A Photograph is Not an Endorsement
Why Snap Judgments Are the Enemies of Good Photography
Welcome to In the Flash, a reader-supported publication about intent and creativity in photography.
One of my favorites assignments of 2023 was a remote portrait shoot for NYTMag’s Space Issue, profiling people who are sending their ashes to space after they die. It was a quirky and heartwarming story with a twang of absurd humor. The website slogan of Celestis, the company that makes such posthumous space travel possible, states — “Make the dream of spaceflight a reality.”
I approached the portraits with curiosity and empathy. All the people that I’ve met for the story (remotely, over zoom) were unique and lovely — a retired physics professor, a space educator, an aerospace engineer/Star Trek enthusiast, and a former fire fighter who wanted to be reunited with his deceased wife in the vacuum of space. I fell in love with each and every one of those subjects, and I was sure the reader would as well. I was wrong.
When the New York Times shared the story and photos, the negativity of the comments, both on social media and under the article on the magazine’s website, was overwhelming.
“The ultimate self-absorbed & pretentious act”
“Why would one waste time on covering this nonsensical desire of people...?
“This idea is pure ego trip. Use the money to donate to some food bank and/or some orphanage, animal shelter, etc… let go!”
And my favorite - “Isn’t this just liberal white privilege?” left under the portrait of Lemuel Patterson, a retired school teacher.
It was obvious that most of the commentators didn’t bother to read the story, which explains that the ashes are not being scattered in space nor are being sent on a designated funeral rocket, but are loaded on a commercial rocket launched for other purposes and are contained in a tiny-thimble sized capsule. Instead, snap-judgements of the headline resulted in vicious commentary that was hard to reconcile with the whimsy of the story. Having your ashes sent to space is not most people’s idea of a good time, but it is deeply personal and idiosyncratic wish, untraditional, maybe, but not all that different from a choice of being cremated, buried, or transformed into a tree. At first, I was flabbergasted at the disconnect, but the more I thought about what happened, the more I understood what the feature did “wrong.”
Contrary to the current ethos, the magazine didn’t attach a virtue-signaling statement in the premise, leaving some readers stranded without a moral compass. Because the headline didn’t specifically point out that the environment is NOT damaged by the act, nor are the people portrayed offensively rich — the cost of such “space flights” is arranged in tiers, the first of which is $2500, cheaper than a regular funeral — some of the readers automatically targeted them as outlets for their outrage. The unfortunate part about such social media target practice, is that in the process of being righteous, the commentators missed the humanity of the story.
Just after the space portraits, I photographed a controversial subject who happened to be on the “not to be photographed” list — Kevin Roberts, the President of the Heritage Foundation, and a Trump supporter. The photographs were met with indignation. “Why would you want to take the picture of an ass in the process of trying to destroy America. Doesn’t anyone say no anymore?” Read one of the comments.
At first, these two incidents appeared unconnected. The outrage over the space portraits seemed to be a knee-jerk reaction to a new concept, with photography as the collateral damage. In Kevin Robert’s case, photography itself was the target, or rather, my decision to legitimize an unsavory individual by taking his portrait. But they weren’t isolated incidents. In the last few years, I have noticed a significant change in the critique of visual features, both of my own and that of the peers around me—focused on who is being photographed and why vs. the aesthetic or conceptual merits of the story.
Stumbling on The Atlantic article, Moralism Is Ruining Cultural Criticism, by Adam Kotsko, I realized that all of this is coming from the same molten core. Kotsko compares the current cultural climate to evangelical ideology, in which he has grown up: “Every artwork is imagined to have a clear message; the portrayal of a given behavior or belief is an endorsement and a recommendation; consumption of artwork with a given message will directly result in the behaviors or beliefs portrayed.” He goes on to say that art appreciation and criticism have aligned themselves with moralism, which is more concerned with the message itself than any artistic considerations.
Since Instagram’s inception, photography has been ripe for digital ire. The difference now is that angry snap judgments no longer come from anonymous commentators or isolated trolls but are treated as fully sanctioned, creditable critiques of the work. As long as it supports the correct message, such outrage is not just tolerated but encouraged. As a result, photographers find themselves in a murky territory where work is not judged on the how but on the who and the why.
The problem with Kevin Roberts, wasn’t just that I took his portrait, but that the images didn’t demonize him. The photos weren’t warm and fuzzy either — an ominous shadow revealing the tension — but I didn’t portray him to be a monster. This came from a conscious decision not to use my camera as a tool to judge subjects whose politics I don’t agree with. Which doesn’t mean my lens is objective, far from it. My portrait of Kevin Roberts explored contradictions by using strong shadows and angular lighting, but I had no intention of making him look evil. I suspect that the reason why the portraits provoked ire is my lack of clear-cut condemnation. Not only did I photograph a persona non grata, but I didn’t make him look like a ghoul. One person posed a question, “You don’t draw the line anywhere, no matter the person’s ideology or behavior?”
The short answer is NO.
In 1988, I was in 3rd grade in Donetsk Ukraine, a teacher went around the class asking the students to look at the portrait of Lenin on the wall and answer who they loved more, their parents or Lenin. Every kid gave the expected answer, but when it came to me, I answered “My parents.” As a result, I was flunked out of that class, and my parents had to bribe the teacher to allow me back in. Even though it caused me a lot of grief, my reply was the result of my mom’s hard work getting me and my younger sister to think for ourselves, and to avoid uniformity of ideas in the oppressive regime of the still-kicking Soviet Union. That lesson sunk in deep. One of the subconscious reasons I was drawn to photography is the individualistic thought process of the medium. And, having stared at a Social Realist portrait of Lenin through all my childhood, I wanted to get away as far from that conception of art as possible.
Socialist Realism, the prevalent art style of the Soviet Union, was contingent on the artist expressing a clear message with their work — a utopian portrayal of country and its people. Art that was apolitical was heretical by default. There was no gray zone. The notion that the artist is morally responsible for only documenting the ‘right’ subjects and that the mere act of photographing or writing about something endorses the ideology portrayed, harkens uncomfortably close to the restrictive range of Socialist Realism. The twist now is that such aesthetic restrictions are not being enforced from the top, but are imposed by the general public through social media.
I often use photography to explore subjects that are on the opposing side of my own beliefs. It helps me to get a deeper understanding of the complexities necessary for any moral opinion. It is also my way of probing and asking questions. In 2015, I spent a week on a ConspiraSea Cruise on assignment for Popular Mechanics. I was surrounded by anti-vaxxers, climate-change deniers and people who thought that Hillary Clinton was a lizard sent from space (more about that in a future post). I wanted to understand the stories of people I tend to dehumanize because of the great gulf between their beliefs and mine, and it was one of the most rewarding and fascinating weeks of my life.
Throughout my career, I photographed many political events, from Hillary Clinton fundraisers for Bernie Sanders to Republican rallies. Almost without exception, my best photos came from the Republican events. My lens was more curious, my senses more sharp and my brain was working overtime to reconcile my personal despair at the extreme political messages with the smiling, well-meaning people around me. That tension resulted in images that were far more interesting than those I took at campaign events for Hillary Clinton (even though I voted for her).
The trend of compounding moralism with artistic merit makes me more uncomfortable than being at a Trump rally. The self-inflicted desire for righteousness extends to everything, from judging people whose dying wish doesn’t seem to benefit humanity to Barbie reviews that are more invested in either praising (or lambasting) its female empowerment message than debating its creative merits. I disliked the film, and found myself issuing a disclaimer when discussing what I thought were the movie’s artistic failures — that I do indeed support girl power.
As a photographer, I am neither a social justice warrior nor the judge or the executioner. Instead, I think of myself as a witness, not interested in regurgitating moral certainties, in celebrating or condemning, but in being present. My work has always leaned towards ambivalence, diving into foibles and ethical contradictions with glee. There is no fear of “moral contagion” when tackling subjects and themes condemned by the current culture, because photography gets interesting when its message is complex and ambiguous instead of linear and self-righteous. And without an echo of empathy, no matter the subject, a photograph is inevitably reduced to a propaganda-like facsimile of an artistic statement.
Past newsletters
Behind the Scenes of Remote Portraits Photographed for The New York Time Magazine's Space Issue
What Does it Mean to be a Feminist Photographer in 2023, and Why I Disliked Barbie.
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Great article. In my view one of the most important roles of a photographer is to bear witness. This is impossible to do properly if you spend your time holding your nose at your subject's perceive moral failings. We need to credit our audience with the intelligence to make their own moral judgements.
I find maddening, if not surprising, the judgements made about the people profiled in the space burial story. People are depressingly quick to reach conclusions even when they have little information or capacity to make those judgments, a tendency exacerbated by social media.
Thank you for the lesson on Socialist Realism, which is an apt analogy for the tendency you describe to demand that art embody and convey a particular social or political ideological message.
And for what it’s worth, I saw the pictures of Kevin Roberts in the magazine, which are striking, and still thought he was a prick.