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On Aesthetics and Ethics
  • Miles Ambridge class

    Just saw this picture and its story: parents complaining about their disabled son (spinal muscular atrophy) “Being picked on and being set aside [...]”.

    source the Toronto Star

    For me, what it is even stranger is the face of the children being blurred.
    I would like to invite PV members to a constructive and cordial debate

    gashô

  • 26 Replies sorted by
  • @maxr

    Thanks for this sign-of-our-times image, possibly destined to become another milestone in our media literacy and society's grappling with modern issues.

    Well, the picture says it all.

    Would you have done things any other way if you'd been the photographer? The teacher? The Toronto Star editor?

  • I hate to spoil a good story, but...

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  • Hey @Walker
    This image -the original one - seems like out of a ghost's-bad-joke-hat; nevertheless I think it's rich enough for a friendly discussion.
    As I said up there, the children faces being blurred it is more concerning to me, it this something "so bad" that we need to cover children's faces? The openess of sMiles contrasts with the whole dramatism being added to it. That said, there's impossible to read an image without a context... which is the same to say it doesn't exist. What is (on the) context here?

    BTW ever thought of putting Miles on top of a rainbow unicorn instead? iron man suit?

  • @maxr

    I've done as you said, i.e. tried to be constructive.

    Firstly, I'd like to investigate more. These days, more than ever, I use the rule: Follow the Money

    • This might have been a hoax. It was worth checking. No sign of a hoax yet, but I found THIS similar story

    • The Toronto Star is a high-circulation newspaper with the second-highest decline in readership.

    • The newspaper will know better than to have gone to press with this story without talking to the school. As it appears, they've printed a photo from somebody along with their own story. They've got an online comments section and, to the right, a number of pay-per-click advertisements.

    • The Herbert Spencer School is available for comment.

    Our school is located at 605 Second Street, New Westminster, B.C. V3L 4R1. Our Principal is Tracy Fulton, our Vice-Principal is Patti Peterson and our Secretaries are Chris Walton and Ann Michaud. Please contact us at 604-517-6030 or fax us at 604-517-6031.

    • Desperate newspapers can sometimes cut corners in order to save on journalists' leg-work. Opinion from readers, posted online, is free and generates lots of hits.

    • Getting parents of all kids to sign release forms for a class photo is normal. Going back to get more releases for newspaper publication requires time and expense. Blurring the faces in the photo takes 10 minutes.

    • The Toronto Star has possibly done no more than copy and paste an email with photo they've received.

    I'm waiting to hear what the school says. So far, that's all I'll be contributing.

  • Wow @Walker thanks for that ton of research; you're taking this to another level, nice!
    Money, subscriptions, clicks, newspapers and laziness don't mix well together. Disabled kid, photography and oversight are dangerous (acid) materials. Makes me wonder how... wait

    Miles’ father Don Ambridge, who saw the photo first, was disgusted and appalled and demanded that Herbert Spencer Elementary School ask the company to retake the picture. A spokesman for the school could not be reached for comment Friday.

    how did the whole thing get to the newspapper? from facebook?
    and if parents intentions were to protect their son

    Miles’ parents have opted not to show the photo to their son. Belanger said Miles is “aware that he’s different, he’s aware that he’s in a wheelchair” and they were trying their best not to hurt his feelings.

    Why did they let the "drama" install?
    If photographer company offered to shoot again, why they didn't wash dirty laundry at home?
    Is there a lack of coherence behind or is it more like argent/visibility?
    Why are children's faces blurred? Did they do something wrong - of course not? Are they witnessing something criminal - of course not - just careless (enough) job? And if the logic idea (crazy common sense) behind the blurring is protect them (from what?), why publish the whole thing in the first place?

    sorry for many parenthesis and robotic talking... slow learner :)

    le petit Miles Ambridge

  • Why are children's faces blurred?

    Cheaper.

    Going back to get more releases [signed by parents] for newspaper publication requires time and expense. Blurring the faces in the photo [instead, obscures their identity, requires no parents' permission] takes [only] 10 minutes.

  • Christy Clark* feels bad she's not in the picture :( ...Canadians complain, Stateside folks SUE!!! James Cameron adds "Beware of airbrushing the moto-wheelchair out of the picture. The moto-wheelchairs will organize and take over the world! Cue Terminator theme...."

    • Premier of B.C.
  • It turns out, this story was covered earlier- and in more detail - in another paper, the Times Colonist on the previous day.

    http://www.timescolonist.com/news/b-c/the-photo-that-broke-a-mother-s-heart-1.321803

    Belanger posted the photo to the photography company’s Facebook page. Lifetouch Canada removed the photo with a message that it was taken down due to privacy laws, but that they had sent it to their head office.

    Not satisfied with their response, Belanger posted the photo again with the other children’s faces blacked out.

    The Times Colonist, while seeming to have interviewed the boy's parents, make no mention of any attempt to get hold of the other parties.

    Perhaps by serendipity, this story broke on a Friday. Was this such a pressing issue that it couldn't wait until school and photography business Lifetouch Canada opened on Monday? In the meantime, they've managed to garner heaps of comment from readers all to eager to speculate as to what had gone on. Had the story been covered properly, there would have been less public comment.

    Sorry about being such a sceptic. We live in strange media times!

    I still want to hear from both the school and the photographer.

  • Perhaps by serendipity, this story broke on a Friday. Was this such a pressing issue that it couldn't wait until school and photography business Lifetouch Canada opened on Monday?

    xactly me thoughts, my sceptic part just wants to try to know how things are orchestrated.

    cheeeeer io s @Walker and @jleo

  • Sometimes I am trully shocked about problems discussed in US seriously.

  • @Vitaliy_Kiselev
    when you have to feed thousands of machines, being newspapers/news agencies/news sites one of them, and then make it the cheapest possible with as much profit as possible (hey maybe we could run a newspaper without journalists at all?!!!) ... news would be like this. it surely gets worse because usually our (the people) opinions, comments, posts are a total lack of deepness drive route for income (that's mine!). Latter the rest of the world is happy to just import and implement those very fine models, sometimes pushing them ever further, nice! but I bet you already know this very well

    what I am more concerned about - which is a stupid way of saying "where I have a possibility to do and to change something", probably by trying to show its mechanism - is the setting of aesthetic standards through a public set of believes (call it common sense), the misuse of mass opinionated interactive folks, the subtle manipulation strategies that can make sell more, more photoshop, more dreams, more rightfulness, more subscriptions, more hope, more empty mind-space, more happiness

    actually most places are working like this, being this house you run an exception, I thought could make a catalyst from this very soft example photo, for bringing out stuff

    gashô

  • Strangely, our attention was drawn to the plight of the wheelchair kid at the same time as the G8 conference.

    I was watching the TV news and couldn't believe my ears as both Cameron and Putin, side by side, each announced that they were independently arming opposite sides in the Syrian conflict - the UK siding with the Syrian Rebels and Russia arming the Syrian army. What amazed me most was the nonchalant way the speaker announced the vision - as if nothing in particular had been said! No journalists were at the back of the studio in the newsroom, typing. No direct cross to Dublin, no foreign affairs specialist to help us understand the significance or threat implied by what had just been said.

    As John Malkovich said, "And now, sports!"

    It's like the rock - paper - scissors game. Paper trumps a rock.These days, in the public's mind, wheelchair photo trumps international crisis.

  • People suffer indignities every day in families, at work, in a line up for groceries. If we try to correct every one, there might be no society at all! Soon moviemakers who didn't get an Oscar will say. " I felt so bad when I lost, GIMME ONE anyways!!"

  • One of the marks of our world is perhaps this reversal: we live according to a generalized image-repertoire. Consider the United Sates, where everything is transformed into images: only images exist and are produced and are consumes ... Such a reversal necessarily raises the ethical question: not that the image is immoral, irreligious, or diabolic (as some have declared it, upon the advent of the Photograph), but because, when generalized, it completely de-realizes the human world of conflicts and desires, under cover of illustrating it.

    Each photograph is read as the private appearance of its referent: the age of Photography corresponds precisely to the explosion of the private into the public, or rather into the creation of a new social value, which is the publicity of the private: the private is consumes as such, publicly.

    Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography


    In a world in which photography is brilliantly at the service of consumerist manipulations, no effect of a photograph of a doleful scene can be taken for granted. The hunt for more dramatic ... images drives the photographic enterprise, and is part of the normality of a culture in which shock has become a leading stimulus of consumption and a source of value .... The image as shock and the image as cliche are two aspects of the same presence.

    Photographs objectify, they turn an event or a person into something that can be possessed. And photographs are a species of alchemy, for all that they are prized as a transparent account of reality.

    For photographs to accuse, and possibly to alter conduct, they must shock.

    The national consensus on American history as a history of progress is a new setting for distressing photographs--one that focuses our attention on wrongs...for which America sees itself as a solution or cure.

    the determining influence of photographs in shaping what catastrophes and crises we pay attention to, what we care about, and ultimately what evaluations are attached to these conflicts.

    Susan Sontag

  • New Westminster school district superintendent calls school picture 'regretful'

    "It's unfortunate, and I just feel so badly for the family this has occurred," Woudzia told The Record.

    "I understand the photography company, Lifetouch Canada, has assumed responsibility for the matter in which the photograph was organized, and they've acknowledged that the classroom teacher wasn't responsible,"

    from The Record

    Unfortunately, the "News Frenzy" which The Record refers to seems unstoppable. Online zines, eager to get into the act (and a piece of the action) - abound, undaunted by the lateness of the news.

    Try typing "boy wheelchair school photo" into Google News and watch the action!

  • OK, now that the school has apologised...

    I'm glad. I sort of worried that their delay might indicate that somehow lawyers might have got involved to, you know, keep it out of the papers. I thought (heaven forbid) that this was going to be settled by some sort of payout (as if that's going to change anything).

    OK, now that the dust has settled..

    I think that the photographer has managed - possibly by mistake - to create a lasting image which might even go on to become a classic.

    Or else, just maybe, saw this one shot with the kid off to one side, and recognised it for what it is, and decided not to change a thing.

  • Ok, "Selfie" was elected word of the year by Oxford dictionaries (what an honour for selfie eh?) and this is the best use NYPost is able to make of it? WTF is going on with this "newspaper"?!!!

  • BTW The first light picture ever taken by Robert Cornelious, 1839 • aka original selfie sin :P

    From latest selfies scandals, ahhhrrggg so much hypocrisy!!!
    Obama and co. at Mandela's memorial having fun for FCS

  • image

    The Associated Press has “ended its ties” with a freelance photographer after it came to light that he digitally altered a photograph taken last September in Syria.

    Photographer Narciso Contreras used editing software to eliminate a colleague’s camera from his photograph of a Syrian opposition fighter, the AP said Wednesday. The AP did not find any other altered images among the hundreds of photographs Contreras submitted to the agency, but it scrubbed his work from its public archives regardless.

    {...}

    Contreras was part of a group of five photojournalists whose work earned the AP a Pulitzer Prize last year. TIME has featured Contreras’s work in the past.

    Source Time
    AP Communication

    I'll not enter in if it was right or wrong, this guy is a fucking great photographer and risks his life for each shot.
    He have my respect. Now, if you going to clone something do it well guey!!!

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    Some of Contreras photos in Syria

    And a very interesting and more in depth NYT's LENS article

    image

    From the beginning I was conscious of the camera in the frame, but it was difficult to move to make a picture,” he said. “I wanted to get all the tension from the frame. When I was processing the image I thought it would detract viewers from the essence of the situation. I thought about whether it was correct to remove the camera from the frame, for some time. But I removed it. I couldn’t handle this in a very stressful moment, but I can’t blame anyone for this mistake but myself.



    Another possibility seems to be go the virtual news photographer way :P

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  • Though lately there has been an interesting heterogeneous succession of events relating the image world: Calumet bankruptcy, canadian photojournalist Ali Moustafa killed in Syria (air strike), Getty Images "giving away free use" of their database (ejem!) and mining stock business, next chapter in Terry Richardson's relation with models soup opera (poor model being ask to squeeze his balls and doing it so), etc. For the thread I've chosen this image

    Source: nydailynews

     

     
    the one it came to mind right-away
    image

     
    and a follow up, S. Salgado's Journey to the Heavens image image

     
     
    I think this trio of images can help our brains ponder about, ethics, aesthetics, journalism, living out of highly aesthetisizing people's misery (what S. Salgado does in my opinion, with phenomenal technique yes but nevertheless), what's the right moment of an action?, what the fuck is common sense?, does it help to have it?, how can someone endure living after the vulture (actually Kevin Carter killed himself, but there's much more to that story that the photo and subsequent Pulitzer prize - only), how does mass media shape our perception of the world?, how does it affect and change moral patters?, etc. etc.  •  gasho

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  • Kevin Carter committed suicide because he could no longer bear his guilt. Why? Because he realized the lie at the core of the "uncertainty principle" of heartless journalism, and his inability to factor that into some resemblance of responsibility towards another human being. He realized that by not acting, a human being died who could have been saved. Not to mention he personally benefited from this same callousness demanded by his profession. Schlinder said "to save one life is to save the world" , and no more profound idea has ever been expressed. Yet we have governments, judicial systems, mass media, and social networks, including society at large that have done everything they could to induce a world-wide disease of callousness, while at the same time killing millions of innocent victims. If I was a little suspicious, I might believe we were being prepared to not care.

  • @kurth Firstly off, as I wrote above, KC committed suicide but his story has much more to it than this guilt (which I agree IF seen as an “impersonative” guilt of the human race, an irredeemable sense of hopelessness before LIFE). KC had a troubled personality and very very stressful job. He dug drugs big time too. Then WE decided his picture of announced DEATH deserved a prize; here you are son, you go find more dying children and we will delivered them as news. Dangerous cocktail, wouldn’t you say?

    When I was in Africa filming a doc, some people I knew died, FAST. In my “spare” time I enrolled multitude of tasks, one of them being in the team driving an ambulance from the bush to the city hospital, which to be honest was more of a slaughter house than any other thing… I still remember the day the new born baby died. I could go on for hours on how many grey nuances has any standpoint; like the mother of the baby, she had been carrying that being, her child, for 9 months, then she had to go through a very complicated and painful delivery so that the poor thing left this world in the way to the hospital. She cried rivers, oceans holding her baby in the arms, she screamed like only mad people do… she was devastated. But, do you think she’s going to spend the rest of her life moaning her loss?… her life is much more simple than that, she has 4 more mouths to feed and husband with AIDS.

    From the hundreds of people who came positive in the AIDS tests, do you think any of them cried or was sick worried? HOPELESSNESS!!!, in a force that most of us living in the comfort of our western society cannot imagine. That makes you “accept / surrender”. That, the western humanitarian aid (people infected know too well they’re getting a huge deal of basics if they bring positive proof in AIDS tests, also free medicine) and the son of a bitch of the Pope, that at the time came to Africa to remind every soul the wonderful wisdom that condoms were sinful.

    I lived that every single day and when I went to bed, drunk most of the nights (only way I managed to sleep), I cried like a baby… not only because of the sad things, also touched and overwhelmed beyond measure by the manifestations of joy, trueness, sympathy, purity, playfulness, innocence and kindness the scum of the scum of god’s forgotten dirty thoughts kept relentlessly showing. You place yourself amidst 100 orphan childs and let your heart melt like wax =) just be real careful with scratches

    So, what I mean is that it can be very easy to narrow reality to what our belief system is… but normally most things have a lot going on on the backstage… not to even mention CONTEXT. Objectivity isolated it’s just not posible, and context doesn’t provide the whole picture. IMO that’s one of the reasons common sense it’s many times turned into a dangerous brainwashing tool.

    Now, to try and set a common ground, I would dare to think out loud that we’re looking at 3 images, 3 photographs.
    These images have all being registered deliberately | re-gestum, we could say something done backwards
    Each photography had its own sociocultural context as-well as a production value.
    Each individual capturing the image(s) was a pro; had the skill/know-how, lives out of “creating” images (narrowing reality) and furthermore KNOWS their production value.
    Each individual taking the image(s) had his (all men) own personal context.
    Probably each photographer has also a minimum of a belief system, ethic values, philosophy, why not. Does that mean that their jobs and actions are always ruled by them?… incoherence is important parameter to keep in mind too.
    The 3 images have been iconisized by mass media’s cultural standards. Other than the pulitzer KC got, S.S's body of work it’s unequivocally sanctioned as high art.
    The first photography carries the most dose of humour as mass media, yeah that porn actress refurbished as news anchor woman, empowers the photographer’s attitude as an example of moral conduct.

    I’m tired now… and out of beer, the horror, THE HORROR!!!

  • @ Maxr

    I've lived out of the dominant cultural mileu for 3 decades. I never go back. Well, for 2 days for my last show in 2009, but couldn't tolerate it. I am thoroughly de-culturated. You're wrong in one most important point. These people suffering impossibly to conceive conditions are just like you and I. When a lion grabs an antelope by the neck , there's a mammalian surrender response that takes over their brains. We all have that same capacity to surrender to death. These people just do what people have always done. But you can see in that photo of the child, the unbelievable will to live against all odds. To say these people are different, that they take dying easier than we do is , imho, a way for the west to rationalize their deaths as somehow easier than our own, creating a chasm between us and them. This is journalism's crime. They suffer just like you, if you were in the same circumstances. And about KCarter. Suicide is always a very personal decision. I'm certain he was weighing god's failures against his own.

  • Hey de-culturated @kurth :P I think you're wrong about me being wrong, je je, as I never said they or we are different. I observed they just have a (much) different context in general and quite inescapably living conditions... which is demonstrated scientifically impossible for me to look at if not from my subjective and very strongly contextualized background.

    That said, you make fair points / strong comparisons, also in previous post, I really failed to saw them, must have been too focus on producing a meaningful somethin', sorry about that.

    It looks like I also undermined my own attempt of trying to push the argument into the images themselves; how do western cultural bulwarks analyze, react, (if) sanction and lately sell back to us a packaged meaning for those 3 images? All 3 are supposed to be registering stressful realities and all 3 have been, in different cultural niches, morally awarded and mediated... made icons.

    About Carter, I really think he spiraled out and if, as you put it he was weighing god's failures against his own... well we really cannot blame him for killing himself 'cause depending on the days "god" can deliver some awful shitty job, don't you think?

  • I don't blame anyone for killing themselves. It's the ultimate act of free will. Of course , that said, if it was someone very close, I'd probably blame myself.