Guest Reading Shortlist 2.2.15: Jonathan Blaustein

Upper Yosemite Fall, Yosemite, 1865–66. Albumen silver print from glass negative.
Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries © Carleton Watkins

The Reading Shortlist is an occasional post with an eclectic listing of recommended sites, readings and links. A recommendation does not necessarily suggest an agreement with the contents of the post. For previous shortlists, please visit the site links page.

Today's guest for Reading Shortlist is Jonathan Blaustein.

Jonathan Blaustein is an artist, writer and educator based in Taos, New Mexico. He has exhibited his work widely in galleries and museums the US, and in several festivals in Europe as well.  His photographs reside in several important collections, including the Library of Congress, the State of New Mexico, the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

In 2010, his conceptual photo series, "The Value of a Dollar," went viral, and was seen by millions of people around the world.

Jonathan writes about photography for A Photo Editor and The New York Times Lens blog, and has taught at the University of New Mexico-Taos for many years.

Nataly Castaño helped organize this post.

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www.arseblog.com

Andrew Mangan is an Irish blogger writing about my favorite soccer/football team, Arsenal. He's done it every single day for over a decade. He's based in Dublin, and has an absurd and irreverent sense of humor that I can't get enough of.

www.grantland.com

Grantland is a must-read for me. Wesley Morris's film criticism is top notch, Rembert Browne did an amazing on-the-ground piece in Ferguson last summer and Bill Simmons, the editor-in-chief, is hilarious. His writing definitely inspired my first-person, off-the-cuff style on A Photo Editor.

Kazuo Ishiguro: how I wrote The Remains of the Day in four weeks

I read this piece by Kazuo Ishiguro in The Guardian late last year, and it was excellent food for thought. It pushed me to take a big break from email, social media, and all photography for several weeks over the holidays. I hoped it would help me see the big picture again, and it worked.

Interview: Steven Soderbergh and Clive Owen on building the world of 'The Knick'

I watched a marathon of Steven Soderbergh's wicked, twisted new series "The Knick" over the weekend. What a gut-punch of a narrative. Everything about it is top notch: the story, historical detail, production design, camera work, acting and writing. This interview, with Soderbergh and Clive Owen, is really in-depth, and gives some good insight into the creative process of two very talented, successful artists.

Philip Seymour Hoffman for Esquire

Speaking of gut punches, check out this tintype portrait of Phillip Seymour Hoffman. It was taken in 2014, a few months before his death. It is genuinely haunting, and gives me the willies in the best possible way. Poor guy.

A Graphic Photo Spurs Reflection

In the summer, the NYT Lens blog published a horrific photograph of two young Indian girls who'd been lynched, after they'd been raped. Then they asked a few people to write about whether it was actually appropriate to publish such information. They invited commenters to chime in, while offering to fold the best comments back into the body of the article. (FYI, I was actually a commenter, not a writer they'd originally asked.) I thought it was an innovative way to engage the "crowd," while also introspectively questioning whether it was even OK that they published the picture.

Carleton Watkins: Yosemite

I caught this link on Twitter last year, from the Metropolitan Museum's feed. These Carleton Watkins photos taken in Yosemite, in the 19th Century, are spectacular. Plus, I love the idea of something made during the Civil War being transmuted into a jpeg, and disseminated via Twitter, around the globe, in the 21st century.

Interview: Jonathan Blaustein

From the series "The Value of a Dollar" © Jonathan Blaustein

Jonathan Blaustein is an artist, writer, and educator based in Taos, New Mexico. He has exhibited his work widely in the US, and his photographs reside in several important collections, including the Library of Congress, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Jonathan writes about photography for A Photo Editor and The New York Times Lens blog, and has taught at the University of New Mexico-Taos for many years.

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From the series "The Value of a Dollar" © Jonathan Blaustein

fototazo: Your body of work "The Value of a Dollar" went viral after a feature on The New York Times' Lens blog. Millions of people saw the project, a body of photographs that raises questions about food production, distribution and consumption. After having that experience, I'm wondering about the arc of your own belief in the power of photography during your career. Do you believe differently in photography's power to effect social or political change or to effect change in collective consciousness now than you did when you started your career?

Jonathan Blaustein: It was a completely unique experience, going viral, when it happened to me. I had no frame of reference. Luckily, someone I trust suggested I document the phenomenon via screen grabs. I captured the whole arc, as it was happening. There were message boards calling me a genius, and others that thought I was an idiot for buying blueberries out of season.

Dialogue was created, which was definitely a step beyond what I thought was possible, when I was playing around with these food items in my studio. In the moment, back in 2010, I felt like it was a massive achievement.

Now, four years later, I'm not so sure. We consume media in a disposable fashion, just like we consume food. It's here, we love it, and then we forget about it the next day. So I'm very reluctant to believe that these types of situations have a lasting impact on culture.

Clearly, images dominate culture in a massive way. The James Foley video, and attendant screen grabs, are proof of that. They scared millions, if not billions, of people shitless. As was their intent.

But with art, I think very, very few things actually make a difference, in the long term. Andy Warhol. Picasso. August Sander. People like that resonate decades later. I'm not expecting to have that kind of impact, unless I get exceptionally lucky.

From the series "The Value of a Dollar" © Jonathan Blaustein

f: In "The Value of a Dollar" you photograph a dollar's worth of different food products as purchased, minus the wrapper. The images contrast sharply with the glamorized advertising shots used to sell these same products. In another interview, you've talked about how the visual language of those advertising images is "a huge driver for America's obesity epidemic."

There's been a movement towards presenting models in advertising, especially women, without extreme Photoshop nips and tucks as a way to encourage a healthier understanding of our bodies and a reality-based construction of our ideals.

Do you ultimately think food industry advertising photography crosses ethical lines and should be subjected to the same types of campaigns for reform? And more broadly, what do you think about how the conversational threads around the body and advertising relate to your project and interest in the food industry? I'm thinking here of things like the power of images to coerce, the ability of the public to separate photographic truth and fiction, the possibility for photography to show truth at all even without post-production, and the right to create images, even if they potentially create negative social effects.

From the series "The Value of a Dollar" © Jonathan Blaustein

JB: I like to show the TVOAD pictures to my students at the beginning of every semester. They always want to eat the Mickey D's burger, and, to a person, they know that what they see in the media is not true. It's a given, to them. That's why it's so amazing that advertising imagery is effective, and proof that it subverts the conscious mind.

I don't know if I'd say the practice is unethical, because the advertising industry is not driven by ethics at all. It's not immoral, it's amoral. It's only about getting people to consume more than they otherwise would. And if it didn't work, it wouldn't underwrite almost all of the content we absorb every day. (Though I suppose the HBO/Netflix model of pay-for-what-you-want does have some legs.)

Of course the way fashion models are presented, much less when they're photoshopped, has a very negative effect on young girls sense of self. Women too. And you're right to compare it to the way food advertising shapes their bodies as well. One set of images seduces them to eat more, the other makes them feel like shit for not being able to meet the standard. When they feel like shit, they eat more.

I'm currently working on a new project that looks very specifically at the way advertising imagery is constructed to speak to our basest instincts. It's pretty remarkable what's being beamed into our homes these days, if you take a moment to look.

From the series "The Value of a Dollar" © Jonathan Blaustein

f: "The Value of a Dollar" and your follow-up project "MINE" in which you photograph objects encountered on land you own in New Mexico are both projects in which you've isolated and photographed the objects apart from their original context. You've chosen to photograph the objects in your studio instead of the stores where you found the items or the objects you encountered in the landscape. What does stripping context and bringing the objects into the studio give the projects?

JB: It's funny. I was talking to a photographer, Brad Wilson, in Santa Fe last week. He just photographed wild animals in the studio. He gave me the same speech I've given others, about how animals in nature have been done to death, and people always think of Nick Brandt. He wanted to try something that felt more original.

For me, when I began TVOAD, I wanted to try to make pictures that didn't look like what I'd seen before. And I had clearly seen photos of food in other contexts, though it was still relatively rare as a subject for fine art investigation. That's changed, in the last six years, as food became a hot topic in the Zeitgeist.

But the real answer is that to combat the linguistics of advertising imagery, it was really important for me to decontextualize. To be "objective," to the best of my ability. Even though most educated artists know that word is practically unusable.

I used my studio table, as it was, and the walls behind it, as they were. The clean aesthetic was an inside joke, as my studio was in fact filthy. But I wanted them to seduce as art, as a way of drawing attention to the seductive power of the types of images I was critiquing.

It was also a big part of the concept that I photograph the items as they "actually" were. The studio gave me the space to do that, almost like a laboratory.

And it was also a big part of my shooting practice. To bring them into my space, which I could control, and then play around. Make shapes. And stare very deeply at what I was photographing. That was my secret: I gave myself a headache from looking so hard.

You can't really do that in the outside world. That's for real life. The studio is for thinking and commenting. For processing reality, at least for me.

From the series "MINE" © Jonathan Blaustein

f: There's lots of stuff in a store you could have used for "The Value of a Dollar," lots on your land you could have used for "MINE" and lots in your studio that could have been part of your most recent project, "The Mindless Consumption of Animals," which attempts to commodify some of the detritus that built up during eight years in your studio space before you moved out of it. What are the criteria you use for selecting the objects for your still lives from all the options available to you?

JB: This one's easy. Instinct. In my practice, I like to combine the structure of a conceptual underpinning with the freedom to make choices in the moment. Really, the process is akin to shopping. (Which I literally did for TVOAD.)

I look, I think, I make decisions based upon ideas that pop into my head. It's thinking about symbolism, aesthetics, humor, all sorts of things. But I would be hard pressed to enjoy making art if all the decisions were dictated beforehand by an overly-rigid concept.

From the series "MINE" © Jonathan Blaustein

f: In an excellent recent interview of Mishka Henner you put together for A Photo Editor, you said, "If your work doesn't have any sort of political undertone, then you're not really saying anything."

It made me remember a contrarian quote by Henri Matisse:

What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker, for the businessman as well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.  

Your quote seems to leave little space for his conception of art. To make it specific to photography, your quote seems to suggest photography that stays largely on a level of pleasing harmony of form or that works with content that avoids a political tone or undertone doesn’t create any conversation of consequence. Is that a fair interpretation of your perspective? Can you explain more about your position?

JB: I'm glad to see that people are paying specific attention to what I spout off about in these interviews. As I just wrote to you via email, the interviews are highly improvisational, and I do like to make strong, declarative statements.

Since you're giving me a mulligan, I'll specify here that art can be made for any number of reasons. That's the beauty of it. Anything goes, including things that lack the aspiration to challenge a viewer in any way. I live in a town where "making art" often means standing at a painter's easel, outside, looking at a mountain, and making an impressionist version of that.

That's a practice that was innovative at the time of Matisse's compatriot, Claude Monet. But it has been sucked of almost any and all possible juice, with respect to making art I might call "good."

So I suppose what I meant was that great art, important art, brings a powerful POV to the table. It grasps for innovation and original thinking. It attempts to ask big questions about relevant issues. And it is careful not to steal too much of the soul of what's come before. (Stealing just enough is the tricky part.)

Great art need not be political, but things made just to please are rarely powerful, unless they're innovating. Or contemplating metaphysics. Matisse himself was an innovator in his use of color, form, and even in his subject matter, like the Odalisques. The Abstract Expressionists were radical at the time, though of course they referenced Mondrian, Malevich and Cezanne.

When I see an Ab-Ex-style painting made in 2014, even if it's pretty, I'm very unlikely to give a shit.

From the series "MINE" © Jonathan Blaustein

f: Another quote of yours from the Henner interview I'd like to push you on: "That’s what drives contemporary art, at its best, is the desire to figure out what the fuck is going on out there."

I don't want to suggest that it's an exclusive either/or situation, but this quote raised for me the eternal question of visual art's ability to figure out reality and state a concrete position in relation to, on the other hand, its strength for simply asking questions. What's your belief in visual art being able to speak exactly enough as a language to ask and answer the kinds of specific political, cultural and social questions that allow us to figure out what the fuck is going on?

JB: Figuring out what's going on is an inherently investigative process. That's why I specified the "desire" to figure things out. I've said many times, as have others, that it is about asking questions. No one has all the answers. But a curiosity to know more, to educate oneself through the creative process, is vital.

That's why symbolism is so powerful. Things that are too didactic, or too obvious, rarely capture someone's imagination long enough for them to ponder. Or feel confused. Or angry. Or blissed out.

But as a professional opinion giver, I do try to challenge my audience through my pseudo-journalism. I believe if more artists pushed themselves harder, there would be more great work out there.

From the series "MINE" © Jonathan Blaustein

f: Perhaps a related question. You worked on a cultural landscape project in Southern Colorado, but put it aside because you had "a hard time making the pictures what I wanted them to be." Does the studio allow you to control photography as a visual language more than work created outside the studio?

JB: Definitely. It does. But I happen to be working on a project at present that's forcing me back into my archives. I've found that five years later, there are photos from that series in Colorado that I really like. Certainly, individual images were successful.

But to give you a short answer, for once, I do find that the control of the studio environment works well for me.

Installation view © Jonathan Blaustein

f: I'm looking here at installation views of "MINE" in which you've grouped images and created an inverted triangle and other geometrical shapes with the photographs on the wall. How do you think about the installation and presentation of your images as you lay them out on a wall? Are you emphasizing ideas and themes of the photographs themselves in the layout of them in space?

JB: Absolutely. It's something I've tried to incorporate into my exhibitions, a thoughtful design. For the "MINE" solo show, I just started sketching out shapes on scratch paper.

Within a short span of time, I came up with a repeating pattern that resembled Mayan hieroglyphs. Given the primal nature of the symbols I was using, and my appreciation for ancient Meso-American architecture, I thought it was perfect.

Then, for a show in Derby, England, I did the same thing. This time, I sketched for a couple of weeks, and ended up with a cross shape, with the severed deer's head in the middle.

I'd have to give a shout out to Jesse Burke on this. When I saw his show at ClampArt a few years ago, it opened my mind to the benefit from breaking away from a single line of pictures on the wall.

Installation view © Jonathan Blaustein

f: You're also a teacher and writer as well as an image-maker. How do those roles interact and overlap for you? What do you gain and what do you give up by doing each?

JB: It all came about out of necessity, as much as anything else. As regular readers of A Photo Editor know, I call it the 21st Century Hustle. It's the only way I can make a living in a small mountain town with a barely functioning economy.

But I do believe it's to my benefit. Strengthening multiple skill sets makes you better at each. And the teaching has helped the writing, because learning how to entertain people is a big part of being a successful teacher.

With respect to what I give up, I certainly wonder what I'd accomplish with a single-minded focus. As such, I've been jimmy-rigging my life schedule to find more time and energy in general, so I can continue to make new work. That's been a real treat.

Overall, I wouldn't trade the lifestyle, though. I work with younger students, from difficult backgrounds, and there's nothing I've found that keeps me grounded like that. Giving back is good for the karma.

From the series "Mindless Consumption of Animals" © Jonathan Blaustein

f: You have said in the past you're interested in experimenting with video. Any news on that front? What do you think video might allow you to do with your work that photography does not?

JB: Yeah, I'm still in the playing around stage. I'd like to develop the writing aspect, for myself as opposed to as a journalist, and then film things I've written. We're not there yet.

But clearly, video, or cinema, when done right, offers a far more immersive experience than still photos. You have sound, which combined with moving images, can take a viewer completely out of their own existence. It's the reason that TV and movies are infinitely more popular than visual art, even if those formats are now being delivered by Netflix and Amazon, as much as your local cinemaplex.

I'll get there eventually, I hope, but I'm not there yet.

From the series "Mindless Consumption of Animals" © Jonathan Blaustein

f: Both in how you intervene in some of the objects photographed for "MINE" and in your creation of "Blaustein Mining Company" for the project, there's a spicing of your work with absurdity and humor. How do the absurd and humor serve your aims? Is this a "laugh to keep from crying" scenario?

JB: For sure. I was just using that phrase with my wife the other day, as she's a social worker in the local middle school. Taos is a very rough town, which most people don't know. Her job is much harder than mine, so I was encouraging her to laugh at the absurdity of what she deals with, rather than struggling valiantly to overturn a rigged system all by herself. I even invoked Sisyphus, which is about as cliché a reference as you can get.

Overall, I just think that humor adds another level to art. It lives next door to the dark side of existence.   I like to bring them together. I'm not interested in beauty, by itself, or grotesquerie alone either, but when they mix up in one art project, or piece, it makes for the best stuff. A la Mike Kelley.
 
f: Anything else you'd like to add, Jonathan?

JB: Thanks for the opportunity to plumb the depths of my own twisted consciousness. I'm used to being the interviewer, at this point, not the interviewee. So this was very cool.

I'm working on three projects at once, for the first time ever, but I'm not ready to hype them yet. So I'll just end with my gratitude.

Reading Shortlist 2.12.12

The Reading Shortlist is an occasional post with a listing of recommended readings and links. A recommendation does not necessarily suggest an agreement with the contents of the post. For previous lists, please visit the site links page.

Blake Andrews, B, Reject. Andrews on his vast personal collection of rejection letters, his new approach to show applications, whether or not this is all worth it, and a copy of Robert Frank's Guggenheim application for good measure.

Sharon Boothroyd, Photoparley, Marc Feustel on Social Media. eyecurious' Feustel on the decline of photoblogging, on the impact of blogs on the exposure of new talent, and on the online photographic community.

Pete Brook, Wired, In Digital Age, Sourcing Images Is as Legitimate as Making Them. Photographer Paul Shambroom talks about his motivations for moving from his long and distinguished career making large-format images on America's infrastructure to working with found online images.

Featured Speaker John Gossage / SPE Conference at Light Work. An hour long lecture by Gossage that's part of the excellent SPE Conference lecture series that also includes talks by Ken Schles and Thilde Jensen as well as a roundtable hosted by Andy Adams about Photography 2.0.

Richard Mosse, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Through the Glass Brightly: Eastern Congo by Infrared. An excerpt of Mosse's essay from his new book, Infra. A powerful and well-thought through essay that serves as a model for anyone looking to work on their statement.

Claire O'Neill, NPR's The Picture Show, Deborah Luster: The Power of a Picture. An audio conversation with Luster who began photographing prisoners in rural Louisiana as a way to make visual one of the reasons the local countryside had become de-populated and as a way of coping with her mother's murder.

Colin Pantall, Introspective, navel-gazing nitpickers. Pantall on the problems in the contemporary photobook market and in the consumption of photobooks, especially the tendency to blindly follow tastemakers.

Adriana Teresa, New York Times Lens Blog, A Moment With Larry Fink. Teresa, co-founder of FotoVisura and publisher of Visura Magazine, conducts a interview with Fink that's biographic and that also includes questions on Fink's specific projects.

A Question About: Tyler Hicks and the Qaddafi Album, Part II

During the fall of Tripoli in August, photojournalist Tyler Hicks found and published through the The New York Times Lens Blog a personal photography album of Muammar el-Qaddafi. After its publication, questions arose about the decision to do so. To get a response to the questions surrounding the case, we contacted three experts in media ethics for their thoughts.

This is Part 2 of 2 and features responses from Patrick Lee Plaisance, Associate Professor, Department of Journalism and Technical Communication, Colorado State University and Stephen J. A. Ward, Burgess Professor of Journalism Ethics, Director, Center for Journalism Ethics, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Part 1 was published Tuesday and featured a response from Bill Reader, Associate Professor, E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University.

The question: Obviously Qaddafi was a dictator with a lot to answer for, but is there an ethical line crossed by Tyler Hicks in publishing Qaddafi's personal photography album? In a devil's advocate analogy, if the police accuse and suspect someone of mass murder, enter their house and an accompanying journalist finds and publishes that person's personal photography album, I think most would agree a line has been crossed. If an accused war crimes suspect leaves an album behind while fleeing and the same thing happens, is a line crossed? How do the rules of war change the ethics of journalism?

The respondent: Patrick Lee Plaisance, Associate Professor, Department of Journalism and Technical Communication, Colorado State University

The response: I do not have any ethical concerns with the NYT decision to publish Qaddafi's albums. I think your suggested comparison with a mass murderer's belongings is in large part a false analogy. In that suggested scenario, other important factors would have to be weighed: justification/method for journalists' access, status of police investigation, legal custody of confiscated material, etc. Qaddafi is a well-established, notorious international public figure. The only question to be raised here, if there is one, would be one of privacy. But any claim of invasion of privacy in the Qaddafi case would be based on a mistaken notion that our privacy represents an "absolute" value rather than an "instrumental" value. We in the West commonly make this mistake in privacy debates. We value privacy not for its own sake (in an absolutist way that automatically "trumps" all other considerations), but for what it enables us to do. We all require privacy to 1) provide a "space" for self-development, and to 2) maintain the social fabric, allowing us to fulfill different social roles and functions. In our individualistic-oriented culture, this idea that privacy has a critical social function strikes many as counterintuitive (but sociologists and other theorists are very clear on this; see my overview of privacy in the "Privacy" chapter of my book Media Ethics: Key Principles for Responsible Practice). To assume that the value of privacy allows us to"'check out" of society at will, to dodge accountability or to shield people/things from public scrutiny merely to avoid discomfort is a common misunderstanding of the nature of privacy. So, any claim of privacy in the Qaddafi case strikes me as incoherent because the publication of the material does not undermine the key reasons why Qaddafi's privacy ought to be respected. Unless a case can articulate why publication thwarts his ability for self-development or maintenance of his various social roles, any claim to privacy here is unjustifiably vague and rests on merely sentimental and absolutist assumptions about why and how privacy is to be honored in the first place. In addition, the events in Libya obviously represent an important historical moment. I would also argue that as a notorious international public figure, Qaddafi's privacy is greatly outweighed by the imperative to document history. There is no effective rationale to "shield" his family album on the basis of privacy as we should properly understand that value, and there are compelling reasons why that album, just like the personal effects of other historical figures (e.g., Napoleon, Gandhi, JFK, Churchill, etc.), are justifiably entered into the public realm. The nature of such an album is that of a record; shielding it from publication unacceptably prioritizes the agenda/sentiments of one individual (and thus cedes control of the historical narrative) over the need for a comprehensive documentation of human existence (if one wants to get grandiose about it). [via email November 27th, 2011]

The respondent: Stephen J. A. Ward, Burgess Professor of Journalism Ethics, Director, Center for Journalism Ethics, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The response: An interesting question. Drawing the line here is difficult. It would seem to me that Qaddafi and other tyrants and world figures can expect less privacy rights that other people. Certainly, in this case, we are dealing with a person who remains a mystery to many people, whose personal life is directly relevant to understanding his public decisions and to exposing, in a word, his brutality and his lies. For these reasons, I think The NY Times can make a strong public interest claim for publishing these pictures. However, I do acknowledge that there are other cases where such a justification does not work, as you mention. [via email September 16th, 2011]

A Question About: Tyler Hicks and the Qaddafi Album, Part I

During the fall of Tripoli in August, photojournalist Tyler Hicks found and published through the The New York Times Lens Blog a personal photography album of Muammar el-Qaddafi. After its publication, questions arose about the decision to do so. To get a response to the questions surrounding the case, we contacted three experts in media ethics for their thoughts.

This is Part 1 of 2 and features an email conversation with Bill Reader, Associate Professor, E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, that took place between November 26th and 28th, 2011. Part 2 will be published Thursday and feature responses from Stephen J. A. Ward, Burgess Professor of Journalism Ethics, Director, Center for Journalism Ethics, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Patrick Lee Plaisance, Associate Professor, Department of Journalism & Technical Communication, Colorado State University.

The question: Obviously Qaddafi was a dictator with a lot to answer for, but is there an ethical line crossed by Tyler Hicks in publishing Qaddafi's personal photography album? In a devil's advocate analogy, if the police accuse and suspect someone of mass murder, enter their house and an accompanying journalist finds and publishes that person's personal photography album, I think most would agree a line has been crossed. If an accused war crimes suspect leaves an album behind while fleeing and the same thing happens, is a line crossed? How do the rules of war change the ethics of journalism?

The respondent: Bill Reader, Associate Professor, E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University and co-author, with Steven Knowlton, of Moral Reasoning for Journalists (Praeger, 2008)

The response: This is an interesting case. I appreciate the opportunity to respond.

First of all, it's important to be clear up front that "ethical" and "unethical" are not synonyms for "right" and "wrong." "Ethical" means a choice was made with careful consideration with the goal of making the right (or most right) choice. "Unethical" is the realm of knee-jerk and gut reactions; of careless decisions that can only be "right" with a lot of luck. So, the choice to publish Qaddafi's family photos is certainly ethical. The question really should be whether the decision, in retrospect, was more right than wrong.

I cringe a little at the phrase "cross the line" when it comes to ethics. Journalism ethics is not monolithic - there are no "one size fits all" standards, and that applies to all aspects of the profession, from aesthetics to ethics. That is especially true in a global context, as there are so many different forms of journalism operating within so many different cultural contexts. That applies to even the most routine procedures. For example, in the U.S., a TV crew would never imagine using an eyewitness interview without identifying the person, but in Japan it is standard procedure to video only the torso of an eyewitness - not his or her face - to protect their anonymity. In the U.S., we rarely put graphic depictions of violence in newspapers, but in many other nations bloody images of death and destruction are par for the course.

Now, add the variance of "news values" - the textbook classics such as "proximity" and "timeliness" and "impact/magnitude" and (most germane in this case) "prominence."

Qaddafi was a prominent international figure, someone who used that prominence to attain fortune and power almost beyond imagining. He was not a run-of-the-mill war criminal, or even a mid-level lackey. So your point of comparison is not equitable here; Qaddafi chose to be on the world stage, and so the world's interest in him is far greater than mere prurience in the personal details of another person. Many, many books will be written about him, not so much to celebrate the life of a brutal dictator, but rather to shed light on how a nation can elevate and a world can tolerate such tyranny in the modern era.

The photos from the family album are interesting and intriguing in that respect. The few images I saw provided a stark contradiction to the murderous tyrant, perhaps images of a family so enamored with wealth and power that they were oblivious to their own moral trespasses, and to the suffering that provided them with that luxurious lifestyle. They - dare I say it? - remind us that Qaddafi and his family were/are human beings. His crimes were not the works of some monster, but rather of profound human failings.

That is a lesson we all should be reminded of from time to time.

Now, the nut graf: We see such images all the time in biographies of former presidents, of great generals, and of stars of stage and screen. In many ways, what Tyler Hicks did is a modern-day version of sticking a few glossy pages of photos in the center of a biographical book. It's pretty much standard journalistic practice. It would take a fairly persnickety leap of academic navel-gazing to argue that it was profoundly wrong to publish photos from Qaddafi's family albums.

P.S. - It occurs to me that you did not explicitly ask about the ethics of taking the family photos in the first place. Although I see no problem in publishing the photos from Qaddafi's family album, I do question the ethics of pilfering the album, as it is either still the personal property of the family or it belongs to the people of Libya (assuming they seized Qaddafi's assets). If, however, he did get permission from the Libyan government, such as it is, then there's no problem. It does not appear from his blog post that he obtained any such permission.

From an ethics (vs. legal) perspective, stealing is generally only morally acceptable in the most extreme cases, such as stealing a loaf of bread to feed a starving child, or stealing a handgun from a relative or neighbor who has declared murderous intentions. Tyler Hicks did not require the photo album for his or anybody else's survival. Although I agree the Libyan government owes him something (for taking him prisoner back in March), he does not have any moral (or legal, I think) standing to remove items without permission. His argument on the NYT blog is that he took them to prevent them from being destroyed by looters; given the chaos of the situation, that's ethically defensible. But there is no evidence to suggest that he did not, in fact, loot the photos himself.

fototazo: A basic question would be under whose ethical structure a photojournalist works - the country they are from originally, the country where their employer is based, or the country where they are working?

Reader: As to the "location" issue of ethical frameworks, we are in a global age, so the factor of "where" has become much more complicated. For example, if you recall the "Danish Mohammad cartoon" situation, publishing editorial cartoons of Mohammad in Denmark was only mildly controversial, and an act of defiance against efforts to muzzle free expression. But the images were distributed globally by third parties and caused a firestorm of protest (and deadly riots) in other parts of the world. The ethical framework in Denmark, where the cartoons were published, was more accepting of the act; but the framework in parts of the world where shari'a is the norm, where the cartoons were not published per se, was not accepting of the journalistic act. When we publish, we publish to the world, whether we want to or not.

fototazo: Would the end result then be, if we are publishing for the world, a push towards more internationalized media standards? I'm still curious about the idea of under whose ethical guidelines Hicks was working. The original analogy tried to get at this question: does the fact that Hicks is in Libya working, as opposed to Kansas, change how he can operate as a journalist? If a hypothetical Irishman who works for the Chicago Tribune is photographing in Iran, does his ethical responsibility fall under Irish, US, or Iranian standards? Could he do in Tehran what he can't in Chicago?

Reader: There certainly is a degree of "when in Rome …" when it comes to boots-on-the-ground reporting/photojournalism, as you well know from your own experience. For example, in a culture in which it is common for local/regional media to pay people for interviews, media based in the U.S. (where paying for interviews is largely frowned upon, and is even prohibited by some employment contracts) may have to hold their noses/grant waivers and pay up to get information. Field journalists who take meals with sources (such as in many Muslim countries, where hospitality is a religious obligation) may, however, be breaking the "rules" of their employers, which prohibit their domestic reporters to accept free lunches from politicians.

So the basic answer to your questions (and, indeed, to most questions of journalism ethics) is "it depends on the situation" (my approach to media ethics is decidedly teleological and leans toward libertarianism, as you might be guessing; I'm sure my deontological/social responsibility colleagues would disagree).

Ideally, an ethical journalist will try to adhere to the most basic principles of the profession - be fair to sources and audiences; provide balance in reporting in analysis; try to keep biases in check and strive for independence (objectivity?); only encroach on the privacy of others if the information is of serious public interest; balance the journalist's obligations to inform with sensitivity and compassion for the stakeholders and audiences; avoid deception, obfuscation, and misleading omissions; correct errors; and take responsibility for one's professional decisions.

How those principles are implemented will vary widely, even within the same organization with a fairly rigid "code of ethics" such as the NYT. Info-gathering in the placid culture of Kansas is going to be very different from info-gathering in the chaotic anarchy of Libya or Somalia or, indeed, Colombia.

Aside from exploiting a moment of chaos to remove objects that didn't belong to him, Hicks has been quite transparent about his motives. He feared the photos would be destroyed, and his concern was based on his observations of similar situations. The photos he, um, "obtained," are of serious public interest. His responsibility to inform the public outweighs the desire/need of "privacy" of the deposed/deceased Qaddafi. It was a little bit wrong, as all moral decisions are, but it was mostly done for the right reasons and with the right rationale, it seems. His editors at the NYT then made another level of moral reasoning, and clearly decided to publish the photos. I doubt the NYT would have done the same for the hypothetical mass murderer in Kansas, as the ownership of the photos would have been much more clearly defined (likely, such photos would be considered evidence at a crime scene, and it would be a serious crime to remove such evidence).