CNN is has filed a lawsuit because the military involved in the clean-up of NO has threatened to keep the reporters from taking and publishing photos of the removal of the dead. CNN contends they will be as respectful as possible but the photos need to be seen for the sake of honest reporting. CNN feels people need to know about the extent of the devastation and the reality of the issues. I agree. Publish the photos. If people don’t want to see them, they don’t have to look. The world is full of wonderful and horrible things. We are better people for being aware of both. A

I just found your amazing travel blog and I have to agree with Sujoy’s post. However, I would add that I believe pictures of people, starving or otherwise, should be taken only with the consent of those people. There are many people who do not like to have anything ‘unpleasant’ disturb them. The fact is, what you don’t know about, you will never care about. Publish the photos, by all means. This is life, too.

Publish the photos. Is your objective not to mirror the reality as best you can?
Only if your objective was to sensationalise your own writing to make it more saleable or attractive would you be exploiting the tea-workers’ pain.

What is more distrubing than the photos is the fact that you are publishing photos taken from someone else. How do you know it is a genuinely starving photo or some photo op arranged by NGO to make you feel guilty — and thus rake in dollars?

Please be very careful dealing with these NGOs. I have personally seen how they have commercialized the whole foreign aid thing in Dharmshala. I am not saying the folks with whom you are associated with are crooks, but I will take some stuff with grain of staff.

Your earlier posts mentioned how they are kinda left leaning folks — and how you had to visit local leftist biggie. And lefties in India, if nothing else will at least ensure that people have something to eat. So I am very surprised that such situation still exists in that area.

Anyway tread carefully sir.

Thank you for the supportive responses. As for the most recent, by DollarNGO, I’ll just say that the goal of JSK is by no means to “rake in money,” and I can assure you the photos were not posed; as I see the same subjects with my own eyes every day and there is absolutely no reason for JSK to be manipulative. The individuals with whom I work at JSK, and the one who took the photos on that one day (with my camera) are truly dedicated to their activist work and to helping those more disenfranchised than themselves. JB

I think this question is all about the context the in which the images will finally be used, and that to some extent determines the moral ‘right’ to post them. Sujoy’s opening comment has it on the head for that occasion with respect to New Orleans; there is a vested interest in keeping what should be important images out of the public domain. That would be an occasion where a blogger posting the images would be vital and in the public interest.

But as a judge recently commented “in the public interest” is not the same as “interesting to the public”, and I cant agree with Sujoys statement that “people dont have to look at them”. The point here is not (I believe) the viewers, but the subjects of the images who have a right to dignity. a right that would only be superceded to some degree if publication of the images was for the greater good of people in a particular situation. The casual use of such images is prurient and intrusive and often for the gratification of the photographer rather than to provide any benefit.

There are crores of photos of India’s underclasses looking poor and hungry; these and the images of grand monuments and palaces are India’s visual cliches. To publish more on a blog serves little purpose without appropriate presentation and extensive background giving the context of ‘why’. The people did not just become poor in a vacuum, there are wider factors. A good spread of images of poverty would show something of the wider environment beyond the beseeching, tear stained figures on the pavement; the indifference of passers by, or the nature of the relationship between the affected individuals. All this said there is a huge gulf between using pictures of people who happen to be poor and those who are in the throes of misery itself.

My own conclusion, after debating these questions extensively in 20 years as a professional photojournalist is that if someone is paying me to shoot this material and -most importantly - I am happy with the end use of the images (it is not merely being used in a voyeuristic or exploitative way such as advertising), then I feel morally comfortable with doing it - always trying to use my technique with the subjects human dignity in mind. If I’m out and about off my own back it’s more problematic, and I tend to pass on the really ‘hard’ stuff unless I have a specific publication or exhibition in mind; I would rather sit and talk to someone and ask about their life to inform myself than gain attention for a bit of cheap grandstanding.

Sorry for that extensive waffle, probably more than you wanted! If anyones interested in what I think is the finest example of sensitivity and photography combined, go to http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fahome.html and browse the images from the great depression, especially those by Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange.

No pictures of starving to death are not inappropriate they are there to show us what many of us selfishly over look everyday like the celebrities who buy mansions and cars before thinking of helping human kind the pictures are ment to shock us so that we do something to help.We should look at them as a way out of hell. If we feel bad enough after seeing them then we’ll do something and maybe god will forgive us for over looking for so long.

The truly shocking infamous photo of the poor Sudanese girl falen over, trying to, but not making it to a feeding station, barely alive, with a vulture standing behind her waiting to eat her has driven me to sponsor children in countries in need. If not for this photo I may never have done anything like this. I will never forget this terrible photo and the suffering that that poor girl must have endured during her life and her last moments.

As terrible as these photos are, they must be seen to push others to act.