First Edition of the Photography Ethics Symposium
The Photography Ethics Symposium took place at The Royal Photographic Society in Bristol on December 4, 2019. We heard from Anthony Luvera, Jess Crombie, Emma Chetcuti, and Franklyn Rodgers about the ethics of working with people.
In my welcome address, I outlined the objectives for the day. I began by explaining that I had been reading Rebecca Solnit’s new book Whose Story Is This? on my way to Bristol. On the very first page, she writes: “Though there are individual voices and people who got there first, these are collective projects that matter not when one person says something but when a million integrate it into how they see and act in the world.”
The objective of events like the Photography Ethics Symposium is not to hear one person say something profound. Instead the aim of this event was for us to work collectively on this project of photography ethics, to engage in critical reflection and conversation with others in the field, and to go back to our communities, not only with a willingness to integrate what we discussed into our practice, but to share the knowledge that we co-created with others. In this spirit, I feel that it is important to make the key themes that emerged during the day available to a wider audience on this platform.
Perhaps the most unanimously agreed point made during the day was the importance of time. I think Anthony Luvera may have said it best when he described time as a “tool” for photographers, but this thread that ran through the day: time as a tool to get to know people, to build rapport, and to understand their perspectives. Reflecting on her work on the People in the Pictures report, Jess Crombie said that everyone has an opinion about how they are being represented, and everyone has the ability to put forward that opinion, if you give them the time to do so.
Across all of the lectures, time was upheld as an important aspect of the photographic process that enables more ethical engagement with the people we photograph.
Speakers also highlighted the importance of seriously considering where and by whom the final work is seen. Emma Chetcuti described how creating books and returning photographic portraits to participants is integral to Multistory’s process. She also described the significant role that photography can play in bridging communities through exhibitions that represent the daily life of the “Other,” when the “Other” is just down the road.
Focusing also on the output of photographic projects, Franklyn Rodgers described the impact that displaying portraits of positive black role models had on one British neighbourhood. His “Peckham Portraits” of dual heritage African and Caribbean actors became a point of pride, inspiration, and ownership within a local community.
Our speakers recognised that, while some communities are overly represented, others are rendered invisible. Franklyn Rodgers told a powerful anecdote about the experience of bringing his mother to a beautiful art museum, but, experiencing the museum as an elderly black woman, she did not see herself represented on its walls.
When marginalised communities are seen, they are often portrayed through the lens of a single story. Drawing on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The danger of a single story,” Jess Crombie explained that the single story perpetuates harmful stereotypes and reifies unconscious biases. She explained that this is the crux of the problem with a lot of NGO imagery: the only story being told is one of suffering. Stories of resilience, initiative, and community agency go untold.
Similarly, Anthony Luvera spoke about participatory and collaborative photography that actively engages individuals in the process of their representation. He cautioned that participatory methods are not a means of portraying individuals with greater “authenticity.” Instead, they are a way of accessing a “plurality of perspectives.”
There were many other conversations that took place, but these themes – the importance of time, the emphasis on process, and the impact of seeing yourself represented – were the threads than ran through all of the events that day. The Royal Photographic Society and the Photography Ethics Centre hope to run another event next year in order to build on this momentum and to continue these face to face conversations about the ethics of photography. Thank you very much to everyone who joined us on Wednesday for being a part of this important dialogue.