Out of Work
The Latest Post for ‘Book of Plagues’ and an Ethical Question with a Questionable Answer
I posted this earlier to Instagram:
God bless, he says. Plays a classical piece. A familiar melody. I don’t know it. Plays a pop tune from the radio. I think it’s Katy Perry. People walk by. Cars pass. // I drop a few singles in the insulated lunch tote at his feet. He doesn’t smile. No mask. Hood up. It’s a windy afternoon. // He has a story. We all do. // I snap a picture. From a distance. Obscure his face. His identity. He doesn’t want to talk. Let’s the sign tell his story. I have his photo, though. A photo. An outline of a man in distress. Could be one of the millions. // He lost his job. Has kids. Rent to pay. Busking for small bills and loose change outside the box stores on Route 1. // He’s like the millions, adrift in a pandemic-roiled economy. Living in a broken economy, among the “permanent scars on the job market.” The AP says (https://apnews.com/article/dde22861a596aba14351a13163d42560) a third of the jobs lost in the United States to the COVID-19 pandemic “aren’t expected to come back.” Even with the relief package. Even with the vaccines. // I ask him what happened. He looks at me. Puzzled. It’s hard to hear me through my mask. Amid the traffic and wind. // I want to write something about you, I say. About what happened. He shakes his head. No, he says. He speaks an English shaded in a Central European hue. // You lost your job, I say. I’m sorry, he tells me. He looks at me. Thank you, he says. God bless, he repeats. His eyes are sad. // He plays a single note as I walk off. He holds it until. Let’s it hover. It fades into the traffic noise and chatter, rises again. A familiar melody. “I see trees of green, red roses, too.” //
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The Ethics of Posting Images
I posted a diary entry to Instagram earlier today with a photo of a man playing an electronic violin and a sign asking for help. The man was uninterested in talking about his circumstances, seemed not to understand my questions, but he was appreciative of the few singles I dropped in his lunch bag.
His refusal to talk was not unusual. I stop often to talk with the men and women I see panhandling. Some tell me their stories with no qualms; others do not. The question was what to do with the photos I took of the musician in the parking lot.
It is not an easy call. I opted to manipulate the photo — to boost the contrast and black tones, to add shadows, and strip it of color — mostly because I usually run these in black and white. As I wrote up the diary piece, however, I started to ask myself if posting the photo was ethical given his qualms about speaking. I decided to run the photo for a few reasons, though I admit I can’t be sure my final call was the right one.
Ethics are about doing good and balancing our actions. This is the basis for most of the decisions we make as journalists and as ethical beings.
On the one hand, he turned down my request for an interview, which I take seriously and which made this such a difficult choice. He was obviously in distress, embarrassed, and I think he was struggling with the language and with hearing me through my mask.
At the same time, however, he was playing in a public space, visible to the thousands likely to shop in this shopping center over the course of the day. They could see his face, his sign, might chat for a second. His request for anonymity had to be balanced against this public-facing act, and the fact that he was asking for money in a public way.
More important, to me, was that his situation was not uncommon — millions are out of work due to the pandemic and in need of help, and we as a culture have grown adept at ignoring their plight. One of my missions has been to point this out, especially when we come across it in insulated suburban communities. Presenting this photo and letting his sign tell a story had, for me, a journalistic purpose, especially given the lengths to which I went to obscure his identity and make it nearly impossible for someone to know who he was.
There is another issue in play, however, and that is “poverty porn,” which is the exploitation of those living on poverty, often with the most altruistic of motives. Poverty porn is a recent term, usually applied to the nonprofit sector and their appeals for money. But it also infects journalism.
Chester Higgins Jr., a reported New York Times photographer, told CNN (https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/08/health/poverty-porn-danger-feat) a few years ago that the images we see coming out of Africa of poor children often “are ‘theft pictures,’ which means the pictures were made without the consent of the subjects.” They are characterized by a “lack of decency, dignity, virtuous character, or that it shows the subjects’ most vulnerable moment,” Higgins said.
Higgins’ comments give me pause. I’ve been covering poverty issues for more than a decade. I’ve run photos — usually obscured — of people I have not talked with, taken in public places. They are literally snapshots of a moment that, when taken together, tell a larger story. I believe they ultimately tell the truth of the moment. But they also force me to operate in an ethical gray area in which I am balancing the need to remind readers, viewers, followers of social media, etc., of the deep poverty that exists around them, of the Americans living on the knife’s edge of poverty, because most of us live insulated lives.
I posted the photo today. I think it was the right thing to do. But I would be lying if I said I was sure it was. That doubt is a good thing, though, because it leaves me vulnerable, forces me to ask these questions over and over.
What are your thoughts?
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