When reading Lester’s chapter on photography, which happens to line up directly with my research paper, the section that was the most intriguing would have to have been where Lester talks about a subject’s right to privacy when being photographed. Lester begins with referencing his earlier example of the famous photograph “Migrant Mother” in regards to Florence Thompson’s hurt and outrage that her photograph was published and very well-known. Lester inferred that the reason Thompson was looking away in the famous photograph was because looking away was the only way Thompson could have kept her privacy. Going along with this idea, earlier in the chapter Lester also explained that Thompsons outraged was focused mainly on the fact that she did not get any financial benefits from her photo and suffered the embarrassment of forever being the ‘poor woman,’ yet the photographer, Dorothea Lange, became very famous and wealthy after submitting the photo. While Lange was not compensated for the photo and the photo has not been removed from public view, she definitely got the attention of the public and raised a very important question about the ethical issues of photographing tragic news stories. While Lester has made a good point when he talks about a persons right to privacy, he goes on to bring up an important issue on the other end of the spectrum; the need for these tragic photographs for historical and educational purposes. Both sides of this argument are convincing and fair, making it hard to distinguish which of the two should be more prevalent when photographing for any type of news story.
Because there are different types of news, such as gossip versus political or social tragedy, there are different rules on what a journalist can or cannot photograph and the extent to which the pictures can be edited or manipulated. Either type of story, however, has a certain set of an individual’s privacy rights that must be followed. Lester seems to be very vague on where to draw the line when considering an individual’s right to privacy when it comes to photography. At the beginning of this section, Lester seems as if he is being sympathetic towards people who are photographed in weak states or have their personal life exploited. Yet, at the end of the section Lester goes on to talk about celebrities and the conditions that make their right to privacy less significant. Lester refers to celebrities as being people who are so much a regular part of news stories that they attract media attention and therefore have less of a right to privacy. This makes one wonder where the line can be drawn or how much privacy one is allowed depending on their lifestyle. Lester’s validation of a celebrity’s lack of privacy rights seems as if it is on the extreme spectrum of the argument, with little to no concern for the humanity that the celebrities still possess. Lester ends his article on privacy rights by directing a line at future photographers with the advice that “ethical behavior should not be guided by what is strictly legal” (282). By saying this, Lester opens up Pandora’s Box for photographers, guiding them in a direction to break ethical and legal rules in order to get the latest piece of news in a photograph. (537 words)
Works Cited
Lester, Paul Martin. Visual Communication: Images with Messages. 5th. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2011. Print.
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