History of Photojournalism : Ethics of Photojournalism

Photojournalism acts as a visual truth, documenting and showing the reality of the world. A photo has the ability to tell a story and allows people to see first-hand an event or conflict that is happening in the world. However, when images are tampered with, it distorts our reality of truth and may alter the way people look at a situation. Such was the case when it was found that photojournalist Steve McCurry had faked the contents of some of his photos. Steve McCurry is most famous for his shot of the Afghan Girl, which was on the cover of National Geographic. This scandal all began when McCurry was showing some of his images at a gallery show in Italy. When looking at McCurry’s photo of people walking in the streets of Cuba, photographer Paolo Viglione noticed that one of the people’s leg was faded into the steps in the background of the photo. Instead of the man having a foot, there was a yellow gradient in its place. As Rafi Letzter states in the article, “It appears to be the result of a shoddy attempt to move overlapping objects around in the shot.”

After seeing this, Vigilone wrote on his blog about what he had seen, joking about catching the photojournalist in an error. However, news quickly spread about what Viglione had seen and as Rafi Letzter states, “PetaPixel, a popular site for photography enthusiasts, published an article based on Viglione's blog post that has since been shared more than 23,000 times.” The Steve McCurry scandal was soon all over social media, creating backlash from people who were now questioning the integrity of McCurry’s images. As people began to take a second look at his photos, they noticed that McCurry had altered some of his photos, editing people out and changing the color. The founder and director of Echo Photojournalism agency compared McCurry’s images of men traveling on a bike taxi; one that was unprocessed and the same one that was processed. What he found was that McCurry had altered the image, editing out two people from the picture. As Maraviglia states in the article, “What he did in Photoshop is totally outside the limit of power in the profession. In my opinion, one cannot move any pixel when it comes to journalistic photographs.” Maraviglia posted his discovery on social media, causing people to become even more suspicious of McCurry’s work.

With the latest backlash from people and critics, Steve McCurry decided to delete all the images off of his personal blog, which was archived back several years. However, he did address his fans and critics, stating that he no longer considered himself a photojournalist, and instead thought of himself as a visual storyteller. He told the press that he felt that he should be able to do what he wanted to his own photos, altering them to make his own creation. However, as Lewis Sanders IV states in the article, McCurry “admitted on Monday to using the image editing software Photoshop in a selection of his images, crossing what many consider the ethical red line of photojournalism." Steve McCurry was put in a tough situation because sometimes the line between artist and photojournalist can get blurred. Although he did not consider himself a photojournalist anymore, people around the world still thought of him in this way. He believed that he was not breaking the NPPA Code of Ethics, however as Lewis Sanders IV explains in the article, “McCurry bears the responsibility to uphold the ethical standards of his peers and the public, who see him as a photojournalist."

My personal ethics include trust, commitment, loyalty, kindness, understanding, respect, integrity, fairness, reliability, and caring. When learning about McCurry’s photoshop scandal, I looked at this situation in two different ways. The first would be that I think it was wrong for McCurry to alter his photographs because he is distorting our reality of the world. If he omits or adds objects or people in the image, or even changes the color of the image, it does not give an accurate representation of the event. The point of photojournalism is to capture real life events to share with the world. If a photojournalist alters the picture, it is as though they are lying to us, offering us a reality that simply does not exist. Integrity and trust are very important to me and I think that by photo shopping an image, it leads people to not trust that person. I think people will look at Steve McCurry’s pictures a lot differently now because they will be wondering if his photos are real or if he has altered them. He was not honest with people about his photos when he first showed them and therefore it makes him look like a liar. On the other hand, Steve McCurry stated that he no longer considered himself a photojournalist and therefore did not believe that he was doing anything wrong. So if he honestly did not believe that he was breaking any rules, then he should be able to express himself artistically through his photo creations without backlash. I respect Steve McCurry because he did admit to photo shopping some of his images and took responsibilities for his own actions. However, I do not agree with what he did, nor do I think it was fair to his fans and fellow peers for him to lie, for they still considered him a photojournalist. If I were to approach this situation, I honestly do not think that I would have photo shopped any of the images. I believe that people deserve to see the truth and that by altering an image, you are lying about the reality of the image. Unlike McCurry, I think that I would have been honest from the start about the images and told everyone the changes I had made to the pictures. If I were to show an image in a gallery, such as McCurry’s image of people walking in the street, I would have just shown the original image because it is authentic. I think I would respect my peers enough not to lie to them with a fake image. Also, before I altered the photos, I would tell everyone right away that I no longer consider myself a photojournalist, but a visual storyteller. I think it is only fair to tell my peers that I am taking a different path in my photography, which would make people more understanding of why I altered an image.