting human

suffering have failed to consider the philosophical debate on photographic transparency and the

consequences and implications that it has for these ethical dilemmas. I believe this to be an

oversight of serious consequence.

The photographic transparency debate focuses on the question of what it is that makes us

consider photographs to have a superior status as a medium of visual representation and what it

is that we actually see when viewing photographs. The transparency theory states that

photographs are transparent, which means that they give us actual visual access to their depicta.

Essentially, we see things through photographs. I have found that the transparency thesis has

considerable implications for ethical disputes on the representation and viewing of human

suffering through photography. For if we accept this thesis, the acts of viewing and producing

photographs take on a myriad of new ethical considerations and consequences due to the visual

status that transparency gives them. In short, all ethical implications and consequences of vision

are now extended to everything we see through photographs.

Though the debates on photographic transparency and the ethics of documentary

photography have been extensively explored, the connection between the two, and how the

photographic transparency theory affects the ethical debates, has not been considered. In the

following chapters I will be drawing the connection between photographic transparency and the

ethics of documentary photography, as well as examining some of the fundamental ethical

debates in photography with the assumption that photographs are transparent. In doing so, I hope

to bring a new perspective to some of these ethical issues and outline some of the new ones that

arise if we accept the theory of transparency.

This thesis will focus primarily on the ethical dilemmas that come up in relation to those

photographs depicting human suffering. I have chosen to make this the central concern of this

text due to the fact that the situations in which there is human suffering being photographed and

displayed seem to be the ones that spark the most ethical debate. Throughout this thesis I will

examine various types of photography and contexts of exhibition in order to make a well

rounded and informed ethical analysis. Nevertheless, the sphere of possibility in the genres and

uses of the photographic medium is huge, and therefore there are many types of photography and

presentation contexts which I will not be discussing. As a result of this the ethical analysis and

subsequent conclusions drawn in this thesis regarding photographs of human suffering may not

apply to some other areas of the photographic medium, which include (but are not limited to)

commercial, theatrical and medical photography.

Chapter 2 - On Photographic Transparency

“The photograph is the only picture that can truly convey information, even if it is technically
faulty and the object can barely be identified. A painting of a murder is of no interest whatever;
but a photograph of a murder fascinates everyone.”
– Gerhard Richter, as quoted by Aaron Cohen and Jonathan Meskin

Photography is often thought to have representational qualities which distinguish it as a

medium from other forms of visual representation, though what those qualities are—assuming

they exist—has been a controversial topic for quite some time. People often ascribe a certain

amount of truth value to photographs, which they do not ascribe to other representational

mediums, and treat them in accordance to that value. Photographs are admissible as evidence in a

court of law and are frequently seen as more valuable than a verbal account of an event; they can

serve as means of blackmail; photographs taken of outer space by telescopes help to expand our

knowledge of the universe; photographs are the most commonly used forms of identification;

and hidden cameras are used as security devices in order to keep track of what goes on in an

unoccupied space. These types of attitudes about and uses of photography clearly demonstrate

that society does privilege it as a form of documentation. Given that, some explanation is

required as to why this is the case and what it is about the photographic medium that justifies

giving it such a privileged status.

No other form of representation or documentation has even come close to being as valued

as photographs. If Casey gives me a piece of paper on which she has sketched Hannah sneaking

into my room and messing with my computer, I will most likely laugh at her and ask why she is
inventing stories to get Hannah in trouble. However, if Casey hands me a photograph of Hannah

sitting at my computer giggling and tells me that Hannah has been playing jokes on me, chances

are that I will march myself right over to Hannah’s room and yell at her for once again setting

my Microsoft Word autocorrect to replace the word “photography” with “pornography”.

Similarly, if someone comes back from humankind’s first mission to Mars and reports that Mars

is actually a giant disco ball with strobe effects, and this person truly seems to believe this, I

think the most likely response would be to admit that person to a hospital for some serious

psychological observation. Yet if they come back with a photograph of this (assuming there are

no computers aboard their space craft which would allow them to manipulate such a

photograph), there will be, at the very least, surprise, speculation and investigation of the matter.

Furthermore, such an investigation will probably begin with a close examination of the

photograph itself and the device with which it was taken, thus implying that what is in question

is the authenticity of the photograph itself; in order to question an event that has been

photographed, one must question the conditions under which that particular photograph it was

taken and processed.

People do not simply reject events shown in photographs, they reject the photographs that

depict those events as being inaccurate or manipulated. If one looks at a photograph of Greta

Garbo standing at the bottom of the ocean in full evening attire, one not only says that Greta

Garbo was not in fact at the bottom of the ocean dressed in such a manner, but also that the

photograph was illegitimate. People assume that what is depicted in a legitimate photograph did

in fact take place or exist. Photographer Edward Weston is quoted as having said “only with

effort can the camera be forced to lie: basically it is an honest medium” (Sontag, 186). It seems
logically erroneous to say that there is a legitimate and un-manipulated photograph which depicts

something that does not exist, and this implies that there is something inherent in the

photographic medium which gives it a higher or more direct representational or documentary

value than anything else.

In the article “Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism” Kendall

Walton poses the question, what is unique about photography which distinguishes it from other

mediums of visual images? Most often, photographs are described as excelling in the dimension

of realism, where realism is taken to be representing the world in a supremely realistic way and

not as an artistic genre. However, as Walton point out, the fact that photographs may excel at

representing things realistically cannot be what ultimately makes them different from paintings,

drawings etc. For many paintings may, if created with the appropriate technique, be as realistic

as photographs if not more so, given that photographs are frequently distorted or blurry and thus

do not show their depicta in what one would see as a tremendously realistic or accurate manner.

“Paintings can be as realistic as the most realistic photographs, if realism resides in the
subtleties of shading, skillful purpose, and so forth; some indeed are virtually
indistinguishable from photographs. When a painter fails to achieve such realism up to
the photographic standards, the difficulty is merely technological, one which, in
principle, can be overcome—by more attention to details, more skill with the brush, a
better grasp on the ‘rules of perspective’”(Walton, 249).

As it is explained by Walton, it is not that paintings do not have the ability to be as

realistic as photographs; simply that photographs function in such a way that it is easier for them

to be so realistic.

Walton also rejects André Bazin’s claim that a photograph of something is identical to
said thing. He states that it is utterly ridiculous to think such a thing as that a photograph of Brad

Pitt is actually the same as Brad Pitt (though if that were actually the case I would be extremely

pleased). Even if you do not take Bazin’s words so literally, his claim remains implausible; it

does not make much more sense to say that when one sees a photograph of Brad Pitt they are

under the impression that it is Brad Pitt because the photograph is identical to him. It would take

extreme circumstances to create this type of impression—like some serious hallucinogenic drugs,

tremendous extremes of sleep deprivation or a life-sized hologram so perfectly constructed in its

three-dimensionality that for a moment one is lead to believe it is actually Brad Pitt.

Furthermore, such circumstances could also lead one to believe that a particularly realistic

painting of Brad Pitt is in fact him, and therefore this theory the distinction between photography

and other forms of visual representation is once again lost.

Walton then posits that what gives photographs their superior status is that “a photograph

is always a photograph of something which actually exists” (250). A camera cannot take a photo

of something it does not see in front of it, whereas a painting may depict something that is a

figment of someone’s imagination, or a memory. In fact, even in cases where a photograph

shows what appear to be unreal objects or beings, such as a fairy or a flying cow, the photograph

still depicts something which actually existed; namely, in these cases, a person with a set of fairy

wings attached to their back or a cardboard cow suspended in the air by a piece of string hung

from the ceiling.

Due to this property of photography which Walton has distinguished, his central thesis is

that photography acts as an aid to vision itself—much like a pair of binoculars or a mirror—and
therefore when we look at a photograph of an object, it is not a representation of that object that

we are seeing, but rather the object itself via the aid of a photograph. Photographs, like a

telescope, allow people to view things which they would otherwise not have the ability to see.

They supplement our visual powers. Photographs are “transparent” and we see the world itself

through them.

Walton is careful to clarify that when he says that we see objects via photographs he is

not saying that we have the impression of seeing an object when we see it in a photograph—for

this would be the looser interpretation of Bazin’s theory. This claim is much weaker than

Walton’s thesis which states that when we look at a photograph of something we see the actual

objects. If I were to look at a photograph of my ex-boyfriend, I do not have the mere impression

of seeing him; I am actually seeing him in the moment that the photograph was taken.

According to Walton, the transparency of photographs rests on the mode in which we

acquire information from them. When we look at a drawing or painting in order to acquire

information about its subject, what we are relying on for the information is actually another

person—the one who created the image. Our information on the subject is secondhand and thus

our beliefs about it are contingent on not only the beliefs of the artist but also their imagination,

skill, and intent in creating that painting. Our knowledge about the painting’s subject cannot

supersede that of the creator of the painting, for we only see what the artist saw and chose to

represent. In fact, the painting requires a human mediator in order to come into existence; a

painting cannot make itself. A person must take a very active and deliberate role in creating it.

Photographs on the other hand require no such mediation in order to exist. They are produced
mechanically and what they show has not been already interpreted by a human being. Therefore

the knowledge obtained from a photograph does not rest on another person’s knowledge or

perception of the subject. The visual connection between an object photographed and she who

views the photo is direct, as opposed to that of an object painted and she who views the painting

which is indirect, because it passes through a mediator. An object itself causes the creation of a

photographic image through a mechanical process, whereas a person is the direct cause of a

painting of an object.

“The photograph is literally an emanation of the referent. From a real body, which was
there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the
transmission is insignificant; the photograph of the missing being, as Sontag says, will
touch me like the delayed rays of a star. A sort of umbilical cord links the body of the
photographed thing to my gaze: light, though impalpable, is here a carnal medium, a skin
I share with anyone who has been photographed” (Barthes, 80).

Objections may be raised in response to this analysis based on the subjectivity of

photographs, the decisions that a person makes when deciding where to point their camera and

the subsequent impressions that viewers will have of what is photographed. Given this, it seems

that people obviously do mediate photographs. Looking at a photograph of a Yankee game is not

at all like being at the game. A photograph which is aimed at the pitcher will not show the angry

Red Sox fans in the bleachers or the happy Yankee fan that just dumped a cooler of beer on the

couple in front of him. The person who takes the photograph of the Yankee pitcher limits,

censors and decides what people will see of this game when they look at his photograph. What

he chooses to photograph and the angle at which he does so in many ways influences what

people will think of this game when they look at his photograph.

Such objections are quickly dismissed by Walton. He claims that the fact that a person
behind a camera has the power to arbitrate what will be shown in this photograph does not in any

way change the fact that when one looks at a photograph, they see what is in it. Our direct vision

of certain objects of scenarios is frequently affected by other people both intentionally and not,

still no one disputes that do in fact see those things. Objects are pointed out to us that we would

not have otherwise seen and others are obscured from our vision. Cigarette smoke clouding a

room prevents us from seeing the exact color of the eyes of the person we are talking to, a lace

curtain hung over an entry way prevents us from clearly seeing the contents of the room behind

it. Yet no one will deny that I see the room through the lace curtain or that I see the architectural

detail on the ceiling which would have gone unnoticed by me had someone not pointed it out.

What I see is affected and guided by others and still I certainly see it, first hand and essentially

un-interpreted and unmediated by anyone else. The same holds true for what we see through

photographs. Decisions regarding what to show and how dark or light to show them have been

made; someone has decided that showing one part of something is more important than showing

its other pieces; we do not experience the subject through the photograph in the same way we

would if it were physically in front of us, and yet we still see what is in that photograph. The

visual experience I had of Stuyvesant heights was largely guided by my mother and her best

friend and would have been quite different if my mother had not pointed out certain details on

the buildings to me, but it would be ridiculous to deny that I saw the neighborhood.

Another concern that some may have regards the fact that photographs are frequently

imperfect in accurately showing their depicta. Photographs rarely capture truth or convey the

understanding of a scene which might come with the ability to view it without a visual aid. If I

see a close-up photograph of my Golden Retriever’s back, through which I can only see a mass
of reddish-gold fur, I may not even be aware of the fact that the photograph is of Lady. Or the

photograph may show only Lady’s head and shoulders, thus making it impossible for me to see

that she has seven stitches on the top of her thigh where she had a tumor removed. The

photographer may have intentionally chosen to exclude this part of Lady from the photograph so

that I would not be upset and worried. Thus apparently making the photograph extremely

inaccurate in representing Lady at the time in which the photograph of her was taken.

Walton acknowledges that the debate regarding what exactly is unique about photography

frequently centers on this question of accuracy, yet he does not see the fact that photographs are

not always especially accurate as threatening to his thesis on transparency given the fact that

even without the visual aid of photographs we often see things inaccurately due to lighting

conditions, strange reflections and optical illusions.

“But why should this matter? We can be deceived when we see things directly. If
cameras can lie, so can our eyes. To see something through a distorting mirror is still to
see it, even if we are misled about it. We also see through fog, through tinted
windshields, and through out of focus microscopes. The ‘distortions’ or ‘inaccuracies’ of
photographs are no reason to deny that we see through them” (258).

If we can have misleading visual experiences directly (without visual aids) then why should

having them indirectly (through photographs) negate the fact that we are truly seeing?

The accuracy objection to the transparency thesis is highly misdirected and lends far

more scope to the theory itself than is actually intended. The allegation that photographs are

transparent does not necessarily carry with it the claim that photographs accurately represent

situations or knowledge on any given subject. It merely establishes the visual connection

between the viewer of a photograph and the photograph’s depicta. Specifically, it establishes that
the connection is between she who views the photograph and the object photographed and not

between the viewer and a representation of the object shown. I may not see or understand Lady

at the moment she was photographed but that does not negate the fact that what I am seeing is in

fact Lady’s head and shoulders.

As I have outlined—with the help of Walton—much of the confusion and discomfort

over the idea of photographic transparency may be diffused by clarifying that the transparency

thesis is merely a claim about a visual connection. It does not purport to provide accuracy, truth,

neutrality or precision; it contends only that photographs provide an actual visual connection to

their depicta and thus that we can see through the image, unlike other representational media

which do not give viewers any direct visual connection to the subject.

This theory of photography and what makes it distinctive is controversial and by no

means generally accepted. In this chapter what I have done is outlined Walton’s theory of

transparency and given my defense of it against some commonly stated objections to it in the

hope of convincing readers that this is a plausible explanation for why we treat photographs

differently than other forms of visual representation. However, I understand that this theory will

not convince everyone and that many are extremely skeptical of it. Nonetheless, all of the

behaviors that people often display in relation to photographs—some of which I laid out in the

beginning of this chapter—do seem to require some explanation, which transparency provides

for more than adequately. These behaviors indicate that people do believe that photographs are in

some way or another transparent, regardless of whether this is conscious or not. It is for this

reason that I have chosen to make the claim that photographs are transparent and base my ethical
analysis of photography on this claim. If you have not been convinced of photographic

transparency by Walton and my arguments in this chapter, I still ask you to consider the fact that

many people treat them as though they are and thus that an ethical analysis of this type of

behavior is necessary and appropriate.

Chapter 3 - Ethical Consequences of Photographic Transparency

Since its inception, photography has often pushed the limits of people’s intuitions

regarding what is acceptable to look at in a photograph and the transparency thesis carries with it

a myriad of additional ethical consequences in relation to viewing photographic images; namely,

that the ethics of vision—whatever they may be—and observation itself must now be applied to

all things viewed through them. Talk of looking at the content of a photograph is no longer

appropriate; whatever is depicted is not of or in a photograph, it is itself as seen through the

device of the photograph. Therefore, the ethical dilemmas about looking at certain things now

apply to everything that appears before us in photographic images.

This application of the ethics of vision onto the ethics of viewing photographs greatly

impacts the ethical dilemma of viewing human suffering through photography. It implies that the

ethical dilemmas that must be considered are not only centered on the viewer and what is morally

correct for them to view on grounds of self-oriented moral principles, but must also consider

what is respectful and appropriate for those depicted in a photograph, since we now are assuming

that it is them we are looking at and not just a image imprinted on a piece of paper.

The Ethics of Vision

Most cultures operate with intuition that there are some things that are simply

inappropriate to view. While the specific things may change from any given culture to another,

the idea that it is taboo to look at certain things seems to be relatively cross-cultural. For
example, in many modern western societies, privacy is alleged to be one of the most valued

commodities, and most infringements on it, be they visual or auditory, are considered

unacceptable. Therefore, to look at or hear anyone at a time in which they would not willingly

allow you to—possibly while ill or crying, during sexual encounters, during arguments, or at

simply personal moments—is something which most people, at least in theory, wish to refrain

from doing or having done to them.

Both Utilitarian and Kantian ethical theories would have grounds to criticize the act of

viewing persons who are suffering for anything other than completely and directly positive and

productive reasons which would lead to the benefit of those who are being viewed. However,

Kantian ethical theorists would probably be more concerned with the notion of privacy and

respect for the wishes of others in regards to viewing them than Utilitarians would. Furthermore,

a Kantian theorist would most likely hold that even if the wish of a person is not expressly that

they not be observed in their moment of pain, it seems that we must also respect the dignity and

humanity of that person enough to refrain from viewing them in order to satisfy our own

curiosity or fantasy about whatever is occurring to them.

Kantian ethical theory is founded on the premise that humans, being moral agents, have

intrinsic worth, thus making them ends in themselves. If humans were not ends in themselves

their value would be subjective and relative to how valuable they were to the ends to which they

acted as a means. Furthermore, Kantian ethical theory holds that rational beings are the only

things which have absolute intrinsic worth and therefore that all other agents and things are a

means for humans and never ends in themselves.

“-rational beings are called persons inasmuch as their nature already marks them out as ends in

themselves, i.e., as something which is not to be used merely as a means and hence there is

imposed thereby a limit on all arbitrary use of such beings, which are thus objects of respect.

Persons are, therefore, not merely subjective ends, whose existence as an effect of our actions

has value for us; but such beings are objective ends, i.e., exist as ends in themselves. Such an end

is one for which there can be substituted no other end to which such beings should serve merely

as means, for otherwise nothing at all of absolute value would be found anywhere” (Kant, 429).

Thus humans, as rational and moral agents with intrinsic value, must always view

themselves as intrinsically valuable and never treat any rational, moral agent as a mere means to

something else of value (subjective value). People must never be used as a mere means to

achieve any sort of end, given that they will always be more valuable or equally so to that end.

By this I mean that one should never treat another human as though they are without value

except for that which they may provide to another. For instance, a pregnant woman must never

treat her doctor as though his only value lies in bringing her child safely into the world. She

should view that doctor as an independent rational agent whom is valuable in himself and not

only for the service that he will provide for her and thus treat him accordingly. Similarly one

should never form a relationship or friendship with someone else simply because that person

makes them feel good about themselves and generally happy. To form such a relationship would

be to use that person as a mere means to the end of achieving one’s own happiness. In all human

relationships, one must respect and appreciate the value of the people with whom they are

interacting for what they themselves are and the qualities they possess, and never for just a

feeling they may induce or commodity they may provide.

 While simply looking at someone in pain may not be actively hurting them, the sheer act

of looking for no reason other than to fulfill a desire to look, is treating that person as a mere

means to the end of satisfying curiosity, which clearly does not have intrinsic worth. Under

Kantian theory, to view a person for such purposes would, in a manner, objectify them and treat

them as less than the worth of a rational moral agent.

It may be argued that there are situations in which viewing a person uses them as a mere

means to significantly benefit a greater population of moral agents (which would seem to justify

using them as such). For example, imagine that there is an eight-year-old boy, we’ll call him

Max, dying of a rare degenerative disease for which there is no cure and, due to the rarity of said

disease, a significant lack of information about. There is nothing that can be done to prolong

Max’s life and he is sure to die within the next year. There is however a treatment for the disease

that will help alleviate the Max’s symptoms and thus allow him to live a completely comfortable

life until the disease eventually kills him. Max is being treated in a hospital where there is a

doctor researching the disease and potential cures for it. He is too far along in the illness to ever

benefit from whatever the doctor may discover and watching the progression of the illness and

its symptoms in Max provides the doctor with a rare opportunity to see the progression of the

disease, thus helping him in his research for a cure. If Max continues to be treated for his

symptoms the doctor will be unable to study the progression of the disease. If a cure for this

disease were discovered, the doctor could potentially save ten other little boys around the world

with early stages of the disease, thus making Max a mere means to the end of saving others.
 Obviously this is a morally problematic scenario. A Kantian moral perspective holds

quite firmly that it is morally impermissible to allow Max to suffer in order to use his suffering to

cure the disease. However, a Utilitarian approach to analyzing the situation would probably

conclude that a greater good would ultimately be served in stopping the Max’s treatment and

allowing the doctor to observe him. Utilitarianism holds that people are morally obligated to, in

some way, bring about the maximum amount of happiness in the world that they are able. On an

act-Utilitarian view, whatever action which would bring the greatest amount of happiness to the

greatest possible number of people is the morally correct one. This moral perspective clearly

differs greatly from the Kantian perspective in its mode of ethical evaluation, and in some cases,

including this particular scenario, these two ethical frameworks will arrive at different ethical

conclusions. While Utilitarianism would hold that their was a duty to maximize the greatest

amount of happiness, and would thus probably sacrifice Max’s comfort in order to do so, the

Kantian ethical framework would say there is an absolute duty not to treat Max as a mere means

to any end because as a rational agent, his life trumps all other responsibilities and thus he should

not be made to suffer. Utilitarianism and Kantianism arrive at different conclusions in these

types of scenarios due to the fact that they diverge in opinion as to exactly what humans should

value the most and thus have a responsibility towards—the Kantian perspective believes that our

ultimate responsibility is to rational agents as individuals, while Utilitarianism values happiness

above individual life and holds that there is a responsibility to maximize it.

A scenario regarding the viewing of human suffering for no reason other than to satisfy

curiosity may be another in which these two ethical frameworks arrive at different conclusions as

to what is ethically permissible and in fact required. The Kantian framework will without doubt
find it morally impermissible to stare at a suffering child and do nothing to help them, thus not

treating them as ends but using them as a mere means to satisfying curiosity or intrigue.

However the Utilitarian moral framework may not find this to be so impermissible. Utilitarian

analysis of the situation may conclude that if the viewing of a suffering child makes a great deal

of people happy (because they are satisfying this curiosity they have about suffering) then it may

in fact be morally permissible to use the suffering child for the purpose of maximizing happiness.

However, this seems fairly morally problematic on an intuitive level and consequently a number

of Utilitarians might not be comfortable with this analysis. This discomfort may cause these

Utilitarians to attempt to work their way out of this conclusion by positing that the happiness that

people may feel when they view human suffering is not actually “real” happiness and thus there

is no responsibility to maximize it. At this point the dilemma for Utilitarianism in regards to

what true happiness is and what maximizes it has become an empirical one

Though Utilitarianism and Kantianism diverge in many cases and in their modes of ethical

analysis, it is crucial to note that they both rely on a principle of responsibility towards others.

What that responsibility is towards is again a place where these two ethical frameworks differ in

their theories, but nonetheless, they both agree that humans have responsibility towards others.

The case with the Max and the doctor was one in which the doctor’s vision of Max was directly

linked to his duty to alleviate suffering. The question was simply whose suffering, and did not

call into question the fact that some action must be taken. Therefore, the pertinent ethical issue at

the moment regards the responsibility that may come with seeing. I will thus continue to examine

the ethics of vision, not by taking a firm Kantian or Utilitarian perspective, but rather by

focusing on their common premise of responsibility.

The Ethical Consequences of Vision

It seems clear that one cannot be responsible for something if they have no knowledge of

that thing. It is clearly unreasonable to hold anyone responsible for promoting happiness—or

anything else—in situations of which they have no knowledge. For example, act-Utilitarianism

would hold that if one had knowledge of an elderly and sick person, living on the same block,

who was alone and did not have anyone to take care of them, that person would be morally

obligated to act in such a way so as to help relieve this person’s pain to the greatest extent that

they possibly could. However, if one has never heard of this elderly person or does not have any

idea that they are sick, they cannot possibly be obligated to do anything about it. It is clearly

logically impossible for one to consciously prevent something they do not know is happening.

However, it may be reasonable to assume that if one does in fact possess knowledge of

something, they may be, at least, indirectly responsible for it. Vision, as a modality through

which knowledge is obtained, may then lead to that responsibility.

Given that most modern western intuitions on morality have an undercurrent of weakened

Utilitarianism to them, this previously stated expectation that one may be responsible for that

which they have knowledge of, seems fairly significant and needs to be taken into consideration.

There frequently appears to be a certain expectation that people, as moral agents, will not allow

tragic acts or cases of extreme suffering to occur if it is within their power to prevent them.

Moral judgments are generally made on people who stand by and watch as a small toddler

crawls into a busy intersection unattended or as a child starves to death in front of them. Under

both Utilitarian and Kantian ethical theory (Kantian theory holds that rational agents have a duty

to help others, though it gives some flexibility in how to fulfill said duty) it seems reasonable to
assume that one understands what it is they are seeing and therefore vision is directly linked to

knowledge of an event, then the onlooker is potentially responsible for what they see.

Ignoring the Ethical Consequences of Vision

Despite the intuition that it does seem that people are in some sense held responsible for

what they see and have knowledge of, there seem to be certain behaviors that people in many

western societies display fairly frequently that one could cite as evidence against either the fact

that the previously stated expectation exists, or the intuition that it is morally impermissible to

act contrary to it. New York City currently has over thirty-thousand homeless people sleeping in

the N.Y.C. shelter system each night and thousands of others undocumented homeless people

sleeping on the streets (Coalition for the Homeless). New York City has approximately eight-

million people living in it, many of who walk by these thousands of homeless persons every day

and do not stop to attempt to ease their suffering. How then can one reasonably say that people in

general do not find it to be morally permissible to know of someone’s suffering and not do

anything to stop it?

I would argue that people frequently limit their own conscious knowledge of what is

occurring around them by simply choosing to ignore it or to not have intimate contact with it. As

New Yorkers on their way to work rush by dozens of homeless people sleeping on the streets

they rarely ever actually observe these people or make eye contact with them. If a homeless

person boards a subway train and begins to speak, the most common reaction is for other

passengers to look away and pretend they are not there at all. People turn up the volume on their
headphones or speak more loudly to their companions so as to not hear what is being said in this

confrontation with someone who is clearly suffering. Passengers attempt to absorb themselves in

their books or work and thus block this person from their minds completely. By not focusing on

something that is clearly a case of avoidable suffering, people distance themselves from the

situation and thus can “not really know” that it exists. Furthermore, it is precisely because people

have this intuition that it is immoral to stand idly by while someone in front of them suffers that

they attempt to distance themselves from suffering in general. This type of distancing is usually

only possible by not hearing the words or seeing the face of the homeless man standing in front

of you on the subway car. Without a face or voice, the memory of the person is easily erased

because it has no real substance. It is merely a shadow and thus has no ethical consequence.

People often wipe this memory from their minds as quickly as possible so that they will not have

to get through their day with the knowledge that so many people in very close proximity to them

are leading truly miserable and painful lives. However, if a homeless child approaches someone

on the street and looks straight into their eyes and pleads for help, the image of that child is

burned into that person’s memory. It is much harder to forget a face that one has focused their

eyes on or to forget words they have actually comprehended and thus given conscious thought to.

One could not then easily deny or forget that they had knowledge of this case of suffering and

did not act in any way to ease it. For someone to have full and conscious possession of the

knowledge that one is truly suffering right in front of them would entail responsibility for the

situation and that responsibility—and what would be required to actually help alleviate the

severity of the situation—is one that usually seems too costly, or is in fact just not possible, for

most people. Suffering that occurs to people to whom one is connected in day to day life cannot

be blocked out due to the direct effects it will have on them. The suffering of those who one does
not know can have almost no effect whatsoever in so long as one does not dwell on it, and as I

said before, in order to not dwell on it, one must be distanced from the situation and pretend to

not know about it. Moreover, this distancing is desirable because as previously stated, if one does

not know about it, one cannot be or feel responsible for it and thus potentially guilty.

The Ethics of Vision in Photography

As I pointed out in the beginning of the section on the ethical consequences of

photographic transparency, the consequence of taking photographic transparency seriously is that

one must take the same attitude about vision through photography as the attitude they take

towards vision in general. One should not distinguish between something they see in the actual

space in front of them and seeing that same thing via a photograph. Though there may be

obstacles relating to the time in which a photograph was taken and the distance between the

photograph’s depicta and its viewer which impede the viewer from physically connecting with

the depicta, these do not excuse a disparity in the moral attitude one takes towards things they

view through a photograph and things which they view otherwise.

The Ethical Consequences of Vision through Photography

The unique appeal in photography lies to a great extent in its ability to allow visual access

to subjects normally beyond our scope of vision or knowledge. Photographs preserve open-ended

visual connections with objects, people and scenes as seen in one particular instant of time and

may thus provide a visual connection to these instants for people in future times and distant

places who could not have visual access to these things otherwise. Additionally, photography

allows for a one sided direct visual connection to things in a way that was never possible before
its inception. One can look at things through a photograph and have full knowledge of how they

looked in the moment that the photograph was taken, but the subjects in the photograph not only

do not have visual access to those viewing it, but often they have no control over who views it,

where it is taken, or how many times it gets viewed. A photograph’s depicta probably does not

even know when they are being viewed via a photograph.

This one-sided nature of photography clearly presents numerous issues regarding the

amount of direct influence a viewer of a photograph can have on what they see in it. If there is a

variation in the amount that one may affect a scene or a person that they are viewing, there are

clearly different ethical implications regarding the responsibility one has for what they see and

know. Undoubtedly these ethical responsibilities fluctuate with the amount of time passed

between the creation of the photograph and the location of it in relation to the time and space in

which it is being viewed. If one is sent a digital photograph via computer of a child being

tortured down the street at that very moment, then the person who receives the photograph

clearly has a responsibility to call the police, run down the street to stop it or orchestrate some

sort of intervention in some manner or another. However, if one sees a photograph of an old man

being clubbed to death by the Nazis in 1942 they have no possibility of stopping the situation

and thus have no ethical responsibility to act in such a manner. Still, not all cases are so clear cut

and there are many photographs which blur the line of responsibility for an event and the

appropriate action to undertake, though these are not what I am concerned with at this moment. I

will discuss these cases and the ethical dilemmas corresponding to them at a later point in this

chapter; but right now I wish to focus on the concept of the ethics of viewing a photograph of

suffering even if there is no possibility of stopping it or intervening in any manner.

 Think of seeing an ad in the New York Times for a new documentary photography

exhibit going on at the MET which focuses on the AIDS crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa. The

exhibit displays photographs by various documentary photographers who have ventured into the

depths of these AIDS-stricken countries in order to provide the New York elite with visual

access to these AIDS victims. It is a limited engagement, the show will only be up for a month

and you have already heard from friends that it is not to be missed. You then think ahead to your

next free day and decide to spend the next Saturday with a friend having lunch at an Asian fusion

restaurant that has just opened on the Upper East Side and seeing the documentary photography

exhibit at the MET. This is a perfectly normal day in the life of many New Yorkers.

Now, replace that exhibit of photographs with actual AIDS victims. The exhibit at the

MET actually displays a glass room with three critically ill AIDS patients and has invited all of

New York to come and observe them. What better way to show people the reality of what AIDS

does and the suffering that people live through? Will you go see this exhibit with your friend

after lunching at the trendiest new restaurant in New York City?

Of course, this example can be objected to by pointing out that in the case where there are

actual people dying of AIDS being observed by half of New York, it seems to be a different

ethical setup because for one, people viewing them do have the possibility of making contact

with those in the glass room and thus the possibility of helping them. Allowing them to die

simply to watch is clearly ridiculous and grotesque. Additionally, the AIDS victims will be able

to see those who are viewing them and thus this is no longer a one way visual connection. They
will feel humiliated and uncomfortable and that clearly makes the situation more ethically

problematic. Thus, I will modify my example to more accurately depict the visual relationship

between a photograph’s depicta and its viewers.

Imagine that there are a couple of AIDS victims in Africa who are absolutely beyond all

help. There is no treatment that can alleviate their pain and no drug to stop the progression of the

virus. It also happens that they have been contaminated with the HIV II virus and doctors have

not had as much opportunity to see the end stages of AIDS that has resulted from the HIV II

strain. They have been asked if they will allow doctors in America to observe them for medical

research purposes and they consent to this. They are then flown to New York where they are

admitted to Beth Israel Hospital and doctors begin observing them. However, in addition to the

doctors who are observing them and their massive suffering and pain through two way mirrors,

there is also a closed circuit video camera in the room which is transmitting the images of these

people writhing in pain to a screen at the MET where they are available for all to see. There is

nothing that anyone who is viewing this live video feed can do in order to help these people; time

and space are completely irrelevant. Would you go see this exhibit for your Saturday afternoon

entertainment?

There is no ethical difference between viewing these AIDS victims in their moment of

utmost pain and suffering via a closed circuit camera and looking at a photograph of them. Why

is it then that people seem so much more comfortable going to look at photographs of suffering

people than they are looking at them live? I hypothesize that the reason for this lies to a great

extent in something I call “the illusion of non-transparency”. The illusion of non-transparency is

a phenomenon which fools people into believing that photographs are not in fact transparent and

that what one sees when looking at it via a photograph is not actually the real thing.

It seems to be the case the most people will, without hesitation, stare at a photograph of

something which, were they to encounter this thing in the physical, tangible space in front of

them, they would never dream of just staring at for an extended period of time. Pornography is a

prime example of such a scenario. Through photographs one allows themselves to stare at others

engaging in sexual intercourse and completely and fully objectify those whom they are viewing

when, chances are, that if one were to accidentally encounter such a scene in a room they had

just walked into, they would quickly turn and walk away. Granted, if they were to stay in the

room with the intent to watch, the events occurring would probably cease to continue due to the

fact that those actively participating in it did not wish to be viewed. However, even in a state of

affairs in which the people engaging in intercourse did wish to be viewed and had expressed

those wishes, most people would probably have a vague sense of discomfort watching these

events and possibly feel as though they were intruding or as though their presence affected and

thus played an a role in the events they were observing. Pornography allows people to view such

scenes without this feeling of discomfort due to the fact that when viewing a photograph of

something, people entertain the illusion that what they are seeing is not people or events

themselves but merely an image composed of dyes and paper; and clearly there is no ethical

dilemma—personal or otherwise—involved in viewing a piece of paper.

The illusion of non-transparency acts as a device to allow people to fully visually focus

on photographs without feeling that they have ethical responsibility for them. As I discussed in
my section on the ethical consequences of vision, people frequently avoid visually focusing on,

or directly looking at, things that make them ethically uncomfortable and thus by not looking

they allow themselves to escape any responsibility for these things. The illusion of non-

transparency allows for people to take their visual fill of any object they wish and yet avoid

discomfort and feel as though they have no ethical responsibility for what they are viewing so

long as they view it through a photograph because, as I have previously stated, they do not feel

that they are actually looking at the thing itself.

The question that arises in this scenario of viewing suffering through a photograph which

you have no control over, is, why look at it? It does not seem ethically, socially or even

personally productive to spend time staring at people who are suffering simply because it is

fascinating. Obviously I cannot deny the shock factor that frequently comes when one comes to

view and image of extreme suffering that seems to often stun the viewer into continued staring in

order to attempt to comprehend or simply digest what it is they are viewing. It would be

ridiculous to label this as ethically impermissible or to ethically condemn one who finds

themselves in such a position. What concerns me are the cases in which people seek out

photographs of suffering in order to view it. What motivation do people have for viewing pain

that they are in no position to ease, and how can one ethically justify viewing other people’s

pain?
Chapter 4 - Human Suffering, Demonic Curiosity and Aesthetics

“A society which makes it normative to aspire to never experience privation, failure,

misery, pain, dread disease, and in which death itself is regarded not as natural and
inevitable but as a cruel, unmerited disaster, creates a tremendous curiosity about these
events—a curiosity that is partly satisfied through picture-taking. The feeling of being
exempt from calamity stimulates interest in looking at painful pictures, and looking at
them suggests and strengthens the feeling that one is exempt.”
– Susan Sontag

The Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. has one of the largest collections in the

world of photographs and artifacts from the Nazi death camps of World War II. The museum

displays many photographs out in open spaces where they are easily accessible for viewing but

puts the most shocking and ghastly of these behind barriers which block the images from the

direct view of anyone who walks in the room. In order to look at these blockaded images, one

must walk over to the barriers and lean over a several foot high wall. The images on display in

this setting show, among other things, medical experiments being performed on children, the gas

chambers in which millions of people were exterminated, piles of bodies, men and women being

tortured and starved, and the elderly being shot. Given the content and graphic nature of these

images, it is clear why the museum would choose to shield them from the public’s direct line of

view. Not everyone has the stomach to view such photographs and it is impossible to predict the

sort of reactions people might have to seeing these images. Giving people the option of viewing

them or not seems the only fair thing to do.

There are many visitors to the museum who walk right past these barriers and cannot
bring themselves to look over them. There are also those who have read descriptions of the

events depicted in these photographs and, believing they are prepared to view the events, look

over for a moment and upon seeing the intensity of the photographs, immediately turn away.

Others look over the barriers and look at all of the photographs displayed. Some of these people

don’t know what it is they will be seeing and are so struck and fascinated by their first glance at

these images that they are driven to see what other events are shown. Yet, there are always some

who know exactly what it is they will be seeing either because they have previously seen similar

images or because they have been to the museum and seen these specific ones on a prior

occasion. With the element of curiosity of what it was that occurred in these death camps

removed from a viewer who has seen the images before, the question that arises is, why would

one look at them again? There does not seem to be any informational curiosity left for a person

who has been to the museum before, and furthermore if they have already seen those exact

images, they have reacted in an emotional sense to them and made ethical judgments on the

events depicted.

To go to a museum and stare at a photograph of a child being tortured or hundreds of

people being gassed, for no constructive ethical or social reason, seems in many ways to be as

impermissible and invasive as it does to stop and gape at paramedics removing mutilated bodies

from a car accident. Nonetheless, documentary photography, which frequently depicts the

greatest human suffering, has made its way into mainstream artistic and social culture. People are

almost constantly invited to view it, and frequently do so. Jonathan Friday, author of “Demonic

Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Documentary Photography”, argues that what drives people to so

frequently put themselves in the position to view human suffering is something which he calls
“demonic curiosity”. Friday describes this demonic curiosity as an almost pathological “morbid

attraction to human suffering” (Friday, 363). Due to this curiosity, people often have the desire to

put themselves in situations in which they may observe suffering which is neither their own nor

that of anyone they are closely connected to. Documentary photographs often provide an

opportunity for this to occur. On Friday’s view, when people observe documentary photographs

which depict human suffering they are frequently gaping at the people depicted for their own

morbid “pleasure”.

This idea is upsetting but not particularly counterintuitive; I imagine that most people

would find it easy to envision or recall a situation in which they were presented with a sight that

—though truly gruesome and disturbing—they could not bring themselves to turn away from

before they had examined it and taken in their fill of visual information on the scene.

Furthermore, though Friday’s notion of demonic curiosity may be disturbing to some moral

idealists, it is clearly not a neoteric idea and can be seen to have deep roots in Western culture. In

The Republic, Plato describes people’s irrational appetitive natures as something containing a

lust for morbid sights which our more rational parts may attempt to discourage us from actually

viewing.

Leontius, the son of Aglaion, was going up from the Piraeus along the outside of the
North Wall when he saw some corpses lying at the executioner’s feet. He turned away.
For a time he struggled with himself and covered his face, but, finally, overpowered by
the appetite, he pushed his eyes wide open and rushed towards the corpses, saying, ‘Look
for yourselves, you evil wretches, take your fill of the beautiful sight!’ (Plato, 439e).

Clearly, to describe viewing images of human suffering as a “pornographic stare”

(Friday, 365) implies that the viewer who does this is emotionally detached from the imagery

depicted and therefore that they have no ethical or emotional reaction to the imagery. This, of
course, seems abominable to most people, seeing as one usually hopes that people do not like to

see others suffering, and any evidence implying otherwise demonstrates an extreme lack of

morals and basic human decency.

One might argue that this is probably not usually the case in regards to viewing images of

the Holocaust. I believe that it would be difficult to find someone at the Holocaust museum who

did not have an emotional or ethical reaction to what they saw there and given that fact, it seems

unfair to label people’s reasons for going to the museum “demonic curiosity”. It also seems

doubtful that the intent of the museum is to appeal to people’s pornographic attractions to human

suffering with grotesque images of the Holocaust as opposed to educating people about the

events that occurred and asking them to understand the moral atrocities that took place so as to

not allow them to reoccur. The images in the Holocaust Museum and the context in which they

are presented seem to appeal to people’s emotional and ethical sensibilities as opposed to their

demonic curiosity.

Still, as I mentioned before, there are people who go to this museum who already know

what happened and have already seen the images that the museum displays. Furthermore, not

only do people seem to be attracted to viewing photographs depicting suffering, but these types

of documentary photographs have now made their way into the art world and function as

aesthetic and artistic pieces, thus inviting people to view them repeatedly. The main question that

Friday deals with in his text is how it is possible to appropriately appreciate documentary

photographs that depict human suffering as artistic pieces and without demonic curiosity.
The Value of Aesthetics in Documentary Photography

A photograph with attractive compositional and tonal elements seems to have a much

greater capacity for showing its subjects gracefully than one which lacks these, for it is precisely

this grace and aesthetic value that is needed in a photograph depicting human suffering in order

to allow viewers to engage with the photograph and its subjects and thus evoke ethical and

emotional reactions in these viewers. A starker, more severe, and compositionally jarring image

that shows suffering and hideous situations will likely be unsuccessful in evoking sympathy for

what it shows. The shock value and lack of grace in such an image emotionally alienates its

viewers and therefore one who views the image does indeed stare at it for pornographic reasons

(demonic curiosity) as opposed to for emotional or ethical ones.

Prime examples of such potentially alienating photographs are those by Diane Arbus. The

subjects of Arbus’s photographs were frequently socially stigmatized peoples, or, to use the

politically incorrect term, freaks. Through her photographs, one is invited to see those somewhat

intriguing humans which one may not have the opportunity to view on a daily basis and whom in

many ways one might consider “outsiders” or “social deviants”. Arbus’s photographs, however,

do nothing to eradicate the sense of difference” that one might feel towards such peoples. Instead

of showing her subjects in a respectful, graceful, humane and compassionate way, Arbus’s

photos play off of the subjects’ stigmas and only seem to further alienate viewers from them.

“A young man with curlers at home on West 20th Street, N.Y.C, 1966” (Arbus) is a harsh and

unflattering photograph of a young male transvestite. He has dark circles under his eyes, which

particularly stand out due to his smeared, garish makeup, and dark lipstick. His dark hair is

sloppily arranged in hair rollers and he loosely holds a cigarette in a hand adorned by long fake
talons. He looks exhausted, unattractive, bitter, and stereotypically flamboyant. The photograph

is a close up of his face, closely cropped, and no other elements appear in the frame. Unless the

intention of the photograph is to stigmatize this person or a social group associated with him,

why photograph this man in such an unflattering and almost caricature-ish light? At the time in

which this particular photograph was taken, transvestites were most likely considered social

deviants by the general society and probably suffered from a great deal of alienation. This image

does not make this man appear friendly, accessible or attractive, nor does it seem to invite

anything other than gawking at his “strangeness” and desolation. He does in fact seem to come

through this photograph as something “not normal” and to be stared at, and thus the image gives

no assistance in helping to alleviate the stigmas that may already be associated with him or any

other transvestite.

Yet, perhaps this particular man is not unhappy or garish and unapproachable. Perhaps he

only appears to be in this particular photograph. These things may be true, but nonetheless they

do not seem to ease any of the moral dilemmas in viewing such a photograph. In so long as he

looks like someone abnormal or unhappy, and is not depicted in a way that might allow people to

connect with him, they view him only to gape. Even when photographing non-stigmatized

people, the aesthetic elements of certain photographs can turn even the most ordinary of people

into something to which the average viewer cannot emotionally connect to and reduces one’s

interest in an image to demonic curiosity. The most average looking young girl, with long blond

hair and thick bangs, appears grotesque and almost shocking in the photograph displayed in

Arbus’s book Family Portrait (fig.41). The photograph shows this girl in a mug-shot like

composition; dead-on and staring right into the camera. The angle at which the photograph is
taken from—from slightly below—shows the most unflattering angle for almost any person. This

girl looks miserable, and yet her frozen and harsh pose, gaze and framing make it difficult to

sympathize with her. There are virtually no aesthetically pleasing elements in the picture that

might in any way draw a viewer to her or feel anything other than vaguely repulsed by her.

Repulsion seems to be one of the main motivators for demonic curiosity.

The strange harshness and intensity of the people in these images is so visually

uncomfortable and displeasing that the viewer is almost led to see these subjects as inhuman and

thus forgets that they are in fact people they are looking at. There is no moral or emotional

condition posed in this image. There is no connection to be made with the person in the

photograph. Therefore the photograph promotes the viewer’s alienation from its depicta because

all they are shown is an unattractive physique with no other elements that may provide a window

for emotional connection. Furthermore, without this connection, there is no reason to continue to

look at the image other than demonic curiosity. It is thus evident to me that aesthetic value is an

essential condition for viewing photographs of human suffering as art.

Friday on Suffering as Art

In “Demonic Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Documentary Photography” Friday seems to

agree with the premise that aesthetics are an essential part of drawing a viewer to a photograph in

a moral and emotional sense. Furthermore, he states that it is possible for images of human

suffering to function as artistic pieces without being completely morally corrupt. From an ethical

standpoint, how then is it possible to appropriately appreciate images which depict human

suffering—or even just persons whom many may find to be in some senses strange or
horrendous, such as the physically deformed etc.—as artistic pieces which will be viewed over

and over again?

Clearly the demonic curiosity that tempts people to gape at the suffering of others seems

to be something that is immoral to act upon. Now, while it does not seem quite as perverse to

view images of human suffering in order to examine them from a purely aesthetic standpoint,

this also does not seem morally permissible. It may seem that any aesthetic interest a person may

have in the color or composition of the image would be immediately muted by their attraction to

the horror depicted and thus their interest in the image would be reduced to demonic curiosity.

Furthermore, to see such a photograph and focus merely on its aesthetic qualities seems ethically

unsuitable seeing as it would appear that whomever was doing so would lack the morals—which

most people probably intuit to be desirable ones—that would cause them to be ethically struck by

the image. There may also be the intuition that in appreciating images of human suffering for

only their aesthetic value, one trivializes the suffering depicted.

Friday argues that an appropriate “artistic” look at a photograph depicting human

suffering (or something else which may peak our demonic curiosity) requires that the viewer of

the photograph not see the subject as something to look at for their own sake. If one does see this

depicta as such, they are being drawn to the image by demonic curiosity. Friday therefore argues

that through the image’s aesthetic qualities, the viewer’s interest must be drawn away from the

photograph’s particular depicta and towards something which is not specific to that person or

persons.
 However, Friday states that an ethical look at an image as a piece of art does not require

such drastic distancing from events shown so as for them to be completely removed from moral

consciousness—clearly such distancing would be morally undesirable since, as I previously

stated, one usually hopes that images of suffering do provoke an ethical or emotional reaction in

people— but only enough so that interest is not in the actual subject depicted in the photograph.

Therefore, artistic documentary photographs must show their depicta in such a way that they

establish significant meaning beyond the specific subject matter—though that meaning may

encompass the specific subject. Artistic photographs which show human suffering must through

their composition, color, texture etc. become representative of something more than that specific

image of a child being tortured. Therefore, our interest in the image, as its viewers, should be

directed at something that extends beyond that specific child in those specific circumstances. The

image must symbolize something greater than just its subject. A photograph of a man who has

spent months in a Nazi concentration camp, if taken at the right angle, at the right moment, and

printed in the right fashion will portray a certain emotion and have an infinitely greater impact on

its viewer than a mug shot taken of the same man. The emotion that comes through documentary

photographs of people is very much dependant on the exact positioning of the subject’s body and

facial expression at the moment the photograph was taken as it is on the other visual elements

which appear in the photograph.

Thus, a documentary photograph intended as an art piece should not in fact be a

substitute for seeing the events depicted first hand but instead, because of its aesthetic qualities,

lead the viewer to moral insights that extend beyond what is depicted in that particular image. It

is by this technique that a documentary photographer can become an artist; by using aesthetics to
give images of specific events greater and more general moral resonance. A photograph of

human suffering may then be appreciated for its aesthetic qualities without being morally

impermissible precisely because the aesthetic value is a means to the end of moral insight and

therefore does not in any way trivialize the suffering depicted or promote pornographic staring at

the subject. People who are suffering can, in this manner, be depicted gracefully and with

respect. Brazilian documentary photographer Sebastiao Salgado’s work is a prime example of

images that depict people whom are suffering terribly in a graceful manner due to his highly

aestheticized and in many senses, somewhat surreal, style. “If you take a picture of a human that

does not make him noble, there is no reason to take this picture. That is my way of seeing things”

(Salgado).

By bestowing such grace on their subjects through aesthetic value, Salgado’s photographs

manage to be extremely poignant, moving and sometimes tragic. Consequently, these

photographs seem to perfectly avoid the issue of attracting demonic curiosity or completely

alienating viewers from their depicta as Arbus’ work seems prone to do. However, using this

highly stylized technique in photographs depicting human suffering is not without its dangers.

The consequences of aestheticizing human suffering in such a manner are significant and have

some serious implications which must be considered, including, but not limited to, a potential

shift of focus from the subjects of the photographs to the photographer and his style and potential

abstraction of subject matter.

Chapter 5 - Icons and the Economy of Ethical Acts and Feelings

“An Uncertain Grace” photographs by Sebastiao Salgado, essays on Salgado’s life and

work by Eduardo Galeano and Fred Ritchin. Photograph no. 71: Two children are lying next to

each other in the dirt. They are malnourished, covered in dirt and clothed in what looks like torn

potato sacks. If you look closely at their legs you can see traces of what looks like dried blood.

The child on the right is staring at the other. He looks scared or sad. Maybe he is crying. It is

difficult to tell. The other child’s eyes are closed and he appears to be sleeping. Or is he dead?

The book doesn’t say. It gives no information on where these children are, who they are, or what

has happened to them. They are the generic poor, sad, third world children that we see in pictures

everywhere.

Right here, in this book, this photograph is not about these two children or what is

happening to them. Maybe it is about Sebastiao Salgado and these two children are just a means

to him producing his art. After all, the presentation of this photograph gives the viewer no

context in which to see that these are real little kids who have names and who are feeling hungry

and scared. In the context of Salgado’s work they could simply be shapes and shades of gray. Or

perhaps this analysis is too harsh and does not give Salgado enough ethical credit. Perhaps it is

more likely that this photograph is intended to be about “Hunger” or “Poverty” as Friday

suggests should be done in order to take an ethically permissible photograph of human suffering.

Therefore, the subjects of the photograph must become iconic of “Poverty” and in this role they

serve that greater global issue of world poverty in an artistic context. Through them, and their

adorable sad faces, people are touched and pained by the presence of poverty in the entire world
and Salgado is the hero who has captured the plight of all poor children and brought it to the

eyesight of the general public. This seems to be precisely what Friday would consider ethically

ideal viewing conditions for this photograph as an artistic piece. Viewers are not led to take a

personal and subject specific interest in these children. In fact, they no longer see them as real

children but rather as an abstract and thus the viewer’s concerns are with “poor children” as a

global whole.

Yet, at the same time that this photograph may represent a very serious global issue—and

because of its aesthetic qualities seems to at least attempt to sidestep the issue of appealing to

senses of demonic curiosity— the fact that, in this context, it fails to truly represent what is

happening to these children themselves brings with it more ethical and practical consequences

than Friday seems to have considered. Ingrid Sischi, in her article “Good Intentions”, critiques

Salgado’s photography on the grounds that his attempt at raising awareness and motivating

action for the issues he tries to represent is misguided due to the fact that his photographs

inappropriately aestheticize suffering. Such aesthetization of suffering allows viewers to not fully

realize that the children in Photograph no. 71 are actual children whom are suffering and that

through this photograph they are looking at them in a moment of pain. “-this beautification of

tragedy results in pictures that ultimately reinforce our passivity toward the experience they

reveal. To aestheticize tragedy is the fastest way to anesthetize the feelings of those who are

witnessing it. Beauty is a call to admiration, not to action” (Sischi, 92). If photographs of human

suffering are depicted in artistically motivated and creative settings, they ask people to look at

them for their value as art, to critique them, to focus on their creator and discuss them as opposed

to the content of their photographs. In On Photography Walter Benjamin is quoted as having

said:

“[The camera] is now incapable of photographing a tenement or a rubbish heap without

transfiguring it. Not to mention a river damn or an electrical cable factory: in front of
these, photography can only say ‘How beautiful’…It has succeeded in turning abject
poverty itself, by handling it in a modish, technically perfect way, into an object of
enjoyment” (Sontag, 107).

Consequently, the situation in which these children live fails to truly exist in the minds of

the viewers of the photograph because of the abstract and aestheticized way in which the

children are depicted. This is a perfect example of the illusion of non-transparency coming into

play. The children in Photograph no.17 lose their identity when viewed through this picture due

to the abstract conditions in which the photograph is displayed and thus viewers may emotionally

disconnect from the children on a personal level and simply be concerned with global Hunger,

Poverty or Sickness. They forget they are seeing real people and not just images. “In general,

Salgado’s subjects are too much in the service of illustrating his various themes and notions to be

allowed to either stand forth as individuals or to represent millions. He’s a symbolist more than a

portraitist—the people in his pictures remain strangers” (Sischi, 93).

Unidentified symbols can evoke only abstract and vague concerns and these types of

concerns are much less poignant than those which are evoked by a subject for which there is a

context and history, which allows for the possibility of a personal and much more intimate

emotional connection—even if it is a one sided one. Abstract, out of context concern is almost

overwhelmingly broad, to the point of being debilitating in terms of motivating any action to

actually help these children. “The images that mobilize conscience are always linked to a given

historical situation. The more general they are, the less likely they are to be effective” (Sontag,

17). An icon stands for far too much to seem immediately accessible to any average individual
and therefore whatever concern one might have for the symbols they see in any photograph is

most likely to be unproductive and idle given that they appear intangible.

It is unreasonable to state that photographs such as those previously described can never

have a productive and positive effect on their viewers. Surely there are cases in which someone

has seen a book like Salgado’s and been so moved by the photographs in it—despite the non-

specificity of said photographs—that they pick up and move to a sub-Saharan country to work

with AIDS victims or even just whip out a checkbook and write a $10,000 check to a couple of

famine relief foundations. However, these cases are clearly exceptional ones and while it would

not be rational to expect or even hope for such a reaction and response from the majority of those

who see photographs of human suffering—even presented in the most idyllic of contexts—it

seems to me that photographs such as Salgado’s are not actually conducive to generating such a

response. While some people may react ideally to such photographs, those reactions and

subsequent actions in response to those images are despite the fact that the photographs have

been presented so abstractly and without a meaningful political context. In order to actually

encourage such reactions, it seems that such photographs must be accompanied by appropriate

information regarding the situation and persons they depict.

Symbols, Icons and the Concept of Awareness

Given that concerns for abstract concepts and human symbols are likely to be so

unproductive in terms of actually acting on those situations depicted in the photographs, it seems

that the main effect of presenting these types of images in aesthetic or artistic, creative settings,

is raising awareness about world issues. This seems to be precisely what Friday deems ethically
permissible. However, Friday fails to realize—or neglects to mention—that “ethical

enlightenment” and “awareness” are not intrinsically valuable and thus if they do not lead to a

greater end which does have intrinsic value, these concepts have no ethical value at all. It does

not actually make any sort of difference whether one knows that a child is being beaten to death

across the street if they will not act in any way to save that child. Similarly, it really does not

matter if a class full of high-school students in Northern California spend a month studying the

AIDS crisis in India—reading about it, looking at photographs, watching documentary videos,

finding statistics—if none of them ever do anything that will affect or address this crisis.

Awareness, in the abstract form that it is likely to take in response to Salgado’s

photograph, does nothing to help these specific children. The concept of awareness all too often

seems to be a rationale that is used to justify viewing images that depict something that people

may otherwise be uncomfortable looking at. It allows people to feel ethically validated in

looking at something that, while they may feel that it is really terrible, they may have no

intention of actually doing anything about. Yet, the only reason the concept of awareness can be

so easily used to ethically validate consumption of this image, is because what people are

becoming aware of is in some sense, not real to them, due to the illusion of non-transparency.

The context of the photograph makes its depicta representative of something so huge that people

can easily detach from it without feeling overly guilty, or truly morally affected, because it

seems almost untouchable. “Moral feelings are embedded in history, whose personae are

concrete, whose situations are always specific” (Sontag, 17). Without this abstraction occurring,

people would not be so comfortable looking and doing nothing other than emoting.
 We are generally uncomfortable looking at something to which we can personally

connect and know we have the power to help. When we see a beggar child on the street, we do

not stare at them to raise our awareness of poverty. We look away because their presence makes

us uncomfortable. As discussed in chapter 3, the fact that they are right there, undeniably real

and that they are suffering makes us not want to look; for if we look we may actually have to do

something. Therefore, people who are not interested in devoting time, money and energy to

actually helping starving children in Africa don’t generally go there to look at them. That’s too

personal, too hard and too guilt producing if they do nothing to help those who are starving.

People who have already decided to devote their time and energy to helping starving children in

Africa are the ones who go there. Those who are not willing or able to actually help, may go to

museums where they can freely look at photographs of starving children and by not seeing them

as something real and human, feel as though the fact that they are seeing these images at all and

emoting over them is sufficient ethical redemption for viewing them in the first place.

Awareness as a Motivator and the Economy of Ethical Responsibility

Having determined how it is possible to ethically validate viewing photographs of human

suffering as an art form, the question that remains is still: But why do we look at them at all?

Why do we do this which requires such ethical validation? I have already determined that it does

not usually seem that people actually go to look at photographs of people suffering in order to

satisfy their demonic curiosity. It seems reasonable to assume that people who go to museums to

look at a Sebastiao Salgado photography show are not thinking “You know, I’ve been really

wondering what children in the terminal stages of AIDS look like. I bet it’s really unpleasant. I
think I’ll go check out the new Salgado exhibit.” Furthermore, given Friday’s theory on how

photographs like Salgado’s avoid demonic curiosity through aesthetics, the concern regarding

demonic curiosity and viewing photographs because of it, should be more than sufficiently

answered. I will thus direct my discussion of this question without further addressing demonic

curiosity.

The motivation and justification for viewing photographs of human suffering are cyclical.

They are also the same thing. Emoting and awareness are not only justifications for looking at

images of human suffering but in fact frequently act as reasons to do so. Since the justification is

also the motivation, it begins to be seen as ethically desirable and leads right back to further

incentive to seek out ways to view such photographs. We now have another illusion occurring;

“the illusion of the ethical value of awareness”, which acts as a motivator for looking at

documentary photographs depicting human suffering.

The misconception that awareness is intrinsically valuable often leads people to

specifically search for opportunities to take in information about events which in reality may

have absolutely no bearing on their actual lives. It is considered ignorant, self-involved and taboo

not to be well informed on certain types of world events, despite the fact that they may be

occurring thousands of miles away and pose no threat to anyone within a three-thousand mile

radius of us. Why does this seem to be the case? I imagine that at its root, the notion that people

should be well informed about negative—or even just significant—events occurring to other

people is linked to some sort of expectation that people, as moral agents, have a responsibility

towards other moral agents regardless of whether they know them or not. If one does not seek
knowledge of things that may be occurring to others, and thus does not have any, they have

fundamentally negated all their possibilities of helping and this is frequently seen as incredibly

self-involved. Therefore, there is a certain expectation that people proactively seek ways to

inform themselves about events occurring outside of their immediate locations and social and

cultural universes. However, the reason for doing so seems to frequently get glossed over and

thus the overt expectation is simply that people be aware and not that they actually use their

knowledge to help. Though the latter may be expected to some extent in certain communities and

societies, not meeting that expectation is rarely seen as purely ridiculous or ignorant. In fact, it is

seen as supererogatory to meet this expectation. The former expectation that people at least be

informed and aware of events occurring to others around the world seems to be not obligatory

but sort of a minimum requisite that moral agents should meet in order to be seen as even

remotely ethically satisfactory, and this is due to the misconception that awareness itself has

ethical value.

Consequently, we see people actively searching for ways to inform themselves about the

suffering of others, which is often done by viewing photographs of them. There is the sense that

one should become aware and that this awareness will lead to emoting over whatever issue is

currently at hand, which will in turn seem like an ethically valuable act. You went to the

museum, you saw the dying children in the photographs, and you felt badly for them, you took

time out of your happy and relatively worry free life and cried for them.

This leads back to my discussion of the ethics of vision and people restricting what they

actually allow to come into their full visual consciousness for fear of the responsibility they will
have for it if they do. As I mentioned in that section, when people encounter instances of

suffering in their immediate physical or emotional space, they are generally unable to look at it

without feeling overwhelming responsibility as well of guilt for their inaction in response to it; is

why people avoid looking directly at homeless people etc. However, the illusion of non-

transparency makes it psychologically possible to look at photographs of starving children.

People can look and not see them as real and thus not feel as though they must accept

responsibility for them.

We thus see an economy of responsibility and ethics arising in regards to viewing

photographs of human suffering. If we completely ignore the suffering that people are

experiencing around the world, we lose respect from others as a moral agent. However, most

moral agents find it too costly (emotionally, financially, and socially) to actually take action to

help to remedy this suffering and so they seek a substitute which is less costly but still allows

them to feel at least somewhat ethically redeemed: emoting and awareness. Your sadness and

knowledge of the situation feels like ethical redemption for living your life and not helping those

who are suffering. You have taken time out of your day to feel sad and sympathize. Because you

are a moral agent, you have emotionally suffered in seeing these heartbreaking pictures and it is

this empathy which allows you to live without the stigma of being heartless, ignorant and lazy

and also lets you release some of your ethical guilt for simple living in a world where people can

suffer in such a horrific manner. I call this action and the feelings that accompany it “ethical

indulgence”.

People feel the need to emote over the suffering they know is occurring in the world. It is
an indulgence to search for ways to do so, and photographs which promote the illusion of non-

transparency by being over-aestheticized and presented in non-specific and artistically aimed

contexts, like Salgado’s, only encourage this unproductive way of dealing with ethical feelings

and guilt. “The manufactured poetry that is so dominant an aspect of [Salgado’s] aesthetic could

turn the people in the Sahel into emblems on greeting cards for all of us who want to express our

humanity” (Sischi, 95).

Context, Intent and the Illusion of Non-Transparency

Jonathan Friday states that in order to be appreciated as works of art, photographs

depicting human suffering must become abstracted, aestheticized, and taken out of their original

context. Though this seems like an accurate analysis of how art gets created and appreciated, to

do so is extremely ethically problematic, as I have outlined in the last chapter. Yet I most

definitely do not mean to imply that it is necessarily and always inappropriate to view

documentary photographs depicting human suffering. There are most certainly contexts in which

it is not only ethically acceptable but also desirable to view such photographs.

“Moralists who love photographs always hope that words will save the picture. (The
opposite approach to that of the museum curator who, in order to turn a photojournalist’s
work into art, shows the photographs without their original captions.) Thus, [Walter]
Benjamin thought that the right caption beneath a picture could ‘rescue it from the
ravages of modishness and confer upon it a revolutionary use value’” (Sontag, 107).

The Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. is an environment in which photographs of

human suffering are contextualized appropriately to provide information on a historical event in

what would seem to be an extremely powerful attempt to prevent such events from reoccurring.

The quantity of historical information and artifacts surrounding the photographs in the museum
work in direct opposition to the creation of the illusion of non-transparency and make it nearly

impossible for anyone viewing the images to forget the reality of them. Additionally, the intent

of the Holocaust Museum would certainly seem to be education and prevention, as opposed to

creativity and aesthetics, and thus people visiting the museum will most likely come with

different intents and motivational factors than they would to an art museum.

In a setting such as that of the Holocaust Museum, there is no focus on the people who

took the photographs of these atrocities, and no praise or glorification of these individuals. Thus

there is nothing to distract from the events depicted. These photographs are not presented as

someone’s creative work or artistic endeavor. They aren’t even presented as one particular

person’s humanitarian mission (which also glorifies the individual too much and distracts from

the actual issues). They are simply shown as what happened in a certain place and a certain time,

as a result of certain events. Like any photograph found in a Newsweek or Time article on the

victims of Hurricane Katrina or the incredible losses the theater community in the United States

has suffered due to the AIDS virus, whatever aesthetic value that such photographs have serves

to help further engage the viewers of them in such a way that they can connect and sympathize

with the photographs depicta.

Chapter 6 - Conclusion

The implications of photographic transparency on the ethical debates regarding the

viewing of photographs depicting human suffering are significant. In this thesis I have outlined

what these implications are and demonstrated that because of these implications, it is, in many

contexts, ethically impermissible—or at the very least extremely questionable—to view these

types of photographs. Furthermore, I have shown that many of the contexts in which such

photographs are often shown are—though possibly well intentioned—ethically misguided, if not

actually impermissible. However, it has certainly not been my intent to morally condemn all

documentary photographs depicting human suffering or to depreciate the work of photographers

who have taken such photographs in attempts to call attention to social, political and economic

issues. Photography can be an extremely powerful tool to document and transmit visual

information and it is precisely because of the directness and transparency of the photographic

medium that it has the ability to convey intense emotion, suffering, happiness and distress.

Using photography as a means to communicate the severity of the suffering that many in

this world are currently experiencing can be an extremely effective method of helping shape

public opinions, laws and organizations that can address these situations, as is clearly evidenced

by early twentieth century documentary photographer, Lewis Hine. Hine played a crucial role in

changing the child labor laws in the United States. His poignant and sometimes horrifying

photographs of child workers “helped pit politicians against the practice of child labor” (Gilgoff).

However, many artistic presentations of photographs depicting human suffering which focus on

the creativity of the photographer, and are not presented as detailed socio-political commentary

on the particular issue which they depict, are, in my opinion, misguided forms of presentation
and contextualization of such material. Such forms of presentation are problematic because of

how they allow people to view the photographs without understanding the reality and severity of

what they are seeing, and often promote and facilitate self-indulgent, faux ethical motivations for

viewing photographs of human suffering. Thus the objective of this thesis is not to use ethical

theory to prove the impermissibility of photography depicting human suffering, but rather to

outline the ethical dilemmas involved in the act of viewing such photographs in certain contexts

and draw attention to the potential consequences of and reasons for choosing to do so.

It is because I believe that it is unethical to propagate the viewing of human suffering

through photographs without appropriate information regarding the situation and persons

depicted that I have chosen not to include the photographs I have described in this thesis. The

purpose of this text is not to educate people on the AIDS crisis in Africa and thus I do not feel

that I have the appropriate amount of information on the situation depicted in Salgado’s

photograph to justify propagating its viewing. The inclusion of this photograph would not be

beneficial to the children depicted or to alleviating the circumstances in which they existed (and

in which many continue to exist) without the information required to combat the Illusion of Non-

Transparency and to provide a way for the viewers of the photograph to situate the children in

the world so that they may have the opportunity to help them. Despite my attempts to stress the

fact that these are real children and that we must be very aware of that when looking at them,

without a way to contextualize them as individuals in the world, I believe they will be seen as

icons.

Though I have chosen not to include Salgado’s and Arbus’ photographs in this thesis, I
have included some of my own photographs from an exhibition I recently mounted as a

supplemental component to this thesis. This exhibition focused on and explored the idea of

human icons and how a person can become one and was inspired by a quote by Richard Avedon

in which he states that bringing people into a studio, and thus isolating them from their usual

surroundings, often forces them to become emblematic of themselves (Sontag, 187). The show

thus consisted of a series of studio portraits in which I attempted to photograph my subjects in a

moment in which they were iconic of themselves.

Photographic transparency does not vary from photograph to photograph and is thus

obviously not dependant on a photograph’s depicta. My photographs are just as transparent as

Salgado’s and the photographs in the Holocaust Museum and are thus equally subject to ethical

analysis. However, as I have previously stated, the ethical conclusions that I have drawn in

regards to viewing people as icons and the Illusion of Non-Transparency are based on the

concept of viewing human suffering and I have not explored the ethical implications of my

photographs and of viewing my subjects through them. Given that my photographs are not of

human suffering and thus that seeing the people in them as iconic does not seem to distract from

serious situations which must be taken seriously and that my subjects do not seem to be being

used as a means to the end of self-indulgent ethical enlightenment, which in the end may have no

ethical value whatsoever, I feel it is permissible and neither contradictory or hypocritical to show

my photographs in this thesis. Nevertheless, I feel that accepting photographic transparency

requires acknowledging all photographs as transparent and therefore it is necessary to consider

the implications of it on all types of photographs. Though the ethical questions and dilemmas

will vary with photographs’ depicta, the transparency thesis will most likely give rise to new
elements to consider in all realms of photography. I thus think that it would be valuable, if not

crucial, to analyze the implications of transparency on the ethics of showing and viewing not

only my photographs and others in the same genre, but also those in many other realms of

photography which I have not discussed in this text.

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