Poetic licence, the liberty to disregard facts, has never been limited to text or poetry. Film is always faking it – even documentary films transpose shots and sequences across time. A painting is often about idealised figures, objects, landscapes, not just an element of fantasy. Music renders emotion via story via emotion again. When it comes to photography though, we have an expectation of truth.
Photographs are expected to do something no other means of expression can. Photographs are credible. They are records of the present, they are immediately historic facts. We will believe it if we see it.
We will believe the toil of glistening ebony peasant women in Janah’s photos. We will believe the luminous sensual eroticism of Mapplethorpe’s flowers. We will believe the grandeur of Prabuddha’s shadow-streaked landscapes. We will believe, even feel, the horror in Nick Ut’s photo of the Vietnamese child after a napalm attack.
Photographs are true, honest, and real. And journalism photos more so than all other photographs. So, when anyone messes with that truth, honesty, reality, then all of us should rightfully be outraged.
In the digital age it is easier than ever before to doctor images, but it is even easier for anyone to get caught doing it. Souvid Datta learnt this the hard way. An award-winning photojournalist, Datta was caught out doctoring images by replicating the work of other photographers. In one image – from a series on the violence in Kolkata’s sex industry – he transposed a character from a photograph that the legendary Mary Ellen Mark took in the 1970s. There was no disclaimer that the work was not completely his.
Broken systems
It is a sign of the times that when a compatriot found himself under the spotlight for deceit, I felt little more than passing disgust. So much has been eroded from the sacred monolith we knew to be ethical photography. Perhaps it was never sacred, nor a monolith – though it ought to have been both.
Datta’s downfall comes not long after Steve McCurry’s plunge from grace. Datta at least had the decency to come clean, show contrition, and apologise in an interview with Time magazine. McCurry first blamed his underlings, and then made excuses about being only “a visual storyteller” after a lifetime of reaping accolades for being a great photojournalist.
What troubled me more than Datta’s bald-faced plagiarism was the callousness of Magnum and LensCulture. Two of the “biggest organisations in the photographic community”, they advertised a competition for photographers with an image from Datta’s Kolkata series that essentially shows the statutory rape of an underage girl. The image shows a man lying on top of a teenage sex worker. You can only see the man’s back. But the girl’s face is naked before Datta’s camera.
A photojournalist is both a photographer and a journalist, as my teacher, guide and legendary picture editor Bob Lynn declared in 1998 – so we must work twice as hard as both. He asked that we zealously guard the integrity of our photograph. He taught us that hard, intelligent work is worth more than cheap tricks. Picture editors and photojournalists, he said, are charged not only with reporting news, but also informing people about their world, and sometimes, educating them about injustices and burning issues – through their photographs and accompanying captions.
Few understand those maxims, or the responsibilities of the photojournalist, anymore. In 2001, while giving a talk to photojournalism students at Syracuse University in the US, I explained the ethics of image adjustment as “anything you could do in the darkroom, you may do with Photoshop. But no more”. The instruction was quite simple: no addition or subtraction of an element, be it a lamppost, tree, cigar, rickshaw, football player, or political enemy. None.
The 18 young photojournalists looked back at me quizzically: they had no idea what a darkroom was.
History could have been a guide for them, as it for us today. Felice Beato reenacted scenes of the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny, Ansel Adams printed photographs like no one before or after, Yevgeni Khaldei brought a Soviet flag made from tablecloths to raise over the Reichstag, Eugene Smith found his electronic flash to be “available” light at Minamata. But these are interesting cases for debate. They occupy the rich palette of graytones between white and black. Faking the truth, betraying the integrity of the image, stealing shamelessly, copying outside of fair use – those just occupy the black region.
So what compels some photographers to deceive, plagiarise? In my opinion, they do so for base self-interest. Add to that ignorance of ethics, absence of a moral compass, and careless disregard for the value of true labour, and we have entered the badlands.
Integrity of the image
Jodie Steck, my mentor and another great picture editor who led the picture editing team at several news organisations, including at the Associate Press’s New York headquarters, demanded that we hold ourselves to the highest standards. She said we may fail sometimes but we may never fail to correct ourselves, that picture editors through their anonymous service convey the truth that is its own perfect reward. It was because of her that I came to understand that if the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, the price of freedom of expression must be eternal vigilance over expression.
The Associated Press ruthlessly fired anyone who manipulated images – still, it happened more than once. Early this century, Reuters laid off senior picture editors and promptly found that the new, inexperienced replacements were transmitting doctored images. I worked at both these venerable agencies and watched many other organisations too go down bleak paths, simply to save money. The apprenticeship route was broken, training programmes were abandoned. I wondered how we would go forward: without good mentors providing an ethical foundation, without experienced picture editors, who would teach the new crop of photojournalists right from wrong.
Voicing the unpopular opinion and staying true, even if hurts self-interest. Making good judgement calls as a picture editor. Guiding photographers to do great stories without doctoring images. Preserving the integrity of the story and the photographic moment. Taking photographs with humility, compassion, respect and without seeking to alter or influence events. All these come from good teachers. All these make for good photojournalism.
The writer is a former picture editor and photojournalist who worked at the Associated Press, Reuters and as an independent consultant for nine years.
