The Ethics of Photojournalism

  



Steve McCurry's vibrant and brilliant photographs are featured below. Showing them highlights his magnificent work – it is not to claim they have been altered in anyway.

"Shaolin Monks Training" by Steve McCurry. Displayed at the Cavalier Gallery in Greenwich, CT. 



               

 Steve McCurry was featured in Time Magazine in 2016; Steve McCurry: I’m a Visual Storyteller, not a Photojournalist by Olivier Laurent. McCurry is a well-known and respected photojournalist with a forty-year career who has received awards and had many of his photos praised (Laurent). However, in 2016, some of his images were questioned regarding being altered in Photoshop (Laurent). As more and more people questioned his work, he responded with, “I’ve always let my pictures do the talking, but now I understand that people want me to describe the category into which I would put myself, and so I would say that today I am a visual storyteller,” McCurry tells TIME Magazine. I chose this controversy regarding the alteration of photos because I feel in relates similarly to AI issues of today. I think photojournalists need to relay the truth; it is their job. It is not always the perfect image but it is reality. So whether the image is altered in Photoshop or created with AI this is not accurate to the truth. AI is a potential threat in that the picture can be entirely forged; it is not based on reality; it has gone from changing a detail through Photoshop to entirely making a new image and saying it is a real photo. In Laurent’s article, Steve McCurry stated he was a freelancer, never an employee of the News Organization therefore not a photojournalist, so what he did should not be an issue.

 

Steve McCurry stands among his photographs, including his most famous, "Afghan girl," in the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Hamburg, Germany. (Photograph by Ulrich Perrey, Corbis)


I feel that Steve McCurry was dishonest; even though he claimed to be a freelancer, he was well aware that some of his images would be presented in mediums that consumers anticipate photojournalistic integrity to be represented in the photos. Regarding my ethics, I value honesty, which I do not feel McCurry was doing with his viewers. Whereas I value logic, and I understand wanting to have the perfect picture that will be very impactful and altering his images created that to happen, I believe honesty overrides that desire. I think that Steve McCurry promised his audience as a photojournalist to show life accurately and relay the truth. Truth is one of my ethical principles, which should be a principle of all photojournalists. Additionally, I value being a caring person, and my ethical principles would not allow me to deceive my viewers by publishing false narratives through my photography.  I think another article in Time Magazine also about McCurry, Why Facts Aren’t Always Truths in Photography, where Peter Van Agtmael speaks to the need to have exact rules regarding what kind of photo you are presenting as a photojournalist. The article points out their ethical principles differ from commercial and art photography vs. photojournalism (Agtmael). Peter Van Agtmael explains, “It is essential that the lines between these genres are clear, well delineated, and communicated to the audience.”  My ethics align with this kind of transparency in photography.

PowerPoint Slide By Daniel Fraher


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