Photojournalism Ethics in the Modern Age

While photojournalism is almost as old as photography itself, the ethics of photojournalism have evolved over time and are still evolving. With each new leap in technology, we are left to ponder the boundaries of photo manipulation. When has a photographer gone too far in modifying an image?

To demonstrate how far we have come, it is important to consider where photojournalism began. The Civil War Trust credits Matthew Brady as the father of photojournalism for his work documenting the Civil War. Yet, we know that he did not photograph the battlefields as he found them, instead moving the bodies as necessary to compose the image, a practice that would be unacceptable by today’s photojournalism standards.

Title: Antietam, Maryland. Bodies of dead, Louisiana Regiment
Creator: Matthew Brady
Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/cwp/item/cwp2003005540/PP/resource/

The National Press Photographers Association clearly states in the preamble to its code of ethics that their “primary goal is the faithful and comprehensive depiction of the subject at hand.” They further state that “photographs can also cause great harm if they are callously intrusive or are manipulated.” To that end, “editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images' content and context. Do not manipulate images or add or alter sound in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects” (NPAA).

But how much manipulation is too much? How far can we go before we have mislead viewers or misrepresented subjects? Based on how individual editors and the photojournalism community has policed itself, it is clear that there is little wiggle room in this regard.

In 2003, The Los Angeles Times printed a photo by Brian Walski of a British soldier gesturing for an Iraqi man carrying a small child to stop.

Title: Soldier in Basra
Creator: Brian Walski
Publisher: Los Angeles Times
URL: http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/10-news-photos-that-took-photoshop-too_b328

It is a provocative image of the potential for conflict between soldiers and civilians. However, an observant editor of another paper realized the above image is stitched together from two of Walski’s photographs; it is a combination of the two shots. The soldier is from one image; the civilian from another.

While the editing may seem minor at first, it changes how we read the photograph. In the doctored version, we are left with some tension about what will happen if the civilian does not stop. In the original photographs, we see the soldier signal for the man to stop, but then lower his weapon as the civilian comes closer, suggesting some permission was granted to approach. We read less conflict in the original photographs.

Brian Walski was fired by the Los Angeles Times for violating the code of ethics when he presented his edited image as truth.

In another famous case, Reuters released a photo to the wire service of smoke over Beirut after an Israeli airstrike, but later removed the photograph after viewers complained that the image looked photoshopped based on the repeated, circle patterns.

Brian Walski was fired by the Los Angeles Times for violating the code of ethics when he presented his edited image as truth.

In another famous case, Reuters released a photo to the wire service of smoke over Beirut after an Israeli airstrike, but later removed the photograph after viewers complained that the image looked photoshopped based on the repeated, circle patterns.

Title: Smoke Over Beirut (Edited)
Creator: Adnan Hajj
Publisher: Reuters
URL: http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/10-news-photos-that-took-photoshop-too_b328

Title: Smoke Over Beirut (Original)
Creator: Adnan Hajj
Publisher: Reuters
URL: http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/10-news-photos-that-took-photoshop-too_b328

Reuters broke ties with the photographer, Adnan Hajj, after determining that he had manipulated the photograph intentionally.

While photo editors agree that these examples are unethical, they can be difficult to catch. According to a New York Times article, “detecting the smoke and mirrors is a challenge. While editors for print publications commonly rely on editing systems that track each change made to an article, photo editors have fewer tools at their disposal and often rely simply on experience and instinct.” (Aspan).

As evidenced by the fact that the images above were published by major news services, photo editors cannot always determine when an image has been edited beyond the bounds of the profession, and the editor’s job is only getting harder as they view more images, increasingly coming from amateurs who may not be well versed in photojournalism ethics.

CNN, NBC News, ABC News, and Fox News have sections of their web sites where people can submit photographs to the news department. Three of the four sites make no mention of photojournalism ethics; only ABC News included any instructions that “events depicted in the footage are real and not staged” (ABC News). The other terms of service were more concerned with the transfer of an image’s copyright than in instructing the public on the boundaries of ethical photojournalism. They rely on the masses to understand the industry’s proprieties.

At the same time, it is increasingly difficult for amateurs to even know that their images are doctored. Services like Google+’s Auto Awesome “improve” a photo when it is saved. In the case of the “Eraser” feature, “if you take a sequence of 3 or more photos in front of a structure or landmark with movement in the background, Eraser will give you a photo with all the moving objects removed” (Auto Awesome). A layperson may submit one of these modified photographs without realizing it and without the complete set of images, a photo editor may print one of these doctored photographs unwittingly.

As we continue to make everyone with a cellphone camera a photojournalist, we need to create better protections against using manipulated images in journalism. Such an effort requires the technology to determine a photograph’s provenance, perhaps in embedded metadata, but it also requires the very news organizations who solicit these images to educate laypeople on the ethics of photojournalism and its importance.

Works Cited

“10 News Photos That Took Retouching Too Far” 10,000 Words. May 21, 2009. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/10-news-photos-that-took-photoshop-too_b328

Aspan, Maria. “Ease of Alteration Creates Woes for Picture Editors.” New York Times. August 14, 2006. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/14/technology/14photoshop.html?_r=0.

“Auto Awesome Photos & Movies”. Google. 2013. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. https://support.google.com/plus/answer/3113884?hl=en.

“Matthew Brady” Civil War Trust. n.d. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/biographies/mathew-brady.html.

“NPAA Code of Ethics” National Press Photographers Association. 2012. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. https://nppa.org/code_of_ethics.

“Send Us Your Cell Phone Video and Pictures” ABC News. May 7, 2006. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=1927971.

Van Riper, Frank. “Manipulating Truth, Losing Credibility.” Washington Post. March 4, 2009. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/essays/vanRiper/030409.htm.

Cool "reverse image search engine"

Hi all,
 
While I was researching for my final post I found a reference to this site: http://www.tineye.com/

Here's the description: 
TinEye is a reverse image search engine. It finds out where an image came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or if there is a higher resolution version.

I thought it was worth sharing.

Happy Thanksgiving.
 
Amy

Vivian Maier - Her Discovered Work

Vivian Maier - Her Discovered Work:

'via Blog this'

Civil War Photos in Color: A Good Thing or Bad Thing?

Earlier in the semester, I came across this article about some Redditers who decided to color in American Civil War photographs: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazing-american-civil-war-photos-turned-into-glorious-color-2013-10 After reading this article, I decided to search for more photographs and came across one man’s website, Mads Madsen,  on Colorized History: http://twistedsifter.com/2012/12/colorizing-historic-photos-gallery/. A complete list of his work can be viewed here: http://zuzahgaming.minus.com/

These colorized photographs are very impressive to say the least, so let’s take a second to discuss what these colorized photographs bring to the table. They humanize the generals and soldiers in the photographs and make us feel something on an emotional level.  According to an article by Darren Rowse, “Color can help tell us stories (visually) and it can be used to communicate on an emotional level…I would go so far as to say that color is the primary factor responsible for making a photo feel exciting, lively, mysterious or perhaps melancholic or a little somber” (Rowse, 2006-2013). [1]

Whether or not you agree with that statement (I don’t necessarily agree with it), I do think that color does add an emotional depth to these American Civil War photographs. Being able to view portraits of Union and Confederate soldiers and even our 16^th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln 

in color gives us a different idea of what this volatile era was like. This photograph was taken by Mathew Brady in 1861 at the beginning of Lincoln's first presidential term and at the launch of the Civil War.

 During the Civil War, Brady and his associates traveled throughout the eastern part of the country, capturing effects of the Civil War through photographs of people, towns, and battlefields.  Here are some examples of photographs Madsen colorizes: This is a photograph of General Ambrose Burnside, commander of the Union army at Potomac. I did not get this information from Madsen's website, however. Madsen does little to describe the photographs in his online collection so I had to poke around for information about many of the photographs he has colorized.

Here is another photograph that Madsen colorizes. I am unsure as to what the title of the photograph is because of his lack of description but if I had to take a guess, I would guess that this is a photograph of the dead at Antietam. The color in this image really adds depth to the carnage of War, with the scattered bodies on the ground.

Let’s take a look at the process that Madsen uses to colorize these photographs in this video clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVf60pGsi9Q&feature=youtu.be

He speaks very quickly in this tutorial but you can almost make out that he’s done some “limited research” on the generals he is colorizing. This makes me a bit nervous because I would hope that he would do extensive research on the characteristics and features of people and places depicted in the photographs.  However, it is difficult to say to what he is basing the level or degree of saturation and distinct coloring on, which in my opinion, makes some of these colorized photographs look fake. A juxtaposition of a few generals in black and white vs. color reveals this in my opinion:

I think my biggest problem with these color photographs is the idea of authenticity. As these color photographs of the Civil War and earlier eras become popular, more and more people are going to think that these color photographs are the originals.  Now, I know what you’re going to say: How can people be that stupid? Of course they’re going to know that color photography wasn’t around during the Civil War era.” But maybe not. When you color in these photographs, you are essentially changing the history of taking photographs and the history of the War.

Nowhere on these websites do they explain the art of photography that Brady had to master during the Civil War era to take these photographs. Processing these photographs involved many steps; Brady and other photographers had to transport their supplies by wagon, mix their own chemicals and prepare their own wet plate glass collodion negatives and develop these negatives within minutes, before the emulsion dried. [2] Nowhere on this website does it state what kind of person Brady was to be able to take photographs of both Union and Confederate soldiers and Generals. While many close relatives told Brady not to go, he decided to take a group of photographers and aids, such as Alexander Gardener and Timothy O’Sullivan, to document the war. While many of these photographs were attributed to him, they were not necessarily taken by him. He was more of a project manager, preserving their negatives and buying others from other photographers to add to the collection. He not only preserved wet glass negatives of soldiers and leaders during the War, he also documented the dead, which was not well received at the time but proved to change the face of War for many Americans. He invested most of his fortune into preserving this Civil War photograph collection, and it eventually led him to bankruptcy.  He eventually sold the collection to Congress in 1875 for $25,000. In his final years, he reflected on these photographs, saying: “No one will ever know what I went through to secure those negatives. The world can never appreciate it. It changed the whole course of my life.”[3]

These details are important, or should be important to the viewers, and this information should be accessible for everyone looking at these photographs. When you leave this information out, people begin to assume that the color photographs are authentic, and that these Photoshoppers are the creators, especially with younger generations who believe that if it’s on the internet, it must be true. There is so much background and context to these photographs that cannot be added by a simple coat of color pixels. The color adds a new layer but the older layers should be addressed as well. These colorized photographers like Madsen need to pay homage to the photographers that came before; those who didn’t have Photoshop and who had to do the real thing from scratch.

---

[1] David Rowse. The Importance of Color in Photography: An Interview with Mitchell Kanashkevich (Digital Photography School, 2006-2013) http://digital-photography-school.com/the-importance-of-color-in-photography-an-interview-with-mitchell-kanashkevich.

[2] Library of Congress, Civil War Glass Negatives and Related Prints http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/cwp/civilwarphotos.html

[3] Library of Congress, Mathew B. Brady Biographical Note http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/cwp/bradynote.html

British Library Photo Archive and Massachusetts Historical Society Photo Archive websites

 

For this assignment I looked at a couple of websites, one was the British Library’s photo archive and the other was the Massachusetts Historical Society’s photo archive. Both websites were well laid out and had nice descriptions of what they have in their collections. I got to the British Library’s photo archive by doing a Google search for “British Library Photo Archive”. When doing this search, the British Library website photo archive section came right up. This webpage is located at: https://imagesonline.bl.uk/?service=page&action=show_home_page

&language=en. On this page, there is a search box called “search images”. I tried searching for historic photographs of London and only got 9 images. This was disappointing as I’m sure the British Library has more historic images of London then that. After that, I decided to try searching just the word “London”. When I did this search, I got 162 pages of images. Not very efficient but at least I got a plethora of results. I got all sorts of images, many were drawings and paintings, but there were also plenty of photographs. Some were of the city of London, and many others were of people, buildings, places, or events (some only vaguely) related to London. Many of the photographs, nevertheless, were beautiful and their collection included daguerreotypes, tintypes, ambrotypes, calotypes, cabinet cards, cartes-de-visites, etc and many images made with different types of mechanical processes (such as such as halftones, photogravures, lithographs, and others). Most photographs were black and white, though there were some early color photographs as well. One can pull up a photo by clicking on it or by clicking on the magnifying glass icon at the bottom left of each image. The images were mostly fairly well catalogued with subject matter described, person in photograph named, dates or at least ranges, and some information about the type of photograph, publication the photo originally appeared in or the photographer if known (many, of course, were not known).

            After looking through these photographs for a while, I decided that I wanted to try to find something more specific so I returned to the photo search page and tried searching for photographs of London from the 1920s and 1930s. I searched by using the words “London 1920s, 1930s” and I only got a few images mostly of photographs taken from airplanes during aerial bombardments (presumably from the first and second world wars). This was both disappointing as not many images came (only 5) as well as surprising as the aerial bombardments of London took place during the first world war (1914-1918) and the second world war (1939-1945). In saying this, presumably none of these photographs were from the 1920s or 1930s, which were the time periods I specified in my search. So even though I’m pretty sure the British Library has photographs of London from the 1920s and 1930s, I was not able to easily find them.

            At this point, I decided to have a look at the Massachusetts Historical Society’s photo archive. I did a Google search for “Massachusetts Historical Society photo archive” and this brought up the Massachusetts Historical Society’s photo archive website located at: http://www.masshist.org/library_

collections/photographs.cfm. This is how the Massachusetts Historical Society describes its photography collection “The photographic archives at the Massachusetts Historical Society consist of approximately 120,000 photographs. Modern portraits of individuals and family groups, initially acquired with manuscript donations, dominate the collection. Its full breadth, however, spans the history of photography and includes more than 550 daguerreotypes, 100 tintypes, 200 ambrotypes, 4,000 cartes-de-visite, 200 cabinet cards, and 5,000 glass plate negatives, as well as large format prints and thousands of images produced through modern photographic processes.

Approximately 50,000 photographs in 380 separate collections are described at the collection level in 45 online finding aids and in ABIGAIL. All 800 individual cased images in the daguerreotype and ambrotype collections are cataloged in ABIGAIL. Please contact the reference librarian if you do not find a specific photographic item in the online catalog.” With this great description I decided to do a search for photographs of Walden Pond. I clicked on the ABIGAIL search and then typed “Walden Pond photographs” in the search box. I got 2251 pages of results (10 results per page), which was exiting! However, upon closer inspection, I realized that most of the photographs were not actually shown online. One presumably has to actually go into the Mass Historical Society in the Back Bay to look at them. Also, I realized that most of the results were not only photographs but also “mixed media”. I would assume this means that there are photographs, images, documents, etc in each of these listings. Nevertheless, the listings seemed to be fairly well catalogued showing date/date range, author/photographer (if known), publication the photographs and/or documents originally appeared in, and type of image (daguerreotype, ambrotype, tintype, lithograph, etc.).

So in wrapping up, both websites I looked had their advantages and disadvantages, however, it was nice to actually see the photographs in the British Library’s collection. The Massachusetts Historical Society did seem to make finding specific images or subjects of images easier, even if one has to go there to actually look at them. Both search engines gave me either too many only vaguely related results if my search was fairly general or too few results if I was searching for something more specific. Nevertheless, I would probably have more luck with both websites if I were to sink some time into using differing search terms to find what I was looking for. Both websites were beautifully designed and invited the user to have a look at highlights of their collections, which could certainly be fun and useful.

Philadelphia City Archives and Philadelphia Museum of Art

Introduction

For this assignment, I chose to look at how photographs are made accessible and described in the websites of these two organizations:

Philadelphia City Archives (95,287 photographs)

http://www.phillyhistory.org

Philadelphia Museum of Art (4,044 photographs)
http://www.philamuseum.org/

Background Information

Both of these organizations are located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Despite this similarity, both organizations are vastly different in their administrative composition. This has influenced the formation of their photographic collections and resulting presentation online.

The Philadelphia City Archives is maintained by a government body, known as the Philadelphia Department of Records. The City Archives holds an estimated 2 million photographs dating back to the mid-1800s. The photographs were originally created by a photography department within the City of Philadelphia to document the city's activities and to assist city officials in making decisions. Over time, the increasing historic value of these photographs lead the City Archives to begin a digitization project in 2005. After receiving grant funding in 2007, 2008, and 2010, the PhillyHistory site developed to allow users to not only see historic photographs of Philadelphia, but to see the photographs linked to their geographic coordinates on a map. Of the 2 million photographs in their collection, the City Archives has put 95,287 photographs online.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization operated by a board of trustees and a director. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is made up of 8 curatorial departments that care for 227,000 objects. Photographs fall under the "Prints, Drawings, and Photographs" department, which was formed under a different name in 1920. Photographs were not collected until 1949, starting with a gift of 69 photographs by Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946). In subsequent decades, the collection has grown to include 2,500 photographs by Julian Levy (American, 1906-1981), 4,000 photographs by Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976), and more.  In other words, the collection is comprised of fine art photographs, rather than documentary photographs. While no exact figure of photographs is published online, at least 4,044 photographs have been made searchable online.

Searching the Photographic Collections

Neither of these websites offer finding aids for their collections. Searching through a database of images is the only way to access the photographs.

Philadelphia City Archives

Upon landing on the PhillyHistory home page, searching is encouraged by a big button. There are two interfaces through which to search the Philadelphia City Archives photographs. The default method is the thumbnail view (top image). The other method is the map view (bottom image).

Either method provides the same searching capabilities. Some of the fields users can search by are address, keyword, topic, series, collection, and time period. Users can filter searches by neighborhood, by whether the records have digitized media, and by date that the record of the photograph has been changed.

When a photograph has been selected, a new frame pops up with information about that photograph. The descriptive information includes title, description (usually the same as the title), notes (sometimes a photo depicts a building that no longer exists), address, date, photographers, collection (some photos have been added by other organizations), collection ID, asset ID, topic, and hyperlink (if it relates to a post on their blog).

Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Philadelphia Museum of art is actively engaged in putting photographs online. Because the Philadelphia Museum of Art is home to much more than just photographs, users have to search a bit to find photographs. Upon landing on the Philadelphia Museum of Art website, users have to go to Collections > Search Collections. Then, they are presented with three search methods (top image).

The first search method is to use a blank search bar to search by keyword(s). Users can turn "hints" on or off, much the same way related search results automatically show up in a Google search. Users also have the choice to add special characters here.

The second method is to search by various options such as artist/ maker, classification (format), country of work, and curatorial department. Users can also filter results to records only with a provenance, and records only with audio file. It is through this method that search results can be narrowed down to just show photographs.

The final search method is to search by accession number, which is useful for finding a specific record if a user already knows one.

Upon selecting a photograph to view (bottom image), the information comes as raw data that is not labeled. The information includes curatorial department, title, country of origination, date, process, measurements, whether the photo is on view or not, a unique identifier, provenance, "social tags" added by user, and additional information about the artist or collection.

Conclusion

Photographic collections are seeing new life thanks to the digital revolution. Cross-sector partnerships (such as the Library of Congress and Flickr pairing up in 2008 to create Flick Commons) and special programs (such as the SEPIA Project funded by the European Union from 1999-2003) are being developed to explore the potential power of digital systems to share and manage photographic collections. With online photograph collections have increased in popularity, issues of accessibility remain.

The biggest issue, as seen through the examination of the online photographic collections of the Philadelphia City Archives and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is the importance of context. Unlike a finding aid, which groups photographs on a collection level and provides some contextual information, these search methods rely on the user to make associations between photographs. As far as guides go, the Philadelphia Museum of Art only has substantial information about a collection of photographs, such as the Paul Strand collection, if it has been put on exhibit. The Philadelphia City Archives allows users to search through a handful of series  (e.g. Winter Scenes) and collections (e.g. Phila. Water Dept. Photographs), but provides no significant information on these categories. Ultimately, context is the factor lacking in these two organizations.

However, at the item level, the information supplied by both the Philadelphia City Archives and the Philadelphia Museum of Art is not drastically different. Both organizations try to supply sufficient information for their records in a consistent manner. More than anything, the interfaces through which a user interacts is the primary difference. For the Philadelphia City Archives, whose photographs depict the city throughout history, the method of searching visually by a map presents photos in a more dynamic context than they would be otherwise. While the Philadelphia Museum of Art also provides a small map to denote where the photograph was produced, it  is not as important for their photographic collections.

To conclude, the challenge of providing context at the collection and item levels is shared by agencies big and small, private and public. As the trend to share photographs online grows, so too will our understanding of the best approaches to help users retrieve contextual information pertinent to photographic collections.