persons involved. The viewer needs to know, for
example, whether the executed man himself has in
the past committed some deliberate act of killing, or
whether the executioner believes that by carrying
out the execution in summary fashion he will pre-
vent acts of killing in the future. None of this knowl-
edge can be acquired by means of a photograph.
Words, by way of contrast, can easily provide such
knowledge. They can, for example, inform the
reader of heinous acts committed by the victim
prior to the execution. Indeed, in the months after
this image was widely circulated in the American
press, Adams learned that the executed man had
hours before murdered an entire family, a discovery
that led Adams to lifelong remorse for the damage
the image did to the reputation of the executioner.
Such limitations in the kind of meanings photo-
graphs (and images generally) can convey lead Son-
tag to conclude that photojournalistic images can
serve only to ‘‘goad conscience,’’ and that the effect
such images can have will amount to no more than
‘‘some kind of sentimentalism.’’
In her 2003 work,Regarding the Pain of Others,
Sontag acknowledges some positive ethical dimen-
sions of photojournalism. For one thing, such
images can cause viewers to remember past atro-
cities, and remembering of this sort is for Sontag an
intrinsically positive ethical act. As well, photo-
journalistic images can help keep the suffering of
those who are geographically distant in the minds
of viewers, and in this way make it more difficult
for that suffering simply to be ignored. But Sontag
remains steadfast in her lack of optimism with
regard to the potential for photographs to foster
comprehensive understanding.
A second and increasingly pressing ethical di-
mension associated with photojournalism arises
from the advent of digital technology. Prior to the
widespread use of such technology it was difficult to
alter a photograph in an undetectable way. As a
result, viewers of photojournalistic images devel-
oped an implicit trust that the beliefs they formed
as a result of viewing such images were generally
true, and that they had good reason for believing
those beliefs to be true. As Barbara Savedoff notes in
her bookTransforming Images: How Photography
Complicates the Picture, such trust has carried over
into the digital era, and can be taken advantage of by
those who avail themselves of digital techniques. A
seamlessly altered image, presented to a trusting
audience, can engender radically false beliefs, even
while the viewers believe that they have good reason
for thinking those beliefs to be true. Concern that
such trust will be taken advantage of in this way has
led newspapers to deal harshly with photojournal-
ists who succumb to the temptation. There is at least
one instance of a photographer for theLos Angeles
Timesbeing fired for submitting a digitally altered
photograph that was run on the front page.
Photojournalists themselves have been active and
vocal regarding photojournalistic ethics. The foun-
ders and members of such professional groups at
Magnum Photos codified many aspects of what is
considered ethical practice in the late 1950s and
1960s. Earlier in the twentieth century, the use of
photographic images in overtly propagandistic con-
texts, even those obviously highly manipulated,
such as the montages and collages of John Heart-
field or Hannah Ho ̈ch in the 1920s and 1930s, pro-
vided a lexicon for use of images for social goals.
The viewer was afforded the opportunity to be edu-
cated about the nature of the image itself as well as
its purpose and thus be empowered to judge better
the ethical issues that arose.Portraiture
The portraiture context is one in which the photo-
grapher creates an image of her subject with the
subject’s willing participation. Commercial instances
in which the subject hires the photographer to make
an image that is pleasing to the subject—weddings,
graduation photographs, department-store por-
traits—are ethically unproblematic, as in such situa-
tions it is understood that the photographer will use
her technical expertise to render an image that is
flattering in exchange for a certain sum.
Matters are more complicated, however, in con-
texts where the portraitist has not been hired by the
subject, and is expected to make an image that is
interpretive. Examples of this sort include images by
a diverse range of photographers including Diane
Arbus, Richard Avedon, Annie Leibovitz, Robert
Mapplethorpe, and Alfred Stieglitz.
A sustained investigation of the ethical dimen-
sions of such portraiture occurs in Arthur Danto’s
essay ‘‘The Naked Truth.’’ Danto’s discussion
begins with the observation that it is an important
aspect of being human that we care about how we
appear to others. Unlike non-human animals, with
the onset of adolescence, human beings normally
become highly conscious of the image they project
to those they encounter. Given the centrality of such
concern, Danto suggests that we ought to have a
right to control over our appearance, a right that
can be thought of as akin to our right to control
over our bodies. In the same way that it is wrong to
do violence to the body of another (including med-
ical procedures absent informed consent) it is argu-
ably wrong to do violence to the image of another.ETHICS AND PHOTOGRAPHY