Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/11/07

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Subject: RE: [Leica] Journalism, altered photo's, and other ethical debates
From: "B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 09:33:38 -0500

What does "a war of aggression" have to do with it? It's unacceptable,
period. Or are you suggesting that if the girl was, say, an American
diplomat's daughter in Iraq, and her legs had been blown off by
"patriotic Iraqi resistance fighters," it would be acceptable to crop
the photo because it was a justifiable, defensive action against an
aggressor?

The problem in all this is that when we start modifying basic standards
depending upon the politics of a situation, whatever 'truth' there is
flies out the window.

And, btw, by calling anything by Chomsky - an unquestionably brilliant
guy - a 'seminal text,' one is making as much of a political statement
as one would be making if one called Das Kapital a cogent analysis of
modern economics. ;-) 

B. D.

- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us] On Behalf Of Rob
Appleby
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 2:17 AM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: Re: [Leica] Journalism, altered photo's, and other ethical
debates


I think in the conext of a sanitised presentation of an war of
aggression, that would count as unacceptable.

- -- Rob

http://www.robertappleby.com
Mobile: (+39) 348 336 7990
Home: (+39) 0536 63001

All outgoing email scanned by
Norton AntiVirus (TM) 2003 Professional Edition.

- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Welch" <eric@jphotog.com>
To: "Leicalist" <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 7:12 AM
Subject: Re: [Leica] Journalism, altered photo's, and other ethical
debates


> on 11/6/03 9:32 PM, Phong at phong@doan-ltd.com wrote:
>
> > Speaking of cropping, a few months ago there was
> > a photo of bombing victims in Iraq where you see
> > a older man carrying in his arms a girl who appears unconcious or 
> > dead.  All the copies in the US that I saw of the photo had it 
> > cropped so that you don't see that her leg(s) were blown away and 
> > she was completely maimed.  Cropping in this case would
> > appear "dishonest".
>
> How do you know it was cropped? Did you see her maimed legs in non-US 
> publications? Editors tend to go with their reader's tastes. It's 
> hardly dishonest to crop. It's editorial judgment. The act of 
> photographing as
has
> been said here, is selectively cropping from real life anyway. If the
point
> of the photo was her legs, then maybe it wasn't a good decision to 
> crop,
but
> it's hardly dishonest because readers understand there is a world 
> outside the borders of the photo.
>
> Eric Welch
> Carlsbad, CA
> http://www.jphotog.com
>
> "Where books are burned in the end people will burned, too."  Heinrich
Heine
>
> --
> To unsubscribe, see 
> http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html
>


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Replies: Reply from "Rob Appleby" <rob@robertappleby.com> (Re: [Leica] Journalism, altered photo's, and other ethical debates)