Nicole Tung: On navigating ethical dilemmas
In this episode, we talk with Nicole Tung on navigating ethical dilemmas. She explores the responsibility a photographer has beyond taking a photo, discussing the investment she displays in the impact of her images. She examines the question of when to intervene as a photojournalist in a conflict zone, before talking about how the industry can better support freelancers doing this dangerous work.
What does photography ethics mean to Nicole?
“Photography ethics, for me, means, I think, the framework within which you yourself work as a photographer, how you navigate various situations and moral and ethical problems that will inevitably come up. I think that being very conscious of where you draw the line on what you’re willing to do, what you’re not willing to do if you’re confronted with a very problematic situation is something that I try to think ahead of before I work on a story, for example. And that I think comes with experience; I don’t think you can have that framework without spending the time doing this work. Certainly during my first year or two documenting conflict, I was still building that scaffolding, and it is something that you start to layer onto over the years because you encounter different things and you see different situations, and you also learn from the people around you. So it’s really about whether you can go home at the end of the day or the end of the assignment that you’re working on and feel that what you did was mostly okay.“ (35:01)
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Nicole Tung is a freelance photojournalist, born in Hong Kong. She graduated from New York University in 2009, and freelances for international publications and NGOs, primarily covering the Middle East region. Her work often explores those most affected by conflict and the consequences of war. After covering the conflicts in Libya and Syria extensively from 2011, she has recently turned her focus to the protests in her native Hong Kong, while documenting the aftermath of ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
Her work has been exhibited at various festivals worldwide and has received multiple awards including an honorable mention for the IWMF 2017 Anja Niedringhaus Awards, and the 2018 Online News Association’s James Foley Award for Conflict Reporting, among others. She is the 2020 recipient of the Visa Pour l’Image French Ministry of Culture’s Production Grant, and is part of VII Foundation’s “Imagine: Reflections on Peace” exhibition and book. Nicole served on the board of the Frontline Freelance Register, advocating for the safety of freelance journalists around the world. She is based in Istanbul, Turkey.
You can see her work at http://www.nicoletung.com