Greenberg, McCain and 'Gotcha' Portraiture: Do We Need a Law?

 Long after I'd heard more than I though I could stand on this subject, I happened to catch a thoughtful (if maddening) radio piece called "Snap Judgments" from WNYC's On the Media, a program syndicated by NPR.

 Program host Bob Garfield uses Jill Greenberg's controversial portrait session with John McCain as a point of departure for raising provocative questions about editorial portraiture in general: Why aren't editorial portrait photographers held to the same journalistic standards as other journalists? And where's the line between a photographer's prerogative and a 'gotcha' image?

Although Garfield comes across as a well-meaning enforcer of journalistic objectivity and ethics, Platon, Martin Schoeller, and former Time DOP MaryAnne Golon ably defend the subjective [and compelling] approach to magazine portraiture. Schoeller, for instance, says people are shocked by his images of real people because they're so accustomed to the twisted images of people shown in magazines and advertisements.

Platon describes himself as "a disturber. I come and try to disturb the status quo." When Garfield asks whether that is a reasonable journalistic technique, Platon plays right into his hands with this reply: "I'm surprised that I’m allowed to carry on doing what I do every day…I’m still waiting to be sent out of the country for bad photographic behavior."

Another provocative if unsubstantiated point raised by Garfield: magazines and photographers may be so angry and frustrated by the control Hollywood celebrities [and their publicists] exercise, that they take it out on other subjects with less media savvy and power.

Greenberg observes that subjects assume the risk when they agree to a shoot. Then she goes on to admit, without naming names, that she's been assigned by magazine editors to "make people look bad." And finally she tells Garfield that she "doesn't know what those canons and ethics [of journalism] are" because she went to art school.

You can hear Garfield's jaw drop, dumbfounded by his luck in getting what amounts to admissions by three unrepentant artists that they aren't slaves to journalistic objectivity. He concludes that it's high time to spell out the rules of basic fairness in magazine portraiture "not because these issues are black and white, but because they obviously aren't."

Good luck with that memo, Bob.

You can listen to the 15-minute podcast here:

Click here to see a slideshow that goes with the podcast.

Comments

[eric f.]

I know that there are instances where you can argue that both professions can cross over, but since when are portrait or fashion photographers journalists?

Creative portraits are staged, which goes against all the photojournalistic rules I've heard.

[Jon Hornstein]

I was a photo editor at a national news magazine in the late 80's when the debate over the ethics of digital retouching was first emerging.

I always maintained that as a photo editor, the direction I gave to the photographer and my edit of the shoot was more "manipulative" than anything that could be done digitally.

Photojournalism is no more or less subjective than other forms journalism. Publications, editors, writers and producers have a point of view whether they acknowledge it, or even recognize it, or not.

We should all strive to be fair and ethical but we also need to realize the limitations of “objectivity.”

Context is everything. A picture of Dick Cheney looking demonic means one thing on the cover of Rolling Stone, something else entirely on the cover of the National Review.