The Pennsylvania State University

The Graduate School

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY ETHICS BEYOND CONSENT: A RELATIONAL

APPROACH TO AN ETHICS OF ENCOUNTER

A Dissertation in

Art Education

by

May Alkharafi

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

December 2020

ii The dissertation of May Alkharafi was reviewed and approved by the following:

B. Stephen Carpenter, II Dean, Professor of Art Education and African American Studies Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee

Ebony Coletu Assistant Professor of African American Studies, English, and African Studies

Kimberly A. Powell Professor of Education, Art Education, Music Education, and Asian Studies

Michelle Bae-Dimitriadis Assistant Professor of Art Education, Asian Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Christopher M. Schulte Endowed Associate Professor of Art Education, University of Arkansas Special Member

Karen Keifer-Boyd Professor of Art Education & Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Art Education Graduate Program Officer

iii ABSTRACT

In this interdisciplinary dissertation, I propose a relational and nonhuman-centered ethical disposition for street photography. I argue that an ethical disposition is necessarily relational, since to exist is to exist in relation—to human and nonhuman others. This dissertation departs from the notion that every decision or activity that produces an effect has ethical dimensions. I examine the ethical implications of how street photography scholars and practitioners conceptualize the genre and its ethics, historically and today. I argue that, whether explicitly or implicitly, the ways in which street photography scholars and practitioners conceptualize the genre has ethical implications. In the process, I examine the limits of representationalist models of ethics, legalistic models of ethics, and defeatist models of ethics that claim the ethical role of street photographers diminishes with a general state of widespread surveillance.

In this dissertation, I develop an ethics of encounter, a relational, ongoing, and dispositional approach to street photography ethics. This approach focuses on tracing relations and their effects, where relations extend to nonhuman forces and entities—including light

(Chapter 3), cameras (Chapter 4), photographs and photographic archives (Chapters 5–6), and surveillance infrastructures (Chapter 7). For example, light, I argue, has the agential potential to engender, guide, inspire, influence, deter, constrain, or shift the course of an encounter. Since light has the capacity to affect the encounter, an ethical disposition takes into account the agential potential of light in street photography practices and analyses. Moreover, I argue that cameras can enable a relational process that may or may not lead to the production of visual artifacts but that nonetheless has pedagogical value. I discuss the materiality of the camera, how it can affect the encounter, and the ethical implications of considering a camera’s agentic capacities when undertaking analyses. I argue that because street photography is a multisensorial practice, it requires multisensory analytic modalities (Campt, 2017) and sensational pedagogies (Springgay,

2011).

iv Further, I argue that photography itself can be understood better as a relational practice than as an independent one, and that photography is a practice that may or may not lead to the production of visual artifacts. The agentic capacity of cameras and recording devices includes the physical, material, tangible trail—not just the indexical trace—they leave behind. This trail is what I call the incidental by-product of practicing photography—it is, in other words, the side effect of a relational process that involves a camera or recording device. I propose that an ethical disposition for street photography allows that photographs are sometimes merely by-products of a relational practice involving a camera. When photography is equated with the production of photographs, the space to understand street photographic practices otherwise is foreclosed. When one approaches found images through familiar narrative frames—for instance, in a manner that dismisses the possibility that photography can be pursued for purposes other than producing photographs—one may be tempted to assimilate the images encountered into familiar frames of reference (i.e., “canonical masters”).

I examine how iconic images can (re)shape the encounters depicted in them through processes of narrativization and naturalization. I also examine the ethical implications of taking for granted popularized narratives, especially when iconicity masks and reproduces the violent conditions from which the events depicted emerge and are encouraged. I argue that iconic images, as naturalized signs, can shut down critical readings that do not align with popularized narratives.

I then propose modes of analysis that go beyond popularized narratives through reading intra- actively (Barad, 2007) and engaging senses that register at frequencies below vision (Campt,

2017).

Finally, I examine the relationship between ethics, street photography, and surveillance, and argue that street photography pedagogy can encourage critical practices of resistance to oppressive surveillance practices by developing and enacting infrastructural thinking (Parks &

Starosielski, 2015) and a critical biometric consciousness (Browne, 2015). Street photography

v pedagogy can underscore the possibility for critical intervention and resistance by emphasizing that ethics is ongoing and that how one engages with technology has ethical implications.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ...... ix

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... x

DEDICATION ...... xi

Introduction ...... 1

Theory as a Mobilizing Force ...... 3

Chapter 1 An Expanded Approach to Street Photography Ethics ...... 5

What is Ethics? ...... 5 Beyond Big and Small Ethics ...... 6 Technology and the Ongoingness of Ethics ...... 10 Moral Codes ≠ Ethics ...... 15 Informed Refusal as Relationally Applied ...... 16 Legal ≠ Ethical ...... 18 Toward a Dispositional Ethics ...... 19 A Brief Case Study: Nussenzweig v. diCorcia ...... 28 Conclusion ...... 36

Chapter 2 Locating Ethics in Street Photography Discourse ...... 37

Defining Street Photography ...... 37 Characterizations of Street Photography ...... 39 The Flâneur and the Street Photographer ...... 40 Temperament and Approach ...... 44 Obsession and Impulse ...... 48 Successful Street Photographs ...... 50 Street Photography and Elevating the Ordinary ...... 53 The Street and the Photographer ...... 55 Defining the Contours of Street Photography ...... 57 The Human Figure in Street Photography ...... 57 Street Photography and The Candid Approach ...... 58 Ethics in Street Photography Discourse ...... 65 The Limits of Representationalist Ethics ...... 65 The Legal Argument and Its Limits ...... 73 The Prevalence of Surveillance Argument and Its Limits ...... 75 The Reliance on Street Photographers’ Practices and Statements ...... 79 Conclusion ...... 81

Chapter 3 Light and the Photographic Encounter ...... 82

Lantern Laws and the Agentic Capacities of Light ...... 83

vii Writing About Light ...... 87 Light and Movement ...... 91 An Ethics of Encounter ...... 94 Erich Salomon: Light, Surreptitious Photography, and the Candid Aesthetic ...... 102 Jacob Riis: Light and Truth ...... 106 Beyond the Coloniality of Photographic Objectivity ...... 116 Bruce Gilden: Blinding Light and Aesthetic Desire ...... 123 Conclusion ...... 125

Chapter 4 Camera Relationality ...... 126

The Apparatus in Street Photography ...... 126 Camera Materiality ...... 128 Photography Without an Audience ...... 135 Embodied Experience: Photography Beyond the Ocular ...... 137 Vivian Maier: Photographing Without Sharing ...... 139 Walking as a Way of Knowing ...... 142 Horace Engle: Beyond the Script of the Detective Camera ...... 144 Sensory Photography ...... 146 Conclusion ...... 147

Chapter 5 Archival Ethics and the Afterlives of Photographs ...... 150

Archival Ethics ...... 152 Archival Ethics and the Detective Impulse ...... 153 Archival Ethics and the Pedagogy of Slowing Down ...... 164 Archival Ethics and the Limitations of Property Rights Laws as Ethical Signifiers ...... 166 Intra-active Archives ...... 173 Conclusion ...... 176

Chapter 6 Archival Ethics and Iconic Images ...... 177

V-J Day in Times Square and Iconic Narrativization ...... 177 Iconic Relationality ...... 179 Iconic Images, Coded Images ...... 182 The Force of Iconicity ...... 184 Intra-active Moments: How Meanings Get Produced and Reproduced ...... 187 “It Happened Then, Not Now”: The Temporality of Ethics ...... 189 Reading Intra-Actively: Seriality and Juxtaposition ...... 195 Attuning to the Quiet Frequencies of Photographs ...... 201 Conclusion ...... 203

Chapter 7 Surveillance and Counter-Practices of Resistance Within/Through Street Photography Pedagogy ...... 205

Encountering Surveillance Infrastructures ...... 206 Technological Objectivity and Neutrality ...... 206 Joy Buolamwini and The Algorithmic Justice League ...... 209 Ethics as the Extension of Action Beyond the Moment ...... 211 Surveillant Assemblages and Data Doubles ...... 213

viii Jing-cai Liu’s Wearable Face Projector ...... 214 Narratives of Technological Efficiency and Accuracy in Drone Warfare ...... 216 Technological Efficiency, Accuracy, Invisibility, and Transparency ...... 218 Josh Begley’s Metadata+ ...... 218 Infrastructural Thinking: An Ethical Disposition and Mode of Resistance ...... 222 Hiba Ali’s Abra ...... 224 Conclusion ...... 228

Conclusion Toward Relational Pedagogies ...... 231

Implications for Ethically-Engaged Pedagogies ...... 239

References ...... 242

ix LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: A Single Frame From Photographer Takayuki Narita’s Series, Rose Garden (2014-2015) ...... 95

Figure 2: Google Street View Vehicle and Camera ...... 132

Figure 3: Screenshot from Google Street View Interface ...... 134

Figure 4: C. P. Stirn’s Patent Concealed Vest Camera Advertisement ...... 145

Figure 5: Photograph by Bhavesh Patel (2010) ...... 148

Figure 6: Jing-cai Liu’s Wearable Face Projector (2017) ...... 215

Figure 7: Metadata+ App by Josh Begley ...... 220

x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation is a result of a relational process of which I am merely a component part. I am indebted to all those who have played a pivotal role in the realization of this project.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. B. Stephen Carpenter, II and Dr.

Ebony Coletu, who acted as my committee co-chairs despite us not being able to make this arrangement official. It was a pleasure to work as team, Shukran. I am grateful for Dr.

Carpenter’s kindness, support, and guidance throughout my PhD journey. Dr. Carpenter has encouraged me to pursue the lines of inquiry I find exciting, and for that I am truly appreciative. I offer my sincerest gratitude to Dr. Ebony Coletu. Dr. Coletu’s mentorship and generosity have had a significant impact on this project and my general well-being. I am truly grateful for all that

I have been able to learn while working with Dr. Coletu.

I would like to thank Dr. Christopher M. Schulte for his support and interest in my project since its early stages. I remain fond of our early morning discussions about theory and pedagogy. I would like to thank Dr. Kimberly A. Powell for participating in this project and asking questions that push me to articulate my research approach and method. My sincere appreciation goes to Dr. Michelle Bae-Dimitriadis, who has generously agreed to come on board the committee and help me get across the finish line.

I would like to express my deepest thanks to my family. I am grateful to my parents for their continued support and encouragement. I am grateful to my sisters, who believed in me when

I could not. I am also grateful to my human and nonhuman friends, whose warmth and persistent presence have given me the energy to keep going with this project. I would like to thank my editor, whose careful attention helped bring many of the ideas I attempt to share into relief. I would also like to thank the faculty and staff at The Penn State School of Visual Arts for their always prompt assistance and compassionate support.

xi DEDICATION

To my late brother, whose presence never left my side.

1 Introduction

This dissertation theorizes street photography as a relational practice that cannot be reduced to the production of visual artifacts. Whether or not one recognizes it as such, photography unfolds as an assemblage composed of human and nonhuman forces and entities that exceed the individual photographer. Yet there is a tendency within street photography discourse, both historically and today, to treat photography as a strictly human activity that centers on the production and circulation of images. I argue that a focus on the product (i.e., image, technique, formal-aesthetic dimensions) and the individual at the heart of consent, litigation, property and privacy rights, are insufficient for street photography ethics and pedagogy. Such product- motivated and human-centered approaches to street photography deflect attention from the underlying—humanistic, colonialist, racist, capitalistic—frameworks from which individualistic notions of ethics, with their attendant racially violent and environmentally destructive modes of engaging and relating, emerge and are encouraged.

In this dissertation, I engage a relational and practice-oriented approach that decenters the human/individual and the photograph. I shift attention away from the product and toward relational concerns that include light, cameras, photographic archives, and surveillance infrastructures. Such a relational approach requires a pedagogy of slowing down, and one that traces, rather than presumes, relations and their effects. I argue that pedagogy can create the time to consider ethics and that ethical engagement necessarily involves pedagogical dimensions. As an ethically-engaged approach, this dissertation does not stop at critique but offers alternative modalities for reparative and productive modes of relating to human and nonhuman others.

In Chapter 1, An Expanded Approach to Street Photography Ethics, I examine the ethico- pedagogical implications of traditional and applied approaches to ethics. I argue that for an ethics to be viable, it cannot be built upon individualistic and canonical ethical theories that are racially violent by design. I then offer a dispositional, ongoing mode of ethics that extends to nonhumans and that takes into account relations and their effects.

2 In Chapter 2, Locating Ethics in Street Photography Discourse, I examine the relationship between defining street photography and designating its ethics. I argue that it is not only street photography scholars’ and practitioners’ sense of ethics that is insufficient (i.e., representationalist, legalistic, defeatist models of ethics), but also the focus on technical and formal-aesthetic dimensions of street photography deflects ethical engagement. By considering popular approaches to street photography and their ethical implications, this chapter emphasizes the ethico-pedagogical significance of tracing relations and their effects.

In Chapter 3, Light and the Photographic Encounter, I develop an ethics of encounter as a relational and nonhuman-centered mode of ethics for street photography. I argue that since light has the capacity to affect the course of an encounter, an ethical disposition takes into account light’s agential potential in photographic practices and analyses. I attend to the ethico- pedagogical significance of thinking in terms of relations as a non-reductionist and nonessentialist approach to street photographic practice and analysis. Thinking in terms of relations means tracing, rather than presuming, where agentic capacities emerge in the photographic encounter.

Because this relational approach does not quickly assign causes to a single entity and instead traces enactments of agentic capacity in relation—it requires time. This is why, I argue, an ethics of encounter requires a pedagogy of slowing down and lingering with the effects surrounding the photographic encounter.

In Chapter 4, Camera Relationality, I argue that photography involves more than the production of images. Photography, via camera, enables distinctive modes of being in relation that are pedagogically valuable even when they do not result in photographs. I argue that understanding photography as predicated on the presence or prospect of an audience neglects the multisensory and embodied ways of knowing involved in photographic practices, which exceed the ocular.

In Chapter 5, Archival Ethics and the Afterlives of Photographs, I attend to the ethical implications of audience-oriented and product-motivated understandings of photography. Such

3 approaches tend to treat found images de facto as repositories that desire to be circulated. Given that photography is a relational practice that exceeds the visual, I argue that some found images may not want to be found, let alone circulated. I examine historical relationships between contemporary treatments of photography as property and colonial knowledge production. I then offer ethico-pedagogical modes of engaging found images outside and against colonial knowledge production practices.

In Chapter 6, Archival Ethics and Iconic Images, I examine the relational, iterative processes by which iconic images acquire such a status. Iconic images, through their capacity to conceal the coding processes that imbue them with meaning, can shut down the kinds of critical readings that resist popularized narratives. I argue that iconic images require analytical approaches that engage sensory modalities beyond the ocular and attend to the quiet frequencies that register below vision (Campt, 2017).

In Chapter 7, Surveillance and Counter-Practices of Resistance Within/Through Street

Photography Pedagogy, I examine artistic practices of resisting surveillance as a heuristic for street photography pedagogy and a means by which to emphasize the relationship between surveillance and street photography. I argue that street photography pedagogy can underscore the possibility for critical intervention and resistance by emphasizing that ethics is ongoing and that how one engages with technology has ethical implications. In this chapter, I extend my relational concern with ethics—which began by decentering the photograph, attending to light, the camera, and the archive—to consider the afterlives of surveillance images and processes. Such a layered approach to street photography ethics is part of my commitment to emphasize the interrelation between photographic practices and image circulation without reifying either.

Theory as a Mobilizing Force

In this dissertation, I take an interdisciplinary approach that decenters the human as agent or rational subject, and that is invested in doing away with binaristic thinking via reconceptualizing cartesian and humanistic understandings of concepts such as measurement,

4 interaction, objectivity, responsibility, and ultimately—ethics. These theories I draw upon build on the legacies and contributions of Black feminist and postcolonial studies; sharing an investment with constructing more just worlds by critiquing, deconstructing, and reimaging the present by reconceptualizing modes of existing that have never been viable.

Chapter 1

An Expanded Approach to Street Photography Ethics

What is Ethics?

Is ethics a set of moral codes, externally-prescribed rules to be followed? Is ethics something to be possessed and memorized, or something to be practiced and enacted? This dissertation departs from the notion that every decision or activity that produces an effect has ethical dimensions. I develop an approach to ethics that emphasizes the significance of attending to the relation between ways of responding and their effects. This approach also points to ongoing ethico-pedagogical practices that attempt to rework ways of responding toward productive (i.e., reparative, (re)constructive, etc.) engagements.

The mode of ethics proposed in this dissertation might be defined as a striving toward productive modes of being in relation. By contrast, ethics as it is typically taught in university settings often appears as a set of canonical texts (a traditional approach to ethics) or situations that structure deliberation on abstract concepts such as justice, morality, dignity, and so on (an applied approach to ethics). In this context, these two senses of ethics can be understood as traditional forms of ethics on the one hand (e.g., utilitarianism, Kantianism, social contract theory, divine command theory, etc.), and as applied forms of ethics on the other (e.g., an external set of rules that set the standard of acceptable behavior). Whereas traditional ethics, or what Silvia Benso

(1996) calls “big” ethics, claims to offer “an ethical system able to give laws to reality by imposing norms and prohibitions to be respected” (p. 134), applied ethics, or what Benso calls

“small” ethics, claims to offer “systems of ethical norms and principles intended to guide the conduct of [a] group of people, such as the members of a profession or the members of a religion”

(Ward & Wasserman, 2010, p. 276).1 Some applied approaches to ethics claim that ethical

1 One may encounter traditional forms of ethics in the context of moral philosophy (the study and formulation of ethical theories), religion, some philosophies of life (Pigliucci, Clear, & Kaufman, 2020), or

6 theories are too complex to be efficient since they need to be deciphered—which takes time— before they can be applied (Shamoo & Resnik, 2009). However, applied approaches often draw from and build upon moral philosophies and ethical theories (Shamoo & Resnik, 2009; Lauria &

Long, 2017). I argue these interrelated, yet distinct, approaches to ethics—with their attendant modes of engagement—themselves have ethical implications, not only for street photography pedagogy, but for productive modes of relating in/with/to the cosmos at large. In this and the following chapters, I examine the ethical implications of traditional and applied approaches to ethics within street photography pedagogy, and, simultaneously, offer alternative modalities through which to think ethics through and within street photography pedagogy as a repetitive, productive mode of engagement that does not stop at critique.

Beyond Big and Small Ethics

Both traditional and applied approaches to ethics are insufficient since moral codes or a set of prescribed rules can neither control behavior nor anticipate scales of violence that exceed the predictable. The rules big and small ethics dictate “are able neither to wonder over the infinite possibilities of good, nor to constitute a bulwark against the abyssal possibilities of evil reality manifests” (Benso, 1996, p. 134).2 For example, a set of moral codes or rules can neither predict nor prevent acts of atrocity. Moreover, acts of atrocity are often sanctioned by law—a set of prescribed (legislated) rules and regulations. As Grégoire Chamayou (2015) puts it in his book, A

Theory of the Drone, “contemporary forms of atrocity are hugely legalistic” (p. 217). Importantly, legalization as a means to legitimize contemporary forms of atrocity is a practice that extends and

the application of these systems. That is, on may encounter traditional forms of ethics in the encounter with the moral codes deduced and distilled from ethical theories, as “a set of values and rules of action that are recommended to individuals through the intermediary of various prescriptive agencies such as the family (in one of its roles), educational institutions, churches, and so forth” (Foucault, 1984/1990, p. 25).

2 Silvia Benso stresses, “Any ethics that wishes to be believable must renounce the claims normative ethics make of being a practical guide, or a moral ought, or a science of mores, traditions, behaviors; of being able to posit rules and values as conditions for the development of human beings; of providing its followers with static sets of norms to direct moral actions” (1996, p. 134).

7 reproduces historical forms of legalized atrocity; for instance, European imperialist expansion, colonial genocide, or racial slavery.

Moreover, if applied approaches draw upon Western, traditional, “canonical” models to construct their ethics, they also reproduce colonialist modes of relating that are bound up with histories of imperialist conquest, genocide, racial slavery, racial surveillance capitalism, and environmental destruction (Wynter, 2003). For an ethics to be productive and not harmful, and for an ethics to be a constructive force and not simply a set of dogmas and formulas, it cannot be based on theories that are racially violent and exclusionary by design. For this reason, when, for example, ethicists Adil E. Shamoo and David B. Resnik (2009) claim that a principle-based approach to ethics is distinct from, and favorable to, ethical theories (as discussed further below), it is not only problematic that this claim neglects their own theorization of ethics as a set of codes.

It is also problematic that by deriving their set of codes from Kantian theory without challenging it, ethicists Shamoo and Resnik also endorse a particular category of the human as European

Man, which is predicated on designating its “Others” as sub/in/nonhuman (Wynter, 2003).

Following a Kantian model of ethics,3 Shamoo and Resnik define ethical conduct as a primarily social, human-to-human endeavor revolving around formulating, adopting, modifying, and following “rules that apply to all members of the community” (p. 36). Not only is this formulation human-centered, it also takes for granted the category human; that is, the overrepresentation of

Man as human itself (Wynter). As Denise Ferreira da Silva (2016) demonstrates, racial knowledge and power in modern thought create the conditions of possibility for “cultural difference’s capacity to produce an unbridgeable ethical divide” (p. 57) between human-as-Man

3 As Shamoo and Resnik (2009) explain, “Kantianism is a theory developed by the German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), which has been revised and fine-tuned by modern-day Kantians, such as Christine Korsgaard (1996). The basic insight of Kantianism is that ethical conduct is a matter of choosing to live one’s life according to moral principles or rules. The concept of a moral agent plays a central role in Kant’s theory: A moral agent is someone who can distinguish between right and wrong and can legislate and obey moral laws. Moral agents (or persons) are autonomous (or self-governing) insofar as they can choose to live according to moral rules. For Kant, the motives of agents (or reasons for action) matter a great deal” (p. 21).

8 and its others. Racial thinking is encoded in modern ethical theories, and therefore these colonial epistemologies cannot be the basis upon which productive modes of ethico-political engagement are built (Da Silva).

Applied and traditional approaches to ethics pose problems for ethics and pedagogy in other ways too. Within the applied approach, codes of ethics usually derive from “core” or general ethical principles such as honesty, objectivity, or respect for autonomy (Wheeler, 2002, p.

70). That is, within the applied approach, codes of ethics usually derive from, and are a mix of, different traditional ethics such as deontology (which is based on rules), virtue ethics (which is based on moral character), and utilitarianism (which is based on outcome; Lauria & Long, 2017).

In other words, codes of ethics within the applied approach are usually distilled from ethical theories and formatted as digestible, “applicable” sets of codes or rules. These applied or small ethics, Benso notes, compensate for a lack of “a holistic approach to reality” by attempting to control the “small part of reality within which they,” that is, humans,

constitute themselves. … Within the minimum realm in which they govern, they seek

common values and principles able to give that part of reality order and rationality, upon

which those who belong to the specific realm can ground their activity. (p. 134)

Small ethics’ attempt to compensate for a lack of a holistic approach to reality manifests in applied ethics’ tendency to take the form of specialized fields—for example, bioethics, medical ethics, legal ethics, environmental ethics, business ethics, (photo)journalistic ethics, and so on.

Each specialized field draws upon ethical theories to produce “codes of ethics” particular to the problems encountered within the field, and these codes can take the shape of professional societies—for example, The Society of Professional Journalists, the National Press Photographers

Association (Wheeler, 2002, p. 75), the American Physical Society, or the American

Psychological Association (Shamoo & Resnik, 2009, p. 9). Within the applied approach, “ethics set the boundaries of acceptable behavior” (Howe & Kaufman, 1979, p. 243), where, “in their most concrete expressions, ethical standards are spelled out in codes and lists of rules” (Ward &

9 Wasserman, 2010, p. 70). Problems arise when applied or small approaches to ethics attempt to prescribe guidelines that purport to comprehensively anticipate possible responses, activities, or behaviors by zeroing in on recurring patterns of occurrence without addressing what (re)produces those patterns or occurrences. For example, applied approaches to ethics tend to take for granted the modes of delivery and apparatuses of diagnosis, administration, measurement, and management that themselves produce inequality and silence. Applied approaches also have the capacity to be differentially enforced or withdrawn by authorities emboldened to, and often acting to, make ideological assumptions under the pretext of technoscientific discovery, innovation, objectivity, precision, and so on (Roberts, 2011; Benjamin, 2016). “The function and character” of small, applied, or any ethics that relies on an external set of rules, Benso (1996) argues, “is necessarily limited, not only with respect to the domain in which they rule, but also in terms of credibility. The reality that ‘small’ ethics try to bridle by means of norms of behavior escapes their control” (p. 134). For Benso, ethics instead must depart from the overconfidence that characterizes small ethics: small ethics tends to “define and delimit reality into categories always too narrow and constraining because artificial” (p. 136). This colonial attempt to delineate the non-delineable within the applied approach and its traditional antecedents introduces ethical dilemmas for ethically-engaged pedagogies.

In their book Ethics and the Foundations of Education: Teaching Convictions in a

Postmodern World, curriculum scholars Patrick Slattery and Dana Rapp (2003) provide a detailed autobiographical account of the extent to which traditional and applied approaches manifest as ethico-pedagogical-curricular constraints within educational settings. Slattery and Rapp take issue with traditional and applied approaches to ethics and discuss the challenges such approaches pose for education. For them, any conception of ethics as “a tidy system of rules of behavior” or “an unambiguous code of moral conduct, religious virtues, and civic responsibility” is limited

(Slattery & Rapp, p. 21). Rules and regulations, for Slattery and Rapp, are insufficient for ethical engagement, as ethical engagement takes place not as a response to externally enforced

10 guidelines, but in everyday practices, in dreams, in aesthetics, in notions of the self (p. 40). They state, “Ethics involve every dimension of living and being in the world. … [Ethics is] the substance of daily living and decision making” (p. 21). Furthermore, ethical dilemmas do not take place in isolation, but involve all aspects of one’s life, such as “political maneuvering, intimate relationships, economic endeavors, ecological sensibilities, religious practices, social and personal conflicts, health and welfare concerns, peace and war, career planning, entertainment and recreation, disease and death, technology, the arts, spirituality, and personal desires” (p. 21).

Throughout their book, Slattery and Rapp provide examples of ethical dilemmas that arise in relation to the aforementioned dimensions as a consequence of unyielding adherence to traditional or applied approaches to ethics within educational settings. Unyielding adherence and subscription to a set of prescribed moral codes or non-revisable rules is not only fascistic in its rigidity, it does not account for the ethical significance of attending to the contingency of events and specificity of encounters. Nor does unyielding adherence to codes and rules allow for modes of relating otherwise; modes of relating against and beyond dominant, normalized, and enforced practices/processes that are differentially harmful by design (via strategically constructed racializing hierarchies and configurations). The problem with this tendency to prescribe ostensibly comprehensive guidelines that can shape ethical behavior within applied approaches is that it limits, or tethers, ethical engagement to the moment one makes a decision. This tendency simplifies engagements in an (impossible) attempt to manage complexity. By contrast, I propose an approach to ethics as the extension of action beyond the moment, where the ethical is inextricable from the pedagogical, where ethical engagement is ongoing and involves praxis, and where complexity is not erased.

Technology and the Ongoingness of Ethics

What are the ethical implications of tethering ethical engagement to the moment one makes a decision so that it is rendered a momentary and situational decision-making process that does not involve a relationship to technology development, deployment, use, and pedagogy?

11 What are the ethical implications of attempting to separate the ethico-political from the technoscientific? For Shamoo and Resnik (2009), ethical theories “are an important part of ethical analysis and justification,” yet “they are often not useful guides to ethical decision making” (p.

30). In place of theory-based approaches, they recommend an applied, principle-based approach to ethics in scientific research, or what they describe as “principles of conduct” (p. 20). Shamoo and Resnik argue that a principle-based approach to ethics is favorable to theory-based approaches, as the latter introduce more challenges than (immediate) benefits. For Shamoo and

Resnik, theory-based approaches to ethics are not immediate enough or accessible enough to be helpful for those encountering ethical issues, as “one must appeal to a moral theory and infer consequences from the theory” (p. 30). They write that ethical theories are not suitable because they “are usually abstract and complex and are therefore difficult to interpret and apply” (p. 31).

Further, they argue, “people who are making practical choices, such as scientists, need guidelines that are not too difficult to interpret and apply. They need rules and guidelines that are clear and easy to understand” (p. 31). There are many layers to theory-based approaches, which for

Shamoo and Resnik hinders ethical engagement:

On the theory-based approach, one would need to decide which theory is the correct one

before even approaching the dilemma, because an incorrect theory might lead to the

wrong answer to an ethical question. But in science and many other practical endeavors,

people do not have time to wait for philosophers or theologians to decide which theory is

the correct one—they need answers now. (pp. 30-31)

For the applied approach to ethics proposed by Shamoo and Resnik, science is distinct from ethics in terms of practical applicability. Science, they contend, has clear practical applications, as it “leads to technological applications that can be used to achieve practical goals”; for example, “Galileo’s physics was useful for aiming cannon balls and making accurate calendars” (Shamoo & Resnik, p. 20). But they argue that ethics is practical only insofar as it is

“a useful tool for decision making,” for “it has no technological applications. Ethical theories are

12 not useful for building bridges, designing airplanes, manufacturing pharmaceuticals, and so on”

(pp. 19–20). But do Galileo’s physics not reflect and entail particular ethical orientations and consequences? Can technology development and deployment not have ethico-political dimensions (see Chapter 7)? Building bridges, designing airplanes, and manufacturing pharmaceuticals produce effects of ethical consequence and therefore, inevitably, have ethical dimensions. As Langdon Winner (1980) puts it in his analysis of the intimate relationship between politics and technology,

Technological innovations are similar to legislative acts or political foundings that

establish a framework for public order that will endure over many generations. For that

reason, the same careful attention one would give to the rules, roles, and relationships of

politics must also be given to such things as the building of highways, the creation of

television networks, and the tailoring of seemingly insignificant features on new

machines. The issues that divide or unite people in society are settled not only in the

institutions and practices of politics proper, but also, and less obviously, in tangible

arrangements of steel and concrete, wires and transistors, nuts and bolts. (pp. 127–128)

Steel and concrete, wires and transistors, nuts and bolts. Even seemingly simple or innocuous technologies, instruments, or tools entail ethical orientations and implications. What relations do the technologies invite or disinvite, allow or disallow, encourage or discourage? What conditions do the technologies help produce and maintain? Under which conditions are the technologies developed? What impacts do the materials and processes used to develop the technologies have on the environment? Who are the technologies designed for and what are they designed to do?

Are the technologies designed toward productive or harmful modes of engagement? Are the technologies designed to extract natural resources as property to be owned, shaped, and controlled toward environmentally destructive processes? Are the technologies designed to generate and extract data surplus as the tradeoff for (forced) technology use?

13 To suggest that technology development and deployment entail particular relations and ethical implications is not to suggest any kind of technological determinism, where all possible uses and structures of experience are scripted or fixed in the technology. Rather, it is to suggest that there are ethical implications entailed in all phases of technology development and deployment, that a set of choices, responses, and relationalities—not a single idea, person, or thing—iteratively co-produce the technology. The development and deployment of a single technology may involve a host of material-discursive processes that have ethical implications— financing, budgeting, and licensing; research and development; hypothesis testing and peer- reviewed publication; university, corporate, and state affiliations; design, engineering, and safety certification; manufacturing, energy consumption, carbon emission, and labor conditions; networking, management, and marketing; software, mechanical and electrical hardware, data sets and algorithms; minerals and materials; political lobbying, policy legislation, and state regulation; and more. Ethico-pedagogically, technology can be better understood not as a product someone uses, not as the technological object per se. Rather, technology involves the processes and mechanisms of production and maintenance, which include, but are not limited to, the technological object and its (mis)uses. Technology is not merely developed in the design lab or factory—it is (un)made in an iterative, relational process that ensures its existence as such. How a technology exists is contingent on a host of material-discursive forces and entities. Even if, as

Winner (1980) suggests, ethical implications are at their most critical in the production phase, as it is harder to make changes to an existing technology, it is still possible to intervene in how a technology continues to exist. In other words, ethical engagement is necessary not only in technology design, development, and deployment, but also in the reception, (mis)uses, and interventions in technology.4

4 In Surveillance and Counter-Practices of Resistance Within/Through Street Photography Pedagogy (Chapter 7), I examine Joy Buolamwini, Josh Begley, and Hiba Ali’s ethico-pedagogical engagements through art as critical practices of resisting the ways surveillance technologies exist and are popularly understood.

14 Narratives that separate the ethico-political from the technoscientific—that claim, for example, that technology can be objective or neutral—are not arbitrary but strategic conceptions fashioned and popularized to legitimize and normalize racial oppression and exploitation under the pretext of technological objectivity, neutrality, precision, and accuracy (see Chapter 7). In their introduction to Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life, Alondra Nelson, Thuy

Linh N. Tu, and Alicia Hines (2001) note that “historically people of color have been casualties of technologically enabled systems of oppression, from colonial expansion, to the racial sciences of craniology and phrenology, to surveillance and information gathering” (p. 3).5 For an ethical disposition, the question is not simply whether technology is differentially distributed, it is also how technology itself can be, and has been, encoded with racializing mechanisms that produce effects differentially along socially constructed categories of race, gender, class, and ability (see

Chapter 3). Contemporary surveillance technologies can be understood not as recent innovations, but rather as continuations of early technologies of racial surveillance capitalism configured and instituted alongside European imperialist expansion, colonialism, and racial slavery (Browne,

2015). Contemporary surveillance technologies are not new formations, but reformations of early surveillance technologies, which rely on narratives of technological objectivity and innovation to mask the racializing mechanisms encoded in them. This is what Ruha Benjamin (2019) calls the

“New Jim Code,” the employment of new technologies to mask racializing functions extended from old surveillance techniques under the guise of technological objectivity and innovation.

Discursive configurations and material formations, in a relational, iterative process, co-produce the conditions of possibility that ensure the maintenance of racial surveillance capitalism.

The nonlinear temporality of technological consequences echoes the ongoingness of ethics, emphasizing ethical engagement as the extension of action beyond the moment. A given

5 The essays in this book serve as a poignant reminder that what is ethically significant with regard to technology is not simply a question of access to it (i.e., the “digital divide”) but rather technology’s material-discursive structuring processes and capacities.

15 technology often has a program (Flusser, 2000), or a set of codes, that (attempt to) script how it works. Like the code dimension of ethics, the codes scripted in a technology cannot fully anticipate or determine its capacities and effects. An ethically-engaged pedagogy takes into account not only how a technology’s codes and coding processes produce effects, but also that technology is neither fixed nor stable, but rather iteratively produced through recurring engagements and differential enactments of agentic capacity. Technology is neither arbitrary nor objective, and neither are its agentic capacities predeterminable—this is why an ethical disposition traces the agentic capacity of a technology in intra-action rather than presuming it as the essential property of that technology (see Chapters 3–7).

Moral Codes ≠ Ethics

If ethical codes do not amount to ethics, what is the relationship between the two? Ethical codes can be helpful, but problems arise when they are equated with ethics. In medical fields, for example, codes can set the general scope of what is or is not permissible. James B. Rule’s (1973) discussion of the ethics of surveillance in the work place and Philippe Calain’s (2013) discussion of the ethics of medical photography are just a two examples that demonstrate the significance of the code dimension of ethics in certain contexts—for instance when those photographing and those being photographed establish and discuss their relationship or when the goal is to regulate the uneven distribution power inherent in these power relations (Rule, 1973). While ethical codes can be helpful, ethical engagement goes beyond mere subscription to codes since, while in some cases code-following can mean saving a life, in others code-breaking is what is needed to save a life. Moreover, ethics is not merely interpersonal, between people, but also involves the apparatuses and media in which ethical questions also play out. In other words, ethical engagement is not simply a matter of acquiring consent or preserving one’s privacy, but is also, and necessarily, concerned with how one might struggle to anticipate future uses of various forms of documentation. For example, beyond the moment of acquiring consent, medical photographs, like other photographs, have the agentic capacity to outlive their creators: photographs have

16 afterlives of their own that exceed the photographer’s intentions and the bounds of medical, or any other, codes (see Chapters 5–6).

Ethical codes can be a dimension of ethics, but they do not encompass ethics (Foucault,

1984/1990; Bennett, 2001). Likewise, moral codes are constructs to contend with (Foucault;

Bennett), but they do not amount to ethics either. Why is it important to distinguish between moral codes and ethics? An unyielding subscription to moral codes does not take into account that the codes themselves may be unethical (e.g., harmful, oppressive, racially violent, etc.) or that they can be, and often are, differentially enforced or withdrawn by authority according to socially constructed categories of race, gender, class, and ability. An ethical disposition is willing to contest and revise “moral” codes when necessary; when, that is, they are harmful, oppressive, and racially violent.

Applied approaches are problematic if they tether ethical engagement to the moment of making a decision. In the next section, I examine Ruha Benjamin’s (2016) theorizing of

“informed refusal” as an ongoing mode of ethical engagement. Benjamin’s approach emphasizes that applied ethics can have a relational orientation.

Informed Refusal as Relationally Applied

To what extent can ethical codes still be flexible? How can ethical codes be oriented to participate in their own ongoing (re)assessment? How can applied approaches to ethics have a relational orientation? When can applied ethics have a nonhuman-centered orientation that goes beyond person-to-person questions of consent and individualistic notions of privacy? In biomedical and technoscientific settings, codes of conduct can be helpful tools for enabling an ethics of care in settings wherein power is unevenly distributed. Codes of conduct can help regulate the uneven power dynamics between authority figures (e.g., doctors, researchers, border agents, etc.) and those supposedly in their care (e.g., patients, prospective research subjects, asylum seekers, etc.). But what if the codes themselves reinforce the already unevenly distributed power dynamics, “further disempowering those who are already oppressed by current

17 configurations of power and authority” (Benjamin, 2016, p. 15)? What if the consent protocols act as surveillance mechanisms that guarantee information extraction, implicitly linking “the transmission of information to the granting of permission” (p. 18)? What if informed consent protocols stigmatize and penalize asylum seekers who refuse to consent to genetic ancestry testing, demanding “that border agents regard them with added suspicion, increasing their chances of deportation” (p. 16)? Ruha Benjamin’s (2016) informed refusal points out what is possible for applied ethics approaches beyond an inflexible idea of codes of conduct as evenly applied.

In her theorization of “informed refusal” as a necessary corollary to “informed consent,”

Benjamin traces acts of refusal to authority in biomedical and technoscientific settings as a way of “recouping a set of subaltern capacities to challenge status quo configurations of social power and technoscience” (p. 5). In the process, Benjamin demonstrates the limits of the notion of individual agency—one of the bedrocks of bioethics inherent in informed consent protocols—“as the mode through which bioethical autonomy is exercised” (p. 16). Benjamin demonstrates the limits of ethical codes based on colonial notions of individual autonomy that leave out those who are penalized for acting autonomously, such as asylum seekers who face deportation for refusing genetic ancestry testing (because they are excluded from the already faulty notions of

“individual” and “autonomy”). Benjamin’s informed refusal contains within it a call for ongoing deliberation and recalibration, whereby “institutions are called upon to consider how their own norms and practices, as well as existing social hierarchies, place pressure on people to defer to authority” (p. 5). By implicating institutions in their accountability processes, informed refusal affirms ethics’ ongoingness. Rather than foreclose it, informed refusal extends action beyond the moment. Moreover, by connecting processes and consequences—relations and effects—

Benjamin’s informed refusal points out that applied ethics can have a relational orientation.

Benjamin theorizes an approach to informed refusal as reparative and productive, rather than one based on critique. Also at the heart of Benjamin’s theorization is a rejection of colonial

18 knowledge production, whereby informed refusal is designed to enable resistance to authority, expanding the space for those already in vulnerable social locations to respond.

Not all moral codes, however, are inherited or externally prescribed. That is, ethical codes or rules can also be pragmatically self-adopted. But in either case, for an ethical disposition, codes must always be open to revision, which is a part of the ethical process itself. In contrast to ethics as the labor and willingness to revise one’s inherited or self-adopted ethical codes, legalistic approaches to ethics, which are applied approaches, treat ethics as a juridical issue and limit ethical engagement to the moment one makes a decision. What are the ethical implications of treating ethics as a juridical issue? What is at stake in tethering ethical engagement to the moment one makes a decision, whether or not it is deemed the correct one?

Legal ≠ Ethical

By referring to law as an ethical signifier and treating ethics as a strictly juridical issue, legalistic framings of ethics can defer, divert, and, ultimately, foreclose ethical engagement.

Within a legalistic framework, what is legal can be unethical. For example, in some court cases, such as the one I discuss later in this chapter, a judge may acknowledge that a court’s ruling is not a refutation of harm done but merely an effect of the law. Yet the law can be harmful, and this is precisely why different practices and mechanisms for adjusting or refusing it exist, whether through deliberation, protest, civil disobedience and other forms political engagement, in some instances even violence, and so on. In other words, what was legal can be made illegal: think slavery. What is illegal in one geopolitical sphere, can be legal in others: think torture, for example. What was made illegal, can be carried out through other legal means: think prison- industrial complex as modern-day slavery. Even Shamoo and Resnik (2009), who subscribe to an applied approach to ethics, point out the distinction between law and ethics:

People may decide that there needs to be a law against some type of unethical behavior,

or they may decide that an existing law is unethical. If we consider a law to be unethical,

then we may be morally obligated to change the law or perhaps even disobey it. (p. 16)

19 Because law itself can be unethical, it is important to distinguish it from ethics. Legalistic approaches can also defer, divert, or foreclose ethical engagement by narrowing the time of ethical deliberation to the moment one makes a decision, whether or not it is deemed the correct one (see Chapter 2). For example, in such a scenario, ethical engagement (i.e., engagement that attends to effects) may begin and end in the moment one requests/acquires consent. But whether consciously or not, one is implicated in that moment of encounter in an extended temporality that unavoidably involves past and future. Meaning that what one brings to the moment of the encounter informs the encounter and the extent to which one reflects back on in order to redress

(the effects of one’s relations) also inform the effects produced vis-à-vis the encounter. Whether consciously or not, one affects the encounter beyond the moment one makes a decision—and every decision that has an effect has ethical dimensions. Thus, an ethical disposition develops a critical consciousness of the effects of one’s relations, enacting ethics as the extension of action beyond the moment. Additionally, because they center on issues of privacy and consent, legalistic approaches to street photography ethics are human-centered and individualistic since they treat ethics as a person-to-person issue. But as I argue below, an ethical disposition is necessarily relational, since to exist is to exist in relation—to human and nonhuman others. Thus, while considerations of privacy and consent can be helpful for issues that arise in relation to street photography (Gross, Katz, & Rub, 1988; 2003; Henderson, 2003), they do not address the relational, temporally extended dimensions of ethics.

In the next section, I propose an ongoing, dispositional mode of ethics that takes into account relations and their effects.

Toward a Dispositional Ethics

Every decision that has an effect is an ethical one. Thus, almost all decisions have an ethical dimension. I propose an approach to ethics as dispositional, where one’s adopted and cultivated disposition informs one’s modes of relating. Disposition here does not refer to

“nature,” “character,” or “mentality,” but instead it suggests tendency, positionality, and

20 comportment. A disposition is thus not something that one simply attains, but rather something to be cultivated—an ongoing and orchestrated effort. A dispositional ethics, in other words, requires a set of activities, what Foucault calls “forms of self-activity” or “technologies of the self,” which imply “certain modes of training and modification of individuals, not only in the obvious sense of acquiring certain skills but also in the sense of acquiring certain attitudes” (1984/1990, p. 28;

1988, p. 18). One’s forms of self-activity to some uncertain degree shape the attitude one brings to encounters with others; they habituate one to respond or not respond in this or that way. As

Foucault (1988) notes, such a relationship with the self

is not simply “self-awareness” but self-formation as an “ethical subject,” a process in

which the individual delimits that part of himself that will form the object of his moral

practice, defines his position relative to the precept he will follow, and decides on a

certain mode of being that will serve as his moral goal. And this requires him to act upon

himself, to monitor, test, improve, and transform himself. (p. 28)

Since the body is a “relationship of forces” (Deleuze, 1983, p. 40),6 which means ethics is necessarily relational, then an ethical disposition is necessarily concerned with relations and their effects on the one hand, and with modes of relating on the other. In what ways are one’s modes of relating productive or harmful? How do one’s modes of relating leave room for the other to respond, or block the opportunity for the other to respond? How do one’s daily practices, adopted dispositions, and view of ethics habituate one to respond or not respond? Benso (1996) notes,

“The ethical individual is a response to an appeal that does not proceed from the individual her/himself, not even when such individuality is camouflaged under the universality of Kantian reason” (p. 136). What this means, Benso says, is that

6 The body, crucially, is not a human body: “Every relationship of forces constitutes a body—whether it is chemical, biological, social or political” (Deleuze, 1983, p. 40).

21 the ethical individual gives up the privilege of first action. To be free does not mean to

claim authorship for oneself, to be autonomous, to be the archaic principle of one’s life,

but rather to respond (or not to respond) to an appeal coming from the exterior. (p. 136)

In other words, ethics is an ongoing process that involves not just response (or nonresponse) to an event, but also what precedes as well as what follows from it. An ethical disposition is thus concerned with how one’s positionality, or what in feminist writing is discussed as standpoint, orients one to respond. An ethical disposition, in other words, takes into account how one’s prior experiences and backgrounds “affect the ways in which they engaged with others” (Powell, 2010, pp. 542–543); how “different responses are shaped by the standpoint that [one] bring(s) to the” encounter or event (hooks, 1994, pp. 49–50); how one engages technology “through a complex interplay of [one’s] past experiences (real and imagined), present circumstances, and future hopes and fears” (Benjamin, 2016, p. 2). Paulo Freire (1970/2000) theorizes what he calls “problem-posing education” against the “banking system” of education.

While the latter works towards producing docile subjectivities, the former is concerned with critical thinking as a practice of freedom. This passage from Freire, in which he discusses the relationship between ways of knowing and modes of existing, is instructive in demonstrating how one’s positionality, and even the very perception of it, produces effects:

In problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way

they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see

the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation. Although

the dialectical relations of [people] with the world exist independently of how these

relations are perceived (or whether or not they are perceived at all), it is also true that the

form of action they adopt is to a large extent a function of how they perceive themselves

in the world. Hence, the teacher-student and the students-teachers reflect simultaneously

on themselves and the world without dichotomizing this reflection from action, and thus

establish an authentic form of thought and action. (p. 83)

22 Ethics, then, is not concerned merely with thinking or ideas, but is also concerned with how thought and thinking relate to action. Technologies of the self, which involve considering one’s own positionality, says Foucault (1988), “permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being” (p. 18). Instead of limiting ethics to the internalization or memorization of moral codes, it is possible to include material, bodily, somatic, and affective dimensions. The “enactment of ethical aspirations” itself, Bennett says, “requires bodily movements in space, mobilizations of heat and energy, a series of choreographed gestures, a distinctive assemblage of affective propulsions” (2001, p. 3). Affect can be understood as “the capacity that a body has to form specific relations,” while relations “are the virtual links between bodies that a body can form, if it is so equipped” (Buchanan, 1997, p. 80). While “relations become actual when they are connected to a body … they do not initiate anything themselves” (p.

80). A body’s affect, then, is its capacity to form relations and “relations are inseparable from the capacity to be affected” (Deleuze, 1990, p. 218). However, as Ian Buchanan (1997) notes, “all relations are subject to qualification” (p. 82). This qualification can be understood as “health,” which here means

the actual measurable capacity to form new relations, which can always be increased, and

the concomitant determination of whether or not the newly formed relations between

bodies lead to the formation of new compounds, or new decomposition of already

existing ones. … A healthy body … would thus usually have numerous affects and an

equivalent number of relations. (Buchanan, 1997, p. 82)

The distinction between whether relations form new compounds or the decomposition of old compounds, says Buchanan, underscores Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s (1983) ethics as

“it enables a secular, and, just as importantly, non-moralizing mode of ethics, where ethics is understood as an a priori code for the evaluation of human action” (Buchanan, p. 82). Deleuze and Guattari’s ethics, Buchanan notes, can be articulated in this way:

23 those relations which ensure an open future, which is to say, those which promote the

formation of new compounds, are considered healthy; while those relations which lead to

the decomposition of old compounds and are not accompanied by the elaboration of new

ones are considered unhealthy. (p. 82)

Ethics therefore is not about making judgements or subscribing to an external set of rules, but rather about modes of relating. For an ethical disposition, ethics is about the extension of action beyond the moment; about increasing the body’s capacity to form new relations, to affect and be affected. Ethical (non)engagement begins before and proceeds after the initial response.

That ethical (non)engagement commences prior to the moment a decision is made becomes apparent when one considers how one’s disposition, daily practices, and even view of ethics inform modes of relating: If one views ethics as a separate domain from the everyday, how might that lead one to respond (or not respond)? If one views ethics from an individualistic perspective, in what ways does such a view move one to respond (or not respond)? If one views one’s decisions to have no consequence, what kinds of decisions might one then be predisposed to make? What kinds of decisions or forms of engagement might accompany a view of the world as separate from one’s relation to it? But one’s disposition, daily practices, and view of ethics also inform the extent to which one deals with the effects of one’s response (or nonresponse). This is ethical (non)engagement after the event, after a decision of ethical consequence has been made.

A disposition should not be understood as static or fixed, and certainly, it cannot guarantee desirable response. Bennett (2001) stresses, “Every ethic relies on some … tenuous, contingent linkage; no ethical theory can guarantee its desired outcome, not even one like Kant’s that purports to include a moral imperative” (p. 79). Thus, an ethical disposition is hospitable to and invites revision and reworking. It asks, to what extent, if at all, does one recall, examine, re- examine, and reflect on past decisions of ethical consequence? In other words, an ethical disposition requires ongoing (re)assessment and allows room for modifications. This is why stylizing one’s modes of relating is not an activity to be done once, but an ongoing process that is

24 necessarily open to and invites change. As Kimberly Powell and Stephanie Serriere (2013) note, for pragmatist and philosopher of education John Dewey (1916), the “self” itself “is not fixed or ready-made, but ‘something in continuous formation through choice of action’” (p. 408, as cited in Powell & Serriere, 2013, pp. 3–4). Ethics thus is also ongoing; it is not something that someone comes to possess, for example, by memorizing and remaining faithful to a set of moral codes. Instead, ethics is something that someone does or does not practice; it is about (in)action.

Ethics is not already-given or fixed, as some traditional or applied approaches would have it. Such approaches understand ethics to be a response to an external set of pre-determined guidelines or values that ostensibly guarantee correct or incorrect, right or wrong, action. They imply a fixed notion of ethics and maintain a false division between the ethical subject and the

“object” of ethics, which often takes the form of a set of (pre)established rules or values. As

Slattery and Rapp (2003) note, ethics, like education, is not “a static set of rules or procedures to be memorized and applied uniformly in each new situation”; instead, they argue, “the notion of prior experience as a legitimate source of knowledge construction in schools and classrooms allows us to think about ethics as a life process” (p. 73). For an ethical disposition, ethical engagement does not stop. It looks to prior experience as a pedagogical space, an occasion through which to learn and unlearn. Thus, one’s disposition, daily practices, and view of ethics also inform the extent to which one is willing to revise one’s disposition relative to the effects of one’s response or nonresponse to an event. Ethics can be understood not as an obligation to follow a set of codes, but rather as a mode of being-in-relation that influences, inspires, and guides decision-making and ways of responding to others, as well as the (un)willingness to revise one’s adopted dispositions. This entails a certain degree of struggle.

Ethical engagement is not always easy; in fact, it is often difficult since it involves

(re)examining one’s own modes of existing. In other words, ethical engagement involves pedagogical dimensions, wherein one interrogates one’s own conduct and habits of being. “There can be, and usually is, some degree of pain involved in giving up old ways of thinking and

25 knowing and learning new approaches” (hooks, 1994, p. 43). As hooks stresses, critically engaged pedagogical approaches must acknowledge the pain, not just the joy, involved in learning and the discomfort that shifting paradigms can cause (p. 43). Questions of ethics can be difficult, since they contain no clear-cut answers. There is an attractive quality to forms of ethics that claim to be all-encompassing; that offer clear-cut answers that work uniformly across all situations; that can be applied like a template. As Slattery and Rapp (2003) note, “The apparent clarity of these systems is sometimes soothing,” particularly when one is “conflicted about a decision and need(s) a quick solution” (p. 67). However, ethical engagement is not a neat process of deciding which laws are good and warrant subscription.

Taking into account the difficulty involved in questions of ethics is a more productive approach since it does not rely on dichotomies of right or wrong. Relying on such dichotomies means that ethical engagement begins and ends when a choice is made, whether or not that choice is deemed to be the correct one. In other words, taking into account the ongoingness and difficulty involved in ethics extends its pedagogical space. The initial response one has is not final, but rather an opportunity for examining the effects of one’s response on the one hand, and for reflection, deliberation and recalibration of one’s modes of responding on the other. These recalibrations can then be carried into future engagements. To the extent that extending the pedagogical space of ethical engagement in such a way entails difficulty does not mean it is impossible or unnecessary.

When ethics is presented as a set of rules or moral codes set by experts, only to be referenced, memorized, or heeded, it might appear to be a detached and distant field of knowledge and practice, distinct from the realm of the everyday. And it may seem to be necessitated only situationally. However, ethics is necessarily relational, in that to exist is to exist in relation, and every relation that produces an effect has ethical dimensions. Ethics therefore resides in the domain of the everyday. That is, ethics is an everyday (non)practice, rather than one exercised or necessitated exclusively within controlled and/or institutional settings (e.g., the

26 workplace, the school or university, the hospital, the airport, the family unit, and so on). Because ethics is necessarily relational—where an ethical disposition is concerned with attending to relations and their effects, and how one’s modes of relating themselves produce effects—ethics is involved in diverse practices, not just in the ethico-pedagogical relationship to the self. Ethics is also involved in everyday forms of engagement with human and nonhuman others; reading, writing, and other knowledge production practices; pedagogy, curriculum construction, and other educational processes; technology development, assessment, and implementation; art-making, critique, and interpretation; and so on. The ethico-pedagogical project of this relational ethics understands daily practices of the self, what Foucault calls “technologies of the self,” as conduits for productive modes of engaging with others—emphasizing and placing under scrutiny the inseparable relation between the singular and collective levels of being. This is self-fashioning “at the level of the singular human being” as a practice and force toward, following Silvia Wynter

(2003), “refashioning at the collective level” (Da Silva, 2015, p. 99). This is, laterally, collective refashioning via self-refashioning and vice versa. In this relational mode of ethics, self- refashioning is necessarily not a self-concerned aesthetic practice of self-improvement (e.g.,

“Quantified Self,” biohacking, etc.).7 Rather, it is a self-refashioning to be better in relation in the encounter with others.

Importantly, the “other” in the encounter is not limited to Emmanuel Levinas’s (1981) conception of Other as human. Levinas suggests ethics takes place in the encounter with the

Other (human), where “human ethics is archetypal” (Benso, 1996, p. 138). For Levinas, the

“Other person,” rather than the “Other thing,” compels one to “ethics in the most authoritative way because it is more evident with an evidence that is not epistemological, but ethical—to human beings” (Benso, 1996, p. 138). However, Benso argues, “the ethical authority of the Other

… should not obliterate another form of Otherness, which is different from the Otherness of the

7 Biohacking is a movement that originally started as a self-oriented use of bodily data and measurement to seek self-improvement. It has since evolved into an industry.

27 other person, and whose presence is less apparent, less evident, less loud: the Otherness of what

Levinas’s ethics neglects: things” (p. 138). That is, just because the call of the nonhuman appears less “authoritative” than that of the human does not mean one should dismiss the nonhuman dimensions of encounters—since it is impossible to do so. As Benso (1996) puts it,

Things are everywhere. They fill the world with their presence. Whereas it is possible to

avoid the Other (person), to reject the encounter, to be solipsistic without Condescension;

to exempt oneself from an encounter—any encounter—with things is to die. Sensibility,

having a body, is to be exposed to things. The body is the exposure. (p. 132)

Whether or not humans consciously acknowledge it, they are inseparable from nonhumans. But in addition to including nonhumans in ethical deliberation, the relational mode of ethics proposed in this dissertation does not take for granted the category “human” and understands its formation as predicated on modern inventions of race and racial difference as means by which to legitimize and normalize colonial racial surveillance capitalism. This is why an ethical disposition traces rather than presumes relations and their effects. It traces them in their contingent becoming (or not), in intra-action. As such, in this dissertation, I engage a pedagogical practice of slowing down, tracing how modes of engaging and relating, and how material-discursive formations and configurations, affect the encounter and the ethical implications surrounding the encounter

(Browne, 2015; Fleetwood; 2015; Campt; 2017; Hartman, 2019; Benjamin, 2019).

In closing, I engage a brief case study to address some questions that emerge from this chapter. What are the limits of legalistic models of ethics? In what ways is the legalistic approach ill-equipped to accommodate effects of encounters that exceed the bounds of what a court of law can take into account? What are the ethical implications of treating ethics as a decision-making process bounded to the moment one takes a photograph? What are the ethical implications of legalistic models of ethics that inherit the colonialist understanding of photographs as property that can be possessed by the individual photographer?

28 A Brief Case Study: Nussenzweig v. diCorcia

Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s Heads (1999–2001) is a series of seventeen color portrait photographs taken surreptitiously in New York City’s Times Square (Papanestor, 2001, p. 1).

Each of diCorcia’s “Heads” appears encircled in a pocket of bright light, literally spotlighted against the darkened—nearly night-like (Baker, 2010, p. 210)—surroundings. To achieve this visual aesthetic while photographing in daylight, diCorcia came up with what he described as a

“fairly simple” method. Describing his method, diCorcia noted, underneath scaffolding,

I attach [Speedlight] flashes … and these are synchronized to a camera, which is twenty-

feet away with a telephoto lens. I pre-focus the camera [and] pre-focus the lights. When

someone enters the zone which is predetermined, I decide if I can and want to make an

image of them. If I press the shutter of the camera, the flash is synchronized to go off at

the same time. (Tate, 2010, 0:26)8

Over the course of two years, diCorcia produced approximately three thousand photographs, out of which he selected the final seventeen for view at Pace/MacGill Gallery in Chelsea, New York

City (Tate, 3:24; Papanestor, 2001, p. 1). Several years following the series’ initial exhibition and the publication of the accompanying catalogue, one of the people depicted, a Hasidic Jewish man, encountered—and was dismayed to find—his own image reproduced without his awareness or consent (O’Hagan, 2010 para. 22). The man, Erno Nussenzweig, took his objections to court, arguing for the removal of his image from exhibition and circulation on the basis that his privacy and religious rights had been violated (O’Hagan, para. 22). The judge dismissed the case on the basis that the photograph was art rather than commerce (O’Hagan, para. 22). Where are the points

8 Art critic Luc Sante (2011) describes diCorcia’s method this way: “In rigging lights, unseen by causal pedestrians, that were intended to play on anyone stepping on a specific x-marked spot, and then positioning himself at an unobtrusive fixed distance, he constructed an elegantly rigorous formula not unlike a mathematical equation. He, his apparatus, and the setting were the givens, his human subjects the variable. The results married chance and determinacy in a way that appeared anything but mathematical, however. The unrepeatable spontaneity of the classic street shot was preserved, but the lighting utterly transformed the scenario” (p. 2).

29 of ethical deliberation with regards to diCorcia’s Heads and the subsequent court case? When does ethical deliberation begin and proceed? Who is involved in ethical deliberation? Is it merely the individual photographer and those involved in the exhibition and court case? Do those who encounter diCorcia’s work and court case (e.g., art critics, educators, artists, learners, readers, etc.) have an ethical role? How does an ethical disposition take into account the effects of flash photography when considering the ethical implications of a photographic practice (see Chapter

3)? What can diCorcia’s response to the lawsuit demonstrate about his disposition, positionality, and attitude in relation to street photography ethics? To what extent do hostile responses to

Nussenzweig’s expression of grievance via legal means—the means available for contesting large-scale photographic circulation—deter further expression of grievance? What kind of atmosphere does the demonization of those who make appeals produce? What are the ethical dimensions and implications of Heads’ production, circulation, and reception processes?

Production. The ethical implications surrounding a photographic encounter do not emerge merely as a result, or in the moment, a picture is taken. The (photographic) moment is bound up with numerous other moments which are in excess of it. The moment is not momentary even if it seems so; it endures in so far as it affects and is affected by those other moments bound up with it. The moment emerges from/within/in relation to a nexus of relationalities. What precedes and proceeds from the moment of clicking the shutter also inform the effects produced vis-à-vis the photographic encounter. How one approaches the photographic encounter to some uncertain degree informs the effects produced. How one responds (or not respond) to the effects produced around the encounter following its occurrence also has ethical implications. How might diCorcia’s disposition, positionality, and attitude toward street photography ethics inform his response (or non-response)? What are the ethical implications of diCorcia’s disposition, positionality, and attitude toward street photography ethics? How does diCorcia’s disposition on street photography ethics—which intersect legalistic, representationalist, and defeatist models of ethics as discussed in Chapter 2—influence the ethical implications of his project/practice?

30 DiCorcia’s orientation can be understood as part of a long history in humanist rhetoric of sentimentality that subscribes to Enlightenment notion of objectivity (see Chapter 3). DiCorcia said that one of the things he was “investigating was not whether people are all different, but how they are all the same” (Tate, 3:56). DiCorcia suggests that despite the appearance of difference, all people are essentially the same. But erasing differences of experiences neglects differences in material conditions and the social configurations that (attempt to) script people’s life chances and choices differentially along lines of race, gender, class, and ability (see Chapters 2–3). He continued, “I was not trying to hide from [photographic subjects], I was trying to show how they hide from those around them” (Tate, 3:56). DiCorcia said he was not trying to hide from the people he photographed, yet he photographed them with a telephoto lens from twenty feet away.

Describing his relationality to the photographic encounter with the subjects of Heads, diCorcia said, “I never talk to [photographic subjects].… I don’t ask their permission. I don’t pay them”

(Tate, 2010, 1:11). DiCorcia created a blueprint and orchestrated a makeshift outdoor photography studio equipped with strobe lights in an attempt to script the conditions of the photographic encounters that produced Heads. Yet diCorcia maintained that “it was great to bring serendipity, to some degree, into the game, into the hunt, into the synthesis” (Tate, 3:56).

DiCorcia’s approach corresponds to the candid approach to street photography, the guiding tenets of which include the notion that surreptitious photography can mirror reality more authentically than staged photography and that chance and serendipity can make photographs more authentic

(see Chapters 2–3). For diCorcia, “There is no way the images could have been made with the knowledge and cooperation of the subjects. The mutual exclusivity, that conflict or tension, is part of what gives the work whatever quality it has” (Gefter, 2006, para 14). But as I argue in the chapters that follow, making the false equation between surreptitiousness and authenticity reproduces and extends harmful colonialist notions of objectivity.

Asking for consent is not the only ethically generous approach to street photography. Bill

Brandt’s (1904–1983) practice is more flexible when it comes to producing surreptitious

31 (looking) photographs and is an example of an ethically generous approach. Simon Baker (2010) writes, “Brandt produced the effect of images surreptitiously taken, but with no attempt to mislead or deceive the subjects, the better to convince his viewers” (p. 209). Brandt produced

“photographs that appear to show candid and intimate scenes but were in fact often carefully staged” (p. 208).9 Moreover, the view that surreptitious photography is more “authentic” and

“objective” fails to take into account that photographs always manipulate. There can be no

“objective transfer” of “reality” in any photographic process; there are choices, framings, apparatuses, and modes of reception, and there is inherently a gap between photography and reality. But a faith in or a dogmatic subscription to candid approaches to street photography limits possibilities for photographing otherwise, as they disallow non-surreptitious photographs (see

Chapter 2).

Circulation. For diCorcia, photographing people unawares is permissible not only because it is legal but also because the prevalence of surveillance diminishes the ethical role of the photographer. But decisions of ethical consequence in relation to the encounter continued to take place after the moment diCorcia decided to take the pictures composing Heads. Upon encountering the reproduced photograph, Nussenzweig immediately contacted diCorcia and the

Pace/MacGill gallery to express his grievance and wish to halt further circulation of the photograph (Nussenzweig v. diCorcia, 2006, para. 25). DiCorcia responded that “the photographs were not being used for either ‘advertising’ or ‘trade’ and that he believed he was within his legal rights to continue use the photograph of plaintiff in the manner he had been” (para. 25).

Nussenzweig sued diCorcia when he and Pace/MacGill declined to halt further circulation of his image.10

9 Brandt is one among many photographers taking this approach (see Chapter 2). 10 While diCorcia made and sold ten edition prints of the photograph (each priced between $20,000 and $30,000), he “claims that he will create no more original prints of the photograph” (Nussenzweig v. diCorcia, 2006, para. 18; 23). But whether or not diCorcia continues to print and sell original prints only addresses how this move affects him monetarily. And while diCorcia suggests he will not be profiting from the image, he continues to profit from the image’s circulation even if it is not the result of direct sales.

32 As to how diCorcia felt about being sued for declining to halt circulation, he said, “I’m not sure I would like it to happen to me, but I maintain my right to do it.… In a way, it’s about what you do with those images” (Tate, 2010, 2:11). But what did diCorcia do with the images that was more important than the well-being of those who are harmed by his practice? What motivates diCorcia to come up with such a practice, and, more importantly, what are the conditions that encourage this and similar practices in the first place? How does a legalistic model of ethics allow or encourage forms of circulation that benefit those who hold the means to photograph and not those are depicted in photographs? What are the implications of an individualistic mode of ethics that centers on one’s interests and intentions and makes no room for heeding the other’s call?

Recall that diCorcia produced thousands of photographs (Tate, 3:24). But diCorcia placed more value on his selection and editing process—the final seventeen that “work”—over a more flexible approach that allows room for the other to respond. What drives the attachment to one’s own art production over the well-being of others? What is the environment that encourages and defends an artist’s self-prioritization?

Reception. What are the ethical dimensions of receiving photographs and the popularized narratives attached to them? Does an ethical disposition uncritically accept the popularized narratives (by photographers, galleries, art critics, etc.) that place more value on art over the well- being of photographic subjects? How does an ethical disposition critically engage with and resist received narratives (see Chapters 5–6)? In his review of diCorcia’s project for The New York

Times, art critic Michael Kimmelman (2014) wrote, “Good art makes you see the world differently, at least for a while, and after seeing Mr. diCorcia’s new ‘Heads,’ for the next few hours you won’t pass another person on the street in the same absent way” (para. 6). But are the harmful impacts of diCorcia’s practice permissible if they serve artistic, aesthetic purposes? For diCorcia, the gallery, and those who criticize Nussenzweig’s legal action, the aesthetic and cultural value of art trumps the well-being of others. Chief curator of photography at the Museum

33 of Modern Art Peter Galassi wrote an affidavit offered to the court in support of diCorcia. Galassi argued,

If the law were to forbid artists to exhibit and sell photographs made in public places

without the consent of all who might appear in those photographs, then artistic expression

in the field of photography would suffer drastically. If such a ban were projected

retroactively, it would rob the public of one of the most valuable traditions of our cultural

inheritance. (Gefter, 2006, para. 10)

Galassi’s analysis misses the crucial point that what is legal is not always ethical. Moreover,

Galassi’s response also suggests that ethically-engaged street photography may only be possible in tandem with prohibition or regulation. Ethics is not about what is allowed or disallowed, it is about modes of relating (where an ethical disposition attends to the effects of one’s modes of relating). While the court ruled in favor of diCorcia and Pace/MacGill, New York State Supreme

Court Justice Judith J. Gische (2006) noted the court’s decision did not deny the effects the encounter had on Nussenzweig. According to Justice Gische,

Clearly, plaintiff [Nussenzweig] finds the use of the photograph bearing his likeness

deeply and spiritually offensive. The sincerity of his beliefs is not questioned by

defendants or this court. While sensitive to plaintiff's distress, it is not redressable in the

courts of civil law. In this regard, the courts have uniformly upheld Constitutional 1st

Amendment protections, even in the face of a deeply offensive use of someone’s

likeness. (Nussenzweig v. diCorcia, para. 52)

Within a legalistic model, those who experience harm may get accused of inflicting it on themselves. In her analysis of the Nussenzweig v. diCorcia case, Rachel A. Wortman (2010) argued, “In suing Philip-Lorca diCorcia and the Pace/MacGill Gallery for what he believed was a violation of his personal right to privacy and his right to his religious beliefs, Erno Nussenzweig was the one who violated himself” (p. 6). Wortman continued, “No longer like the unidentifiable man on the street—a subject of the city that one passes by each day, Nussenzweig selected

34 himself out, not diCorcia’s photograph of him as ‘Head’” (p. 6). Moreover, Wortman argued, due to “the potentially significant implications of the case for the art world, major newspapers and art publications closely followed the court proceedings. Each time a story about the case was published, the image of Nussenzweig was reproduced alongside the story” (p. 6). But is

Nussenzweig to blame for communicating grievance via legal channels if they are the only recourse available to him after diCorcia and Pace/MacGill refused his request to halt further circulation of his image? In the absence of a reparative, community-oriented means of resolving conflict, does Nussenzweig violate and expose himself, or is it the juridical system and media desire for “news worthy” content? By narrowing the space where the other can make appeals— where the other can respond—Galassi and Wortman’s arguments may dissuade others from communicating grievance or seeking recourse. Ethics manifests in one’s response or non- response, whether one’s modes of relating allow the other to respond or not respond. As such, rather than dismissing it, an ethical disposition is hospitable to the other’s response.

DiCorcia’s practice is not an isolated case, nor does it take place in vacuum, but rather it is a part of an orientation informed by and indebted to the aesthetic perspective of Western canonical art as intrinsically superior. DiCorcia’s approach echoes and reproduces early colonial practices of narrative scripting (through racializing taxonomies) and surveillance gaze.

Describing the aim of his project, diCorcia said: “I was investigating things; the nature of chance, the possibility that you can make work that is empathetic without actually even meeting the

[photographed] people” (Tate, 2010, 2:39). DiCorcia investigated the nature of chance, yet he inflexibly responded to the chance encounter that led to the court case between Nussenzweig and diCorcia. DiCorcia investigated the possibility of creating surreptitious photographs that are also empathetic, yet he prioritized the aesthetic impact of his art and dismissed Nussenzweig’s claims.

DiCorcia’s erasure of the effects of his practice via (re)scripting what “empathic” entails to serve his own individual artistic desires mirrors and extends colonial knowledge production. This example also affirms the insufficiency of abstract concepts (e.g., empathy) as ethical signifiers for

35 ethical engagement: they do not always attend to the necessarily relational dimensions of photography/existence.

DiCorcia did not believe he defamed the people in his pictures, since, “as opposed to

Walker Evans or some other people,” he did not conceal himself or his camera (Tate, 2:39). Yet his set-up and conceptual framework were organized around the voyeuristic practice of seeing without being seen. Heads acts as a technically sophisticated aesthetic exercise in surveillance, whereby the highly technical dimensions deflect critical readings beyond aesthetic impact. By thinking through capacities and not properties, it is possible to observe overlaps between street photography and surveillance practices (see Chapter 3).11

Further, diCorcia takes a defeatist attitude, suggesting widespread surveillance cancels out the ethical role of the photographer. Arguing that it is futile to expect to remain unphotographed while in public, diCorcia says, “There is really no expectation of privacy in a public place anymore in the world. And London and New York [are] saturated with surveillance cameras” (Tate, 2010, 2:11). In this formulation, widespread surveillance subsumes the ethical role of the photographer, where the compelled nature of surveillance photography legitimizes compelled surveillance photography on the part of the individual photographer. Moreover, diCorcia’s formulation neglects that surveillance, both historically and today, is designed and exercised differentially as a project of racialized population management and control. In other words, diCorcia experiences widespread surveillance in cities like London and New York differently than the people who reside outside the frame of white prototypicality around which surveillance practices are structured (Browne, 2015; see Chapter 3).

In contrast to street photography as a technical practice that is bounded to the moment of taking a picture, and in contrast to street photography as an aesthetic practice concerned with the

11 Simon Baker (2010) writes, “Essentially, diCorcia worked like a hunter in a hide or lair, waiting for his prey to appear directly in the crosshairs of his sight” (pp. 210-211).

36 production and interpretation of images, I suggest here that street photography is a mode of being in relation that produces effects and thus has ethical dimensions that exceed the photographic moment.

Conclusion

What is ethics? Ethics is imbricated in every encounter that produces effects. Ethics manifests in the effects of one’s modes of relating. Some ethical framings can be unethical. An ethics is an orientation, a mode of relating which has consequences. In this chapter, I argued that an ethical disposition is necessarily open to and invites revisions that attend to the uncertainty and unknowability that are unavoidable conditions of existence. In the chapters that follow, I develop an ethics of encounter as a dispositional, nonhuman-centered approach to street photography ethics. An ethics of encounter can be understood as a counter-pedagogy to modes of ethics that defer, divert, and foreclose ethical engagement (e.g., human-centered, applied, legalistic, individualistic, defeatist, etc.). As an ethically-engaged pedagogy of slowing down, an ethics of encounter traces rather than presumes how light (Chapter 3), cameras (Chapter 4), photographs and photographic archives (Chapters 5–6), and surveillance infrastructures (Chapter 7) exercise agentic capacity in relational processes that have ethical implications. In Locating Ethics in Street

Photography Discourse (Chapter 2), I address the ethico-pedagogical significance of attending to the relationship between defining street photography and designating its ethics; between approaches to street photography ethics and their ethical consequences; and between defining the contours of street photography and foreclosing the space to practice it otherwise—that is, between relations and their effects.

Chapter 2

Locating Ethics in Street Photography Discourse

In what ways does defining street photography designate its ethics? What are the ethico- pedagogical implications of prioritizing a consent-based model as a framework for street photography ethics? To what extent does a focus on technical and formal-aesthetic dimensions of street photography deflect critical readings of the practice?

In this chapter, I examine the ethical implications of how street photography scholars and practitioners conceptualize the genre and its ethics, historically and today. Some scholars and practitioners of street photography state their ethical dispositions explicitly, others imply it through the ways in which they conceptualize the practice. I argue that, whether explicitly or implicitly, the ways in which street photography scholars and practitioners conceptualize the genre has ethical implications. In the process, I examine the limits of representationalist models of ethics, legalistic models of ethics, and defeatist models of ethics that claim the ethical role of street photographers diminishes with the general state of widespread surveillance.

Defining Street Photography

Within the past three decades, a number of scholars have offered distinct, if sometimes overlapping, definitions of street photography. Historian and critic Gilles Mora (1998) defines street photography as “a genre practiced by photographers who make their primary subject modern urban life, much of which unfolds in the street” (p. 186). For historian Colin Westerbeck

(1994), taking “candid pictures of everyday life in the street … at its core, is what street photography is,” while the street is “any public place where a photographer could take pictures of subjects who were unknown to him and, whenever possible, unconscious of his presence”

(Westerbeck & Meyerowitz, pp. 34–35). Similarly, street photographer David Gibson (2014) describes street photography as “any kind of photography taken in a public space. It is usually of ordinary people going about their everyday lives” (pp. 8–9). Street photographer Valérie Jardin’s

(2018) definition of street photography also emphasizes the human element and touches on the

38 candid approach to street photography but acknowledges the genre’s social aspects: “Sometimes referred to as ‘candid’ or ‘social documentary photography’, this genre usually includes people, or the idea of people, generally in a public place” (p. 3). For Curators Sophie Howarth and

Stephen McLaren (2010), “at its most essential,” street photography is “focused on the task of seeing the everyday world around us more clearly” (p. 61). Howarth and McLaren, like

Westerbeck and Gibson, recognize the centrality of everyday life to street photography, but also, by showing “the everyday world around us more clearly,” street photography’s pedagogical potential.

Existing definitions of street photography have differences, but they also converge around certain ideas. One idea with which most scholars agree is that street photography is not necessarily confined to the street itself but extends to other places within the urban environment.

For example, in Bystander: A History of Street Photography, one of the largest historical accounts of street photography available today, Westerbeck emphasizes that the street

might be a crowded boulevard or a country lane, a park in the city or a boardwalk at the

beach, a lively café or a deserted hallway in a tenement, or even a subway car or the

lobby of a theatre. (p. 35)

Street photography involves more than a focus on street activity. Howarth and McLaren note that what inspires street photography is not necessarily tied to the literal street, but often also includes

“underground trains, front porches and parks—anywhere [one] could observe honest people going about their daily lives” (p. 9). Similarly, Jardin stresses that “the photograph doesn’t have to be captured on the street. For example, the human element can be on the beach or inside a building” (p. 3). In his book The Street Photographer’s Manual, Gibson addresses the question of whether photographs that include “farm animals and landscape,” for example, can be appropriately labeled street photographs (p. 9). Ultimately, Gibson contends that what matters is not so much the precise content of the photograph, but instead the approach that the photograph

39 embodies: “The idea of street photography can extend far beyond the big city” (p. 9). This, however, raises the question: what is this “idea of street photography” to which Gibson alludes?

Ideas about street photography matter for its ethics. For Gibson, photographs can suggest the idea of street photography—even when they are taken outside of urban locations and lack any direct reference to urban environments—if they include “people and show [their] eccentricities,” or reflect “a quirky sense of humour” (p. 9). For other scholars, the “idea” of street photography—or what is sometimes described as the “essence” (Howarth & McLaren), “nature”

(Gibson; Scott, 2007; Westerbeck & Meyerowitz, 1994), or “spirit” (Gibson) of street photography—can be located in street photography’s chief features and characteristics or the characteristics of street photographers themselves. In other words, scholars come up with their own understandings of the “nature” of street photography through their characterizations of the genre and its practitioners, or through what they perceive or establish as the genre’s major features. Put another way, whether intentionally or not, the characteristics scholars choose to emphasize generate a particular narrative about street photography; about what it is, does, or can do. Such characterizations pertain to conventions about the genre’s aesthetic qualities, formal properties, or subject matter. They pertain to the role of street photographers, their temperaments, and their dispositions. But also, these characterizations pertain to the perceived motives or intentions of street photographers. In what follows, I examine some of the recurrent characterizations of the genre and its practitioners, which in turn come to reflect the so-called

“nature” or spirit of street photography and consequently influence the genre’s ethos.

Characterizations of Street Photography

Scholars writing about street photography often attach a recurring set of attributes to the street photographer. This, in turn, produces a defined image of this figure’s roles and aspirations.

Similarly, the features many scholars ascribe to street photography both create and sustain a particular narrative about the pedagogical functions and ethical implications of the genre. In what

40 follows, I discuss the ethico-pedagogical limitations of some of the popular scholarly narratives constructed around the street photographer and the genre of street photography.

The Flâneur and the Street Photographer

Historically and in recent years, the flâneur has been employed as both a point of reference and as a point of comparison to the street photographer (Howarth & McLaren; Scott;

Westerbeck & Meyerowitz, 1994; Yee, 2008). The flâneur describes a literary figure that came into prominence as an urban type in 19th-century Paris, and is most notably discussed by French author Victor Fournel and French poet and literary critic Charles Baudelaire, and, later on, by philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin, who drew on the writings of Fournel and Baudelaire

(Westerbeck & Meyerowitz, pp. 40–42). Mid-19th-century Paris experienced drastic changes both to its architecture and to its city streets. Architect Baron Haussmann redesigned the city under the instruction of French emperor Napoleon III (formerly president of France, Louis-

Napoléon Bonaparte). The redesign introduced a new kind of mobility to the city’s inhabitants. In response to the rapid urbanization of Paris, the flâneur became a figure that adopted a particular mode of navigating a city in transition (Westerbeck & Meyerowitz, p. 40). Even before Paris underwent major transformations, “the idea that the street was a theater” had already been established as a consequence of the social and political unrest France experienced “from the revolution of 1789 to the student rebellion of 1968” (pp. 39–40). Nevertheless, it was the modernization of Paris that amplified this notion as it “created a permanent set on which the street theatre of Paris could be performed, as it were, in repertory” (p. 40). Furthermore, while flânerie was not a new concept, the modernization of Paris gave rise to the figure of the flâneur and provided the “street theatre” to which this figure responds (p. 40).

The flâneur, as Westerbeck explains, was “a walker in the city. He was a connoisseur of the street,” both observant and reflective (Westerbeck & Meyerowitz, pp. 40–41). Westerbeck further explains that while one side of the flâneur is calm, composed, and self-disciplined, the other is “is a gawker, a gaper, a rubbernecker” (p. 41). For the flâneur, “looking becomes

41 participation, a way to be drawn into the scene” (p. 41). “Both a euphoric participant and a cold observer” (Westerbeck & Meyerowitz, p. 43–44), the flâneur roams the city streets with the intention of getting lost in them, of being immersed in the crowds that occupy them, and of responding to the contingencies of city streets with elation, passion, and eagerness (pp. 41–42).

Westerbeck extends the parallel between street photography and the history of Paris. Not only did street photography inherit from 19th-century Paris an association of the street with theater, but also an idea of what the city street has to offer: “Like the metaphor of the street as theatre, the street scene as endless chance juxtapositions, a cornucopia of imagery, carried over from periods of murder and mayhem into the everyday life of the city” (p. 42). The city street, therefore, is understood not only as a theater where events worth witnessing take place, but also as a source of inspiration.

The flâneur is often compared to the street photographer based on the supposition that the former prefigures the latter (Scott, p. 1; Westerbeck & Meyerowitz, p. 44). Scholars also compare the two figures because both are understood to share a participatory relation to the street while also remaining to some degree removed from it. Both figures, in other words, seem to share an infatuation with the street as a rich source of inspiration and as theater. For example, in her introduction to the 2008 book Street Art, Street Life: From the 1950s to Now, curator Lydia Yee ascribes the notion of the street as a rich resource for street photographers to Baudelaire’s exploration of the changing Paris: “Ever since Charles Baudelaire’s 1986 [originally published in

1863] essay ‘The Painter of Modern Life’ inspired the impressionists to paint modern subjects— such as Parisian boulevards, bridges, and sidewalk cafés—the street has been a compelling source of inspiration for generations of artists” (p. 6). She also cites Baudelaire’s description of the flâneur as “a ‘gentleman stroller of city streets’” and “a detached man of leisure observing his own urban milieu,” as well as the “ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent” attributes of the modern street to demonstrate how artists and photographers came to understand the city street in the years following his 1863 publication (p. 6). In effect, Yee locates the flâneur and nineteenth-

42 century Paris as precursors to current practices of street photography, and by making this link at the very beginning of the book, she gives it considerable weight.

However, not all scholars of street photography readily subscribe to a narrative that unequivocally links street photography to the figure of the flâneur. For example, in his 2017 book

Street photography: From Atget to Cartier-Bresson, Clive Scott is skeptical when it comes to accounts that locate 19th-century Paris as the birthplace of street photography (p. 1). In a different chapter of the same book in which Yee connects street photography to the flâneur, curator

Katherine A. Bussard (2008) argues against an image of street photography that focuses primarily on “mobility, instantaneity, and selection” (p. 92) or that emphasizes “visual contrasts, ironic juxtapositions, and lively vantage points,” all of which most street photographers and scholars would likely include “in the current understanding of the genre” (p. 91). That is to say, Bussard argues against an image of street photography that is analogous to the practices of the flâneur as well as against other descriptors that are commonly attached to both figures (e.g. mobility, instantaneity, visual contrasts, ironic juxtapositions).

Nevertheless, whether citing the flâneur explicitly or not, common understandings of the street photographer today take their cue from the figure of the flâneur, as they portray a figure whose image is constructed from terms and descriptors associated with the flâneur. For example,

Howarth and McLaren characterize street photographers as those who “thrive on the unexpected, seeing the street as a theatre of endless possibilities, the cast list never fixed until the shutter is pressed” (p. 9). In their characterization, Howarth and McLaren link the flâneur’s experience of the street as theater and resource to how street photographers have experienced the city street in more recent years. Howarth and McLaren also describe the street photographer as one who

“revels in the poetic possibilities that an inquisitive mind and a camera can conjure out of everyday life” (p. 9). Such a description is undeniably similar to portrayals of the flâneur, who, for example, “celebrate(s) the joys of coming upon the unexpected and the untoward” and who revels in “the mysteries of the urban spectacle” (Ferguson, 1997, p. 83). While Howarth and

43 McLaren do not explicitly cite the flâneur in their descriptions of the street photographer, they do bring up the connection later on in their book. “The street photographer is the archetypal flâneur,” they state, citing Baudelaire’s definition of the flâneur, “a botanist of the sidewalk,” as “an apt description for most of the photographers” discussed in their book (p. 117).

While the flâneur might be the more widely used analogy to the street photographer, other metaphors can also be found. David Gibson, for example, likens street photography to jazz, and the street photographer to the jazz musician. “Both forms of art were developed by mavericks,” he argues, and both the street photographer and the jazz musician get lost: “they have an idea where they are going, they are in control but they are open to chance and what feels right in the moment” (p. 8).12 According to Gibson’s description, the street photographer, the jazz musician, and the flâneur appear quite similar.

Using the flâneur or the characteristics embodied by the flâneur to describe the quintessential street photographer of today can be problematic if that figure is taken as a ready- made image to be applied to contemporary street photography without qualification. First, forgoing a discussion of the gendered nature of the flâneur imparts a male-centered understanding of that figure (Tester, 1987). Second, unqualified analogies that use the flâneur risk romanticizing some questionable modes of engagement embodied by that figure. For example, Westerbeck describes the figure of the flâneur as “at once both boisterous and sneaky, sentimental and alienated” (p. 44), without further examining the intrusive nature of “sneaky” behavior or the limits of “sentimental” modes of engagement. Third, analogies that use the flâneur focus on the visual aspects of the process of flâneurie, neglecting the non-ocular and relational dimensions of such practices. In Camera Relationality (Chapter 4), I take up the relational dimensions of flâneurie, arguing that street photography can be concerned with embodied ways of knowing rather than limiting pedagogical value to the production of visual artifacts.

12 For more on the relationship between photography and chance, refer to Kelsey, R. (2015). Photography and the art of chance. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

44 Within writings on street photography, descriptions of street photographers and street photographs overlap more than contrast. In what follows, I examine descriptions of street photographers’ purported temperament, disposition, and aspirations, as well as notions about what makes “successful” street photographs and what goes into taking them. I argue that these ideas about the photographers themselves influence ideas about street photography ethics today.

Temperament and Approach

Street photography scholars provide two major portrayals of the street photographer’s temperament: the bold type and the shy or reclusive type. The first, perhaps more familiar, image of the street photographer is the bold type, fearlessly approaching their subject, despite the potential resistance, objections, or dangers they may face. Some, such as Gibson, go as far as arguing that to be a street photographer, one cannot be apprehensive about photographing people or about how they might react: “This mindset needs to be undone completely, otherwise you will not be doing street photography properly” (p. 21). Street photographers potentially face resistance or objections from photographic subjects who respond aggressively to being photographed without permission. As Howarth and McLaren admit, “Street photographers will always face threats or violence from those who expressly do not want their pictures taken, but most accept this as an intrinsic risk of the profession” (p. 11). Nevertheless, Howarth and McLaren stress:

“These are not easy times for street photographers, for whom acting suspiciously is an occupational hazard and loitering with intent a modus operandi” (p. 11). Street photographers increasingly find themselves “working in an environment mistrustful of their motives with suspicion stoked and supported by media misrepresentations” (Scammell, 2011, p. 56). While surveillance mechanisms, to varying degrees, have been historically mobilized for purposes of social formation and organization, the emphasis on terrorism around the events of September 11 in the United States marked an intensification of surveillance mechanisms more broadly, an intensification that continues to the present day. One result of associating and rendering security and terrorist threats as everyday concerns is that street photographers have become targets of state

45 and nonstate policing, as the activities they engage in are now more likely to be deemed suspicious (Howarth & McLaren, p. 11). Along with resistance from photographic subjects and various forms of state and nonstate policing, street photographers face legal repercussions: “In an increasingly litigious era where lawyers will take up their cudgels on behalf of anyone who feels they may been offended, violated or harassed by a photographer, we can expect further legal battles over the right to take photographs of strangers in public” (Howarth &McLaren, p. 11). A street photographer of the bold type would be unhindered by such threats. Many celebrated street photographers, such as William Klein, occupy this camp. Notable contemporary examples include Bruce Gilden and Martin Parr, both members of Magnum Photos, the “world’s most influential photographers collective,” as the Magnum agency describes it (Ghannam, 2017, p. 2).

The other image of the street photographer, the shy or reclusive type, is no less common, if surprising to some. Westerbeck argues, for example, “Manic shyness and desire for anonymity are the traits typical of street photographers” (p. 41). Howarth & McLaren, meanwhile, describe shyness as “a surprisingly common characteristic among street photographers” [emphasis mine]

(p. 13). While Howarth & McLaren find shyness to be unexpected among street photographers, they still acknowledge that anonymity is a common desire within this group (pp. 12–13). They cite, for example, Henri Cartier-Bresson likening himself to a taxi driver: “an anonymous someone to whom people reveal their inner selves” (p. 12). More to the point, Howarth and

McLaren cite Robert Frank’s account of what he finds compelling about the photographic process: “What I like about photography is precisely this: that I could walk away and I could be silent and it was done very quickly and there was no direct involvement” (p. 13). Howarth and

McLaren also cite a contemporary street photographer, Richard Kalvar, to point toward a third type, perhaps a fusion of the two. Kalvar admits: “I’m kind of shy and sneaky and aggressive at the same time. Sometimes I have the nerve, sometimes I don’t” (Howarth and McLaren, p. 12).

Street photographers of this camp resort to a variety of approaches to accommodate their shy or

46 reclusive temperament. Whether they are of the bold or shy type, street photographers’ desire to see without being seen, and even their approach to being seen, has ethical implications.

Street photographers take different approaches to accommodate their reclusive or shy temperament, each with its ethical implications. For Jardin, revealing one’s identity need not only take place through confrontation, provoking eye contact, or getting too close to the subject. While

Jardin acknowledges that “a common approach to street photography is provoking eye contact,” she herself does “not enjoy this method, finding it a bit too bold and not a good experience for the subject” (p. 25). Jardin points out that it is important for street photographers to factor in their own personalities as they develop a process for approaching their photographic subjects: “If getting too close is really uncomfortable and unpleasant for you, then why do it?” she asks (p.

17). Jardin is ambivalent about the “in your face” style of street photography, citing it as one approach among many: “Street photography is not necessarily synonymous with being in your subject’s face. There are many ways to approach this exciting genre of photography. You may enjoy shooting all the different ways or just one of them” (p. 17). Jardin’s ambivalence about the subject continues in her discussion of the use of up-close flash photography. “Some street photographers,” Jardin notes, likely referring to photographers like Bruce Gilden (see Chapter 3),

“will go as far as using a flash and photographing their subjects up close with the use of a bright light” (p. 25). Jardin admits that this method “does not fit everyone’s personality, and there are many other ways to practice street photography without provoking your subject” (p. 25). While

Jardin acknowledges that this practice is “not a good experience for the subject,” she concedes that in certain cases it is reasonable: “When done well, the images can be very powerful” (p. 25).

Therefore, while Jardin acknowledges different types of approaches, including numerous non- confrontational possibilities for practicing street photography, she does not stick to her initial instinct to avoid practices that might not be “a good experience for the subject.” While her own approach to street photography is rather sensitive, Jardin’s position is that “when done well,” the

47 “in your subject’s face” approach is equally appropriate. This is an approach that prioritizes technical and formal-aesthetic dimensions over ethical ones.

When scholars characterize street photographers’ approaches—as either bold or shy, for example—and when these approaches are presented on a continuum that allows each extreme to be understood as appropriate “when done well,” they miss a crucial point: each approach is relationally distinct and has different ethical implications. The in-your-face approach of the bold type, for example, might be more ethically questionable, as it may produce psycho-sensory experiences many would find uncomfortable and certainly would not welcome. The presence of the photographer, in contrast, leaves open the possibility for subjects to confront, contest, or otherwise respond to the photographer and the fact of being photographed. The obsessive self- removal from the photographic situation or scene, which both shy or reclusive and bold approaches may enact, can also be ethically questionable as it distances the photographer from the possibility of accountability (see Chapter 4). Moreover, the “when done well” approach focuses on the final photograph, which is a product-oriented and aesthetically motivated approach. In the chapters that follow, I develop an ethico-pedagogical approach that is instead concerned with tracing processes and relations.

It is not only the style of approach that photographers assume or that scholars of street photography prioritize that have ethical implications; the use of photographic technology and how photographers relate to this technology is also ethically weighted. I take up this discussion further in Light and the Photographic Encounter (Chapter 3) and Camera Relationality (Chapter 4), arguing that an ethics of street photography necessitates an ethics of encounter that takes into account the manifold relationalities present in street photographic practices.

Regardless of their different temperaments, what connects street photographers is their obsession with the practice and an almost uncontrollable impulse to take street photographs

(Gibson, 2014; Howarth & McLaren, 2010; Jardin, 2018; Westerbeck & Meyerowitz, 1994).

48 Obsession and Impulse

As note in the previous section, most practitioners and scholars of street photography do not believe that there is a single temperament that must be shared by all street photographers.

Gibson asserts that the bold style of street photography exemplified by, for instance, British photographer Martin Parr—a style that involves getting “close” to the subject—is not something all street photographers must share. However, something they do need to share is “obsession,” which Gibson identifies as a “prerequisite” for practicing street photography and learning to do it properly (p. 24). In Street Photography: Creative Vision Behind the Lens, Jardin describes her own practice in similar terms; for her, the search for potential photographs does not stop, for example, even when one gets hungry (p. 10). Jardin’s book is divided into two parts: the first provides an introductory account of the diverse approaches to street photography and what goes into taking “a stronger photograph,” while the second part details the processes of taking street photographs through an examination of her own photographic work (p. 3). The book format can be described as educational; she addresses it to both aspiring and experienced street photographers. She provides subsections called “assignments,” which offer readers exercises that might prove helpful to their growth as street photographers. Jardin provides advice, too: she encourages street photographers to keep a snack on hand while out to photograph so that when the desire or need for replenishment arises, they need not waste any time (p. 10). However, Jardin stresses, if the street photographer does need to stop for nourishment, it is important that even their stop for food “will offer some photo opportunities. The street photographer never puts the camera away!” (Jardin, p. 10). For Jardin, as for Gibson, constant—that is, obsessive—attention is essential to street photography proper.

The obsession that characterizes street photographers is sometimes described as a compulsion and an imperative. Westerbeck uses the term “bystander” to describe this kind of obsession with taking street photographs as well as to describe the kind of people who “come to bear witness” (p. 36). For Westerbeck, this term is important enough to appear in the title of his

49 book—Bystander: A History of Street Photography. Like any bystander, the street photographer goes outside for the explicit purpose of making observations. But unlike bystanders, making observations is, for street photographers, “almost the same thing as making observances, as if taking the photograph were a ritual fulfillment of a moral obligation” (p. 36). Whether they aim to photograph covertly or overtly, Westerbeck notes that most of the photographers covered in his book share “a compulsion to take pictures, an irresistible need to do it, an imperative that reaches from Eugène Atget to Henri Cartier-Bresson, from amateurs to professionals, and from the most famous among them to (one suspects) the most completely anonymous and secretive” (p. 36).

Howarth and McLaren, too, claim that “the essence of what is now known as ‘street photography’” is “the impulse to take candid pictures in the stream of everyday life” (p. 9). This obsession, this impulse, to take street photographs is driven, or at least bolstered, by a ceaseless desire to capture everyday life in new ways. The city street offers a way to fulfill this desire in the form of endless chance encounters and unexpected juxtapositions.

There are certainly both formal and aesthetic variations among street photographic practices; for instance, consider the more formally oriented practices of Henri Cartier-Bresson, the more aggressive and off-center approaches of William Klein and Bruce Gilden, or Trent

Parke’s “haunting, otherworldly visual style that flies in the face of convention” (Howarth &

McLaren, pp. 11–12). Still, certain characterizations, certain terms, recur in discussions of street photographs. Consequently, such characterizations contribute to understandings of the genre.

When prioritized for their visual rather than relational dimensions, the repetitive use of terms such as juxtaposition, spontaneity, humor, and playfulness, among others, produce an image of what street photography looks like, or should look like; these repeated terms can influence the kinds of images and approaches street photographers seek and pursue. The kinds of images and approaches street photographers seek and pursue have ethico-pedagogical implications.

50 Successful Street Photographs

While most street photography scholars agree that at least some understanding of technique is useful when it comes to taking good street photographs, they also point out that it is not of primary importance. Jardin, for example, states that light, background, and composition are all elements that contribute to a good street photograph, but that “it is often the ‘imperfections’ and surprises that make a great street image” (p. 7). An “emotionally charged” image can be a successful street photograph even when it is “technically imperfect” (Jardin, p. 7). Howarth and

McLaren, too, believe that “technical virtuosity, original composition and compelling content are all essential,” but that they do not automatically assure “great” street photographs (p. 10). The major characteristics attributed to street photographs, therefore, relate not only to their formal- aesthetic dimensions, but also to the emotional weight and narrative potential that photographs can evoke. For Gibson, for example, “street photography can be dark, edgy and surreal but it can also be light, warm and joyous” (Gibson, p. 9). For Howarth and McLaren, even while “a great street photograph may only show us a hundredth of a second of real life,” “in a single frame it can distil a remarkable amount of truth, showing the everyday with such wit or honesty that it will time and again amaze, delight or move us” (p. 10). The emotions and visual imaginaries street photographs are able to conjure are therefore linked to their success.

For Howarth and McLaren, what constitutes compelling content is more worthy of discussion than technical virtuosity and original composition. In street photographs, subject matter might include “something truly unusual—an extraordinary face, an accident, or a crime in the making” (Howarth & McLaren, p. 9). Or it might include “someone very colorful among a crowd of dark business suits, a tall man walking a tiny dog, two people talking with their hands or lovers in an embrace” (Jardin, p. 39). Subject matter in street photography is something or someone that “stand(s) out” (Jardin, pp. 22; 38–39). When it comes to content, then, the element of surprise makes up an important characteristic in street photography. However, simply capturing the unusual does not necessarily make for a “great” street photograph. Rather, a “great”

51 street photograph is able to sustain viewing and does not come across as too obvious: “A great street photograph must elicit more than a quick glance and moment of recognition from the viewer. A sense of mystery and intrigue should remain, and what is withheld is often as important as what is revealed” (Howarth & McLaren, p. 10). Elements of surprise and intrigue therefore complement each other in the making of great street photographs.

Furthermore, in street photography, subject matter can be made interesting through framing and composition: juxtapositions or similarities between colors or shapes within a given environment, or even subjects’ “body language, facial expressions or fashion statements,” can contribute to a robust composition (Jardin, p. 50). “Juxtapositions in art,” explains Jardin, “simply mean drawing a contrast between two elements” (p. 50).13 At times, such contrasts present themselves to street photographers as they travel city streets. In those instances, Jardin recommends, street photographers must take advantage of the opportunity presented (p. 50).

However, street photographers can benefit from intentionally finding, or creating, such juxtapositions. As Jardin advises, “You can find the right stage, and wait for the right person to enter your frame (a billboard featuring a model on an exercise machine and an overweight passerby eating a giant ice-cream cone, for example)” (p. 50). For Jardin, juxtapositions do more than make street photographs interesting: they are also able to add some humor to the composition (p. 50). Humor, Howarth and McLaren stress, “has long formed as valid a part of the lexicon of street photography as more earnest social documentary” (p. 13) and can be elicited by the “visual non-sequiturs and artful juxtapositions” (p. 12) and “visual puns” (p. 63) that often populate street photographs.

Juxtaposition is a term that comes up regularly in writings on street photography and is considered to be one of the genre’s main characteristics. As Howarth and McLaren state, “with its fondness for the idiosyncrasies of everyday life … mischief-making and a capacity to take

13 In contrast to juxtaposition as a formal-aesthetic dimension of photography, I examine juxtaposition as a critically experimental mode of analysis in Archival Ethics and Iconic Images (Chapter 6).

52 subjects out of context and juxtapose unrelated objects is in [street photography’s] blood” (p.

179). For street photography scholars, juxtaposition is tied to successful street photography in multiple ways. First, when it comes to subject matter, juxtapositions enhance content by bringing unrelated elements together, or by bringing together familiar elements in unusual ways, in ways that elicit humor and provoke thinking: “Some of these [juxtapositions],” Howarth and McLaren note, “are witty one-liners; others are complex critiques of the increasingly fluid relationship between dreams, signs and real life” (p. 63). Thus, successful juxtapositions lead to successful street photographs. Put another way, street photographs that are considered successful often contain successful juxtapositions. Second, juxtapositions can indicate the success of street photographers; that is, their ability to capture fleeting juxtapositions (through quickness, dexterity, or capturing “the decisive moment”), or their ability to create “interesting” juxtapositions, as did Walker Evans and Lee Friedlander, who, according to Howarth &

McLaren, “loved to photograph billboards, road signs, shop fronts and other found imagery, relishing the typography and graphic layout of the signs themselves as much as the visual puns they could make by juxtaposing them with real elements in a picture” (p. 63). To what extent do formal-aesthetic dimensions of street photography, when habitually emphasized, influence what gets prioritized in academic or even informal or online discussions of the genre? And what gets left out when a focus on juxtaposition takes place only in relation to formal qualities and technical virtuosity? In Camera Relationality (Chapter 4), I argue that an ethical disposition necessarily departs from product-motivated and ocular-centric notions of street photography since it exceeds the visual and may not always lead to the production of visual artifacts. Instead, taking into account the relational dimensions of street photographic practices allows the recognition of embodied and multisensory ways of knowing. In this sense, juxtaposition can be understood not merely as an instrument for visual success, but rather as an embodied mode of being in relation and way of knowing that need not always lead to the production of visual artifacts.

53 Street Photography and Elevating the Ordinary

Another feature widely reiterated is the ability of street photographers to elevate the ordinary, to discern and extract the extraordinary from the ordinary. Street photographers, according to Jardin, “see the extraordinary in the ordinary” (p. 35). Howarth and McLaren go even further, stating that street photographers “elevate the commonplace and familiar into something mythical and even heroic” (p. 9). For Howarth and McLaren, “all good street photographers have an eye for detail,” which increases their ability “to pick out a simple object and frame it in a way that imbues it with new significance” (p. 60). “A good street photograph is remarkable because it makes something very ordinary seem extraordinary,” they stress (Howarth

& McLaren, p. 9).

Beyond simply elevating the ordinary to something extraordinary, however, street photographers are able to produce invaluable records of events that happen only once and can never happen again (Jardin, pp. 7, 72). As Jardin argues, the street photographer’s job is not just to capture “an authentic moment in time,” but an authentic moment that “never happened before and will never happen again” (p. 72). It is perhaps as obvious that there is no other way to photograph than to photograph something that never happened before and will never happen again, as no two photographers will photograph the same thing in exactly the same way.

Nevertheless, what statements such as Jardin’s insinuate is the street photographer’s ability to capture “something special” (Jardin, p. 7), instantaneously and in a way that highlights the extraordinary found in the ordinary, the familiar, the commonplace. In other words, according to this assumption, the street photographer captures moments that would otherwise go unnoticed.

However, the idea that these moments would go unnoticed in the absence of a street photographer is flawed. As I argue further in Camera Relationality (Chapter 4), there is a long history of non- photographic practices (flânerie among them) that are highly perceptive of such ostensibly easy- to-miss moments.

54 For Westerbeck, street photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson are able to show viewers scenes that they are likely to miss by producing photographs so wondrous they almost seem to be “the product of his imagination” (p. 39). Westerbeck goes as far as to argue that street photography encompasses the most significant portion of any photographer’s body of work. At least, that is what his book sets out to do: “to reveal the extent to which [street photographs] have been the center, the motor, the inspiration” of the street photographer’s career overall (p. 35).

Westerbeck ascribes this superiority of the genre to how street photographers make use of what photography, as a medium, offers: namely, instantaneity and multiplicity. Westerbeck claims these two aspects of photography are inseparable from practices of street photography (p. 34). For

Westerbeck, street photographers use instantaneity and multiplicity more imaginatively than those practicing within other photographic domains, such as photojournalism or the early experiments of Eadweard James Muybridge (p. 34). Meanwhile, Jardin stresses, “street photography is not like any other genre of photography; you have to approach it differently,” with a method “that is subtler than any other photographic expression” (p. 7). According to such accounts, what street photography and its practitioners provide is what other genres and their practitioners cannot or do not provide.

Like analogies using the figure of the flâneur, such descriptions of the genre and its practitioners (that they elevate the ordinary, use photography more imaginatively than others, etc.) romanticize street photography as it exists today. Without assuming passivity on the part of readers—that readers will accept assigned descriptions of street photography or street photographers at face value—what kinds of ideas and considerations might these romanticized descriptions suggest to a street photographer? Does elevating the ordinary become more important than the well-being of photographic subjects? What are the ethical and pedagogical implications of uncritically valorizing street photographers and the genre of street photography?

Does presenting street photographic practices as superior to other forms of photography normalize certain intrusive behaviors? I take up the aforementioned questions later on in the

55 section on ethics, and, in Archival Ethics and Iconic Images (Chapter 6), I further discuss how the romanticizing practices involved in the production of iconic images inhibit or deflect some forms of critical engagement. In the following section, I examine how scholars portray the relationship between the street and the street photographer and what such portrayals of this relationship might suggest.

The Street and the Photographer

In the previous section, I discussed Westerbeck’s characterization of Cartier-Bresson’s ability to capture what goes on in the street in such a way that it appears almost fictional: “He sees so many things we cannot that we wonder whether the street itself isn’t just the product of his imagination,” Westerbeck claims (p. 39). At the same time, Westerbeck suggests that the condition of the street at the time Cartier-Bresson was practicing “has created a modern sensibility that photographers like Cartier-Bresson embody” (p. 39). Furthermore, as Westerbeck admits, while the street as subject matter might be equally compelling for all street photographers,

“as if it had its own personality, imposing itself upon (or perhaps seducing) any photographer who confronts it, the sensibilities of the photographers themselves are also obviously too varied for their individuality to be denied” (p. 35). Like Westerbeck, other street photography scholars discuss and portray the relationship between the street and the street photographer as more or less reciprocal. In some cases, the relationship is even poetic, where the photographer and the street enter into a kind of dance (Howarth & McLaren, p. 12).

The street is not simply a backdrop, rather, it is “subject matter, venue, and source of material and inspiration” for street photographers (Yee, p. 6). In return, street photographers provide the gift of immortalizing, preserving, and uncovering the complexity and vitality of the street, which, according to street photography scholars, gets overlooked in the course of everyday life. As much as the street photographer is “armed with a vision,” scholars suggest that the street itself provides the “photo opportunities” (Westerbeck & Meyerowitz, p. 34) to which the street photographer responds. Then again, while the street provides the fecund ground for inspiration,

56 street photographers, “in their spontaneous and often subconscious reaction to the fecundity of public life … elevate the commonplace and familiar into something mythical and even heroic”

(Howarth & McLaren, p. 9). While the street provides the photo opportunities, the “errant details, chance juxtapositions, odd non sequiturs, peculiarities of scale, the quirkiness of life in the street,” it is the street photographer’s “readiness to respond” that produces successful street photographs (Westerbeck & Meyerowitz, p. 34). The street photographer must be sharp, quick, and perceptive, but also anticipant and patient: “Anticipation, just like patience, is also the name of the game,” argues Jardin (p. 35). Jardin takes this association a step further, contending that

“not unlike the wild photographer who studies the behavior of animals in order to be better prepared to get the shot, the street photographer must rely on his or her study of human behavior to be able to capture the ‘decisive moment’” (p. 35). While the street is the ultimate resource for the street photographer, the street photographer’s readiness to apprehend what the street affords is what makes street photography. Thus, while scholars acknowledge a reciprocal relationship between the street and the photographer, this reciprocity is uneven. In this formulation, it is the street photographer—the human agent—who extracts meaning from the street, instead of meaning emerging as a result of a relational process in which the human is but a component part.

This is a human-centered approach that points to the photographer as the central figure in the street photographic process. Limiting agentic capacity to the human neglects the co-constitutive and co-implicated nature of photographic processes, and in turn produces a limited conception of ethics under which ethics takes place only between humans. In Light and the Photographic

Encounter (Chapter 3) and Camera Relationality (Chapter 4), I discuss the ethical implications of taking into account the agentic capacities of light and cameras in photographic practices and analyses.

57 Defining the Contours of Street Photography

The Human Figure in Street Photography

While on the one hand, scholars emphasize the role of the street photographer as the

“agent” who extracts meaning from the street, on the other, they emphasize the centrality of the human figure (or the allusion to it), to the genre of street photography. For Gibson, “street photography does not necessarily require people—evidence of people is just as valid” (p. 9). For

Jardin, in street photography, “the notion of ‘people’ is more important than the notion of

‘street’” (p. 3). Street photography, says Jardin, “doesn’t require a street or even a city, but it requires people, or at least the idea of people. If the human element is not present in the frame, then there should still be an idea of humanity that shows through” (p. 3). Jardin goes on to argue that “the human element doesn’t have to be in its pure form; the ‘idea’ of people can make a powerful photograph as well” (pp. 31–32). If the human element is “strongly implied … viewers can use their imaginations to fill in the gaps” (pp. 31–32). Still, Jardin elsewhere suggests that a focus on the traces of human presence rather than the human figure itself is in some instances merely a strategic solution (pp. 31–32). In other words, in the absence of an “interesting” human figure, street photographers might resort to capturing its traces (pp. 31–32).

The human figure and its traces are central to the genre of street photography. For

Westerbeck, street photographs may or may not include human figures, but they are likely to allude to humans. Westerbeck uses the street photographs of Eugène Atget—whose body of work largely consists of architecture and objects and rarely includes people (Bannos, 2017, p. 36)—to illustrate this point, concluding that while street photographs may not include people, they are likely to suggest peoples’ presence (p. 34). Although the human figure is not necessary to street photography, the human figure is usually implicit in street photographs (p. 34). Similarly, Gilles

Mora refers to Atget to describe a “distinctive version of street photography” in which street photographs hint at the existence of people not by showing them but by portraying their places of work and residence (p. 186). This “distinctive version” of street photography Mora describes is

58 what Howarth and McLaren would refer to as “still-life street photography” (pp. 60-61). Still life photography, Howarth and McLaren note, “has a long history, going back at least to Eugène

Atget,” and refers to “images that poetically document the things we buy, sell, fetishize, consume or discard. Although they generally do not include people, such photographs are nonetheless very human images that focus attention on the material props of our everyday lives” (p. 60). Howarth and McLaren, as well as Westerbeck and Mora, all offer a similar reading of Atget’s photographs: while his photographs, which are largely devoid of people, were meant to be documents for posterity and as visual aid for artists (Howarth & McLaren, p. 61), they are ultimately about humanity and human existence. However, that Atget photographed human traces to create images that “are ultimately about humanity and human existence” is an imposed, human-centered reading. As Simon Baker (2010) argues, “Atget appears to have been less interested in what we would now describe as the aesthetic characteristics of his photographs than in the aim and use of his pictures, ‘for artists’” (p. 206). Atget himself, Baker continues, “famously described examples of his work to Man Ray, in one of his few recorded statements, as ‘simply documents I make’”

(p. 206). While some attraction to the human figure as subject matter might be motivated by its formal-aesthetic dimensions, an emphasis on the human condition, or the human figure and its traces, as a measure of photographic success—and the compulsion to read photographs through a humanist lens—participate in the “rhetorical appeal to sentimentality [that] accentuates humanistic photography” (Smyth, 2015, para. 17; see Chapter 3). A focus on the human figure appeals to the rhetoric of sentimentality as a means to demonstrate an ostensible shared human condition, and this rhetoric works by masking real differences in experience (Barthes, 1957, p.

100). In Chapter 3, I discuss the ethical implications of the humanist, sentimentalist rhetoric in

Jacob Riis’s photographs and photographic practice.

Street Photography and The Candid Approach

Do street photographs need to be candid? Scholars debate whether photographs must be taken without the knowledge of the photographic subject in order to qualify as street photography.

59 On one side of the debate over what constitutes street photography in this genre lies the “candid” approach, which eschews any degree of staging or posing (Gibson, 2014; Howarth & McLaren,

2010; Westerbeck & Meyerowitz, 1994). On the other side lies a less constricting view, according to which practices that involve a subject’s awareness of being photographed, such as street portraiture, can also be considered street photography (Jardin, 2018). Drawing a distinction between these divergent views need not suggest a straightforward dichotomy in which only two sides exist, with a group that subscribes to the candid approach on one side, and a group that does not on the other. Rather, I draw this distinction to argue that a set of preoccupations and particular conceptions of photographic realism, by way of what they allow or disallow, influence each side’s ethical orientation.

There are several subsets within the group taking a more open approach. There are those in favor of a more open-ended and inclusive understanding of street photography, one that embraces practices that are not entirely candid (Jardin). Then, there are those ambivalent about the subject (Mora, 1998), those who, deliberately or otherwise, sidestep the discussion (Tucker,

2012), and those who are simply not concerned with it (Scott, 2007).

What are the ethical implications of flexible approaches to street photography? What are the ethical implications of disallowing non-candid forms of street photography such as portraiture? Jardin states early in her 2018 book Street Photography: Creative Vision Behind the

Lens that she does not “pay attention to those discussions” about whether or not street portraiture qualifies as street photography (p. 3). Nevertheless, Jardin’s book gives a clear sense of her orientation regarding the matter: all photographic examples included in the book are her own, and among them are numerous street portraits. Moreover, using the same consultative style that drives much of her book, Jardin encourages street photographers to practice street portraiture as a way to overcome the fear of photographing strangers, and she provides advice on the process of taking those portraits (pp. 10, 26–27). Jardin’s account therefore allows for intentional interactions between street photographers and their subjects. This might be considered a more socially

60 oriented—or relational—approach to street photography. An ethically-engaged pedagogy allows street photography to be a mode of relating otherwise, as much as it can be a practice of creating and sharing photographs (see Chapter 4).

In his book PhotoSpeak: A Guide to the Ideas, Movements, and Techniques of

Photography, 1839 to the Present, Gilles Mora (1998) describes street photographers as “those who pursue the fleeting instant, photographing their models either openly or surreptitiously, as casual passersby or as systematic observers” (p. 186). Mora does not endorse one type of street photography over the other (“openly or surreptitiously”), mentioning the two as variations of the same practice. Clive Scott calls out the seemingly strategic ambiguity of Mora’s definition and attributes it to

Mora’s wish to see the street photographer as both badaud (the “gawper” who happens to

be in the right place at the right time, without premeditation or motive) and flâneur (the

serious amateur of other people’s lives, in pursuit of quarry without quite knowing what

it might be), as both casual reportage and as the potential vehicle of a new aesthetic. (pp.

5–6)

For Scott, street photography as a genre is more complex than can be explained through a candid vs. non-candid framework. He describes Westebeck’s (1994) definition of street photography—“candid pictures of everyday life in the street” (Westerbeck & Meyerowitz, p.

34)—as “rather airy” (Scott, p. 5). Scott himself defines street photography in contrast to genres that are similar yet distinct from it, such as documentary photography and photojournalism, as well as through the genre’s historical relation to painting and surrealism. Similarly, historian

Jennifer Tucker (2012) does not use a candid versus non-candid framework to develop a definition of street photography. In fact, in her 2012 article “Eye on the Street: Photography in

Urban Public Spaces,” which examines street photography among other practices of photography in the street, the word “candid” does not come up once. Instead, Tucker examines the roles,

61 functions, and effects of practices of photography in the street in relation to developments in photographic technologies and the social, cultural, and political shifts to which they contributed.

As I note earlier, drawing the distinction between an exclusively candid approach and a more open approach is not meant to create a straightforward dichotomy, but rather to help examine the relationship between defining street photography and designating its ethics. Defining the contours of street photography is also a way of implying its ethics and aims. In other words, those who subscribe to the candid approach tend to be stricter about designating the parameters of the genre and defining what qualifies as street photography, but these bounded definitions follow from a particular conception of photographic realism and objectivity. According to David Gibson,

“Street photography’s core value is that it is never set up; this aspect is ‘non-negotiable’ because the guiding spirit of street photography is that it is real” (p. 9). Gibson is clear about this: if a photographic subject poses for the camera or gives consent, then “this is not street photography; it’s taking a staged portrait” (p. 17). The argument behind the candid approach is linked to photographic realism; that is, photography’s evidentiary potential, its promise of reflecting the

“real.” For Gibson, along with those who subscribe to the candid approach, a subject’s awareness of being photographed is antithetical to the nature of street photography, which is meant to reflect what is “real” (pp. 8–9). Interacting with the photographic subject means interfering with the photographic scene, rendering it inauthentic and therefore outside the confines of what can be labeled street photography proper (Gibson, p. 17). However, the notion of photographic objectivity maintained in “most mid-nineteenth-century writings about photographs”—the 19th century was a time during which “mimesis dominated Western thinking about the visual arts,

[and] the daguerreotype and the photograph on paper constituted ‘only the plain unvarnished truth; the actual is absolutely before us, and we know it’”—was disproven long ago (Schwartz,

2007, p. 70). As Joan M. Schwartz (2007) writes, “A great deal of late twentieth-century theorizing about photographs seeks to demonstrate that photographs are not truthful records of reality” (p. 70). Furthermore, those who subscribe to the candid approach, with their reliance on

62 this notion of photographic objectivity, can be described as “purist” rather than “pictorialist,” categories that can be understood in contemporary terms as “straight” and “manipulated” (Barrett,

1986, p. 53). However, as art critic and art educator Terry Barrett (1986) notes, such a distinction is problematic. He writes:

The major problem with such a division is that these labels tend to reinforce the notion

that a photograph can be “unmanipulated.” Although some photographs may not rely on

brushwork or montage techniques, all photographs are highly selected images which

radically transform the reality from which they emerge. All photographs manipulate,

some overtly, others subtly. Not to be cognizant of this when looking at photographs is to

misunderstand photography and aspects of the world which are photographed. (p. 53).

In contrast to this realist approach, the group not subscribing to the candid approach—the group with a more open approach—is preoccupied with street photography’s social potential and its relational aspects as much as, or more than, particularities of style in the genre. For this group, a subjects’ knowledge of being photographed does not render the photograph less “real.” Rather, it reflects one variation of the practice and offers a different kind of relationality. Those taking this open approach are more concerned with what street photography does or can do (its capacities; its social and relational aspects) than with describing what it is or looks like (its properties; its formal and aesthetic qualities). In relation to ethics, the group that values candidness might end up encouraging voyeuristic, or even intrusive, photographic practices, as it explicitly prohibits any sort of interaction or communication with photographic subjects.

Meanwhile, the portraiture-allowing, open-approach group, by virtue of being less restrictive and prescriptive, gives permission for less voyeuristic practices. Further, the open approach encourages creativity by providing space for exploring and imaging new kinds of practices that exist outside the framework of the candid approach.

An example of a less voyeuristic street photography practice is the method Robert

Doisneau used for Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville. Doisneau said in reference to the image: “I would

63 have never dared to photograph people like that. Lovers kissing in the street, those couples are rarely legitimate” (cited in Howarth & McLaren, p. 179). Because Doisneau was aware of the social and cultural context of his environment, he opted to stage the photograph, which appears as though it was taken candidly, or, as Howarth and McLaren would put it, has “the ‘street photography look’—with its connotations of quirkiness, fun and good luck” (Howarth &

McLaren, p. 183). As Howarth and McLaren note, most viewers would be distraught to learn that

Doisneau’s photograph is in fact not candid. This distraught feeling is perhaps a product of the mythical narrative of photographic objectivity, which designates the candid approach—or even simply “the look” of objectivity—as superior to non-candid approaches.

Unlike Doisneau, Jardin is not concerned with contextual aspects when photographing couples who “choose” to be out in public (p. 8). However, like him, Jardin is aware of the relationship between context and practice. This is perhaps most evident in her discussion of photographing children—a subject that brings up necessary contemporary concerns (Howarth &

McLaren, p. 12). When approaching children as photographic subjects, Jardin advises, one must proceed with caution: “If you are a parent, then you can relate to the uncomfortable feelings you get when you see someone observing your child” (p. 77). Jardin then discusses a method of communication that includes eye contact, but also other social and sensory cues:

In a candid situation, if a parent is present, then make eye contact and show your

intention to photograph the child without disrupting the scene. It is as simple as pointing

to the camera and smiling. If the parent has an objection, then he or she will let you know

without any doubt, whatever his or her language may be. … If, as is most often the case,

the parent nods back in approval, then go ahead and photograph the child. … Once the

parent gives you consent, then take your time, make a beautiful portrait and give a card to

the parent so that he or she can contact you for a copy. (p. 77)

For Jardin, when such a cue (the go-ahead, the parent’s silent nod) is given, the “scene” continues; events may still occur and new elements may enter or exit the frame. Therefore, the

64 photographer is still able to take “candid” photographs and the photographs would still be

“authentic,” even according to the realist formulation put forth by those faithful to the candid approach.

American street photographer Garry Winogrand argues that there is no real necessity to learn whether or not a photograph is staged if it achieves the same effect; that is, if a viewer is not able to discern whether or not it is staged. To paraphrase Winogrand, why would it matter if a photograph is staged if one cannot tell just by looking at it that it was staged (Howarth &

McLaren, p. 183)? “Every photograph could be set up,” Winogrand contends; “if one could imagine it, one could set it up,” (cited in Howarth & McLaren, p. 183). Therefore, it is perhaps more instructive to view the staging practices behind “great” street photographs not as disheartening or disappointing (Howarth & McLaren, p. 179), but instead as a way to question the uncritical faith in photographic objectivity prevalent within the candid approach. More importantly, such staging practices offer an alternative ethics to that of the candid approach, one that can still achieve the aesthetic and rhetorical qualities cherished by the candid approach but without compromising the well-being of the photographic subject.

Furthermore, for the group taking the open approach, staging does not make a street photograph less real and non-candid street photographs are just as capable of occupying a documentary status (Howarth & McLaren, pp. 180–183). This group, as I note earlier, is more invested in what street photography does than in defining what it is—or, for that matter, working within the space of that or any other constricting definition. Understanding things like photography according to its capacity rather than any kind of inherent property has ethical implications; in this case, the open approach expands while the candid approach restricts what one understands street photography to enable. As a social-material practice, street photography necessitates going beyond analyses of its properties (how it is defined and characterized) to include analyses of its capacities; what it is able to do when it interacts with other material practices and material beings (DeLanda, 2006, p. 7). When motivated by the question of what a

65 practice (e.g. street photography, surveillance, or another practice of photography in the street) is—what its properties are—it can be easy to understand that these practices produce different meanings and effects and that they operate in separate, irreconcilable fields. When motivated by the additional question of what these practices can do—what their capacities are—it can be more readily understood how they enable similar functions, how they produce meanings and effects that are not always radically different. Thus, understanding practices according to their capacities opens the space for discussing these different practices in relation to one another. I further discuss the relation between surveillance and other photographic practices in the concluding chapter

(Chapter 7).

Ethics in Street Photography Discourse

In the previous chapter (Chapter 1), I argued that ethics is concerned with relations and their effects, and how modes of relating inform one’s response or nonresponse. Some scholars address questions of ethics explicitly, while others express their ethical stance implicitly, through their analytical practices. However, as I argue below, the types of ethics street photography scholars employ are limited, since they do not account for the relational dimensions of street photographic practices. Moreover, when scholars approach the question of ethics explicitly, they often do so from representationalist models of ethics, legalistic models of ethics, or in distinction to surveillance practices more broadly. These are individualist approaches to ethics. In what follows, I discuss these approaches and their limitations.

The Limits of Representationalist Ethics

Unlike street photography scholars who only tangentially touch on questions of ethics,

Jardin (2018) and Gibson (2014), both street photographers themselves, reflect on the question of ethics directly. Perhaps this is because as practitioners, they encounter ethical dilemmas on the experiential level. However, both Jardin and Gibson approach ethics from a representationalist model, where the concern with ethics is a concern with whether, and how, subjects are to be represented photographically.

66 Jardin states the following with regard to ethics in street photography: “We all have a different definition of ethics. We are influenced by our education, culture and upbringing, but there are, in my opinion, certain ‘rules’ of ethics that derive from simple common sense, no matter who you are and where you live” (p. 8). Jardin does not elaborate on how “‘rules’ … derive from simple common sense” or what “simple common sense” in this case might entail.

However, as an instructional device, she presents her potential response to a number of hypothetical scenarios that pose ethical dilemmas. In one scenario, Jardin explores how one is to proceed if one “inadvertently photograph(s) a subject in an embarrassing situation” (p. 8). In such instances, Jardin states the following: “I will most likely never post the image publicly. I always ask myself, ‘If I were the subject of this photograph, would I feel bad having it displayed for the world to see?’ If the answer is yes, then the decision is quite simple” (p. 8). Jardin is unequivocal about street photographers’ responsibility to respect their subjects: “Respecting your subject is the number one rule in street photography,” she stresses (p. 8). For Jardin, respect for subjects is linked to how they are represented: street photographers should not be “photographing people in vulnerable or embarrassing situations,” for example (p. 8).

But Jardin’s representationalist model is insufficient for a number of reasons. First, it assumes the knowability of the other. How does one decide who is vulnerable and who is not?

How does one decide whether or not a situation is embarrassing? Jardin’s scenario suggests that there can be a standard of measurement from which to judge whether or not a subject is vulnerable, or whether or not a situation is embarrassing. For Jardin, one can base such judgments on appearance. For example, subjects to be avoided if one is to photograph ethically according to this approach include anything from unflattering representations to depictions of homelessness or destitution (the latter two have been extensively debated within photography discourse at large and widely accepted as subject matter to be either avoided altogether or approached carefully

(Goldberg, 2010, pp. 180–182)). In other words, what Jardin proposes is that the appearance or situation of a subject can, in itself, signal whether that subject should be photographed and

67 whether the resulting photographs should be circulated. Within Jardin’s representationalist model, subjects to be avoided would be limited to those with appearances and situations that are observably—that is, stereotypically—vulnerable or embarrassing. However, if the appearance of the subject can indicate whether or not they should be photographed, then there are certain assumptions that are being made about the subject. Likewise, if the situation of the subject can signal to whether or not they should be photographed, then the assumption is that one can fully know the subject’s situation.

Second, by assuming the knowability of the other, Jardin’s representationalist model leaves no room to safeguard those who do not fit within a predefined appearance or situation demonstrating vulnerability. In other words, if a potential subject is not recognizably (and therefore also subjectively) perceived as vulnerable or in an embarrassing situation, that in itself becomes permission to photograph this subject unwittingly. For Jardin—and she is not alone in this—the appearance of a subject (e.g. eccentricity, bold or singular sense of style, etc.) can even act as an invitation to being photographed. “We are often drawn to certain subjects by the way they are dressed. People who stand out in a crowd are likely to make strong subjects,” Jardin admits (p. 38). “People with lots of tattoos or colorful and/or unusual hairdos or outfits,” Jardin argues, “are both easy and interesting. They obviously like to be noticed” (p. 28). The assumption that those who do not conform to a normative image of ‘citizen’ “obviously like to be noticed” is problematic and raises questions about the subjective process by which a photographer gets to decide who does or does not fit within such constructed categories. In this sense, anyone who does not fit within the photographer’s subjective notion of a “conventional” or “typical” appearance is fair game since they “obviously like to be noticed.” This category might include the

“affluent,” who don expensive items of clothing and thus “stand out” from the “crowd.” It might also include models or fashionistas during fashion week, for whom being photographed would likely be perceived as a compliment. However, making such judgments based on nonconventional appearance disproportionately places the focus, and thus potential harm, on anyone the

68 photographer subjectively perceives as different from the norm. This might include foreigners or those who the photographer deems eccentric. It might include gender nonconforming people. It might include those who accidently—for example by mismatched clothing—appear strange or funny to the photographer. And it might also include racialized and gendered scrutinization, as when non-white hairstyles “invite” attention, or non-male-presenting subjects who dress fashionably are “asking for it.”

Third, a representationalist model allows for a focus on the well-being of the photographer rather than that of the subject when it comes to possible objections by the subject at the moment of contact. For Jardin, possible objections appear only in instances of confrontation.

She writes: “If someone confronts you, even though you are within your rights, then never become confrontational. Some people don’t like to be photographed, period. Always try to appease people, and explain what you are doing” (p. 8). “If things get heated,” Jardin stresses,

“then just thank them and leave quietly” (p. 8). Jardin’s statement communicates two main points: the first describes when street photography should be avoided (“if someone confronts you”), and the second articulates that street photography might affect subjects negatively and provoke adverse reactions (“some people don’t like to be photographed”). While Jardin acknowledges not wanting to be photographed as a valid response on the part of the subject and a good reason for the photographer to retreat, the focus of her statement is on disengaging with those who aggressively express their objections. But what about subjects who “don’t like to be photographed” but who are unaware of being photographed? What about subjects who are not aggressive in their response? Or those who are unable to respond for some reason? What about subjects for whom not wanting to be photographed has less to do with not liking it and more to do with how it might endanger their livelihood or their freedom?

Fourth, a representationalist notion of responsibility—where responsibility is about respecting one’s subjects as to not misrepresent them (Jardin, p. 8)—is insufficient as it is individualistic. Ethics, as I argued the previous chapter (Chapter 1), is concerned with one’s

69 response or nonresponse and with letting others respond or not respond. Responsibility in this sense “is not about right response,” but rather about response-ability, “the ability to respond”

(Barad, 2012, p. 81). In other words, response-ability is “a matter of inviting, welcoming, and enabling the response of the Other”; the “range of possible responses that are invited, the kinds of responses that are disinvited or ruled out as fitting responses, are constrained and conditioned by the questions asked, where questions are not simply innocent queries, but particular practices of engagement” (Barad, p. 81). Thus, responsibility is not about imagining what the subject might want based on what I might want; it “is not a calculation to be performed. It is a relation always already integral to the world’s ongoing intra-active becoming and not-becoming” (p. 81). As I discuss further in later chapters (Chapters 5–6), it is impossible to secure one’s photographs and photographic data against uses that disproportionately harm those who are nonwhite. Thus, I argue, street photography ethics is not just a matter of acquiring consent or figuring out who or how to represent a subject, but of deliberating possible uses (and misuses) over time that cannot be fully predicted beforehand.

Fifth, Jardin’s representationalist model of ethics is insufficient in its use of role reversal as an ethical signifier. For Jardin, a helpful means to ascertain whether a photograph is ethical is to question whether the photographer would accept being the subject depicted in it: “If it were you in the picture, then how would you feel? Would you mind it being posted on social media for everyone to see? If the answer is yes (you would mind), then you should probably think twice about using the image” (p. 71). However, the insufficiency of this model of ethics can be demonstrated by the fact that for each street photographer who would be wary of a given depiction, there is one who would not care.

Consider David Gibson’s (2014) use of role reversal in response to an ethical critique of one of his images. The image, by Gibson, includes a storefront that fills the entirety of the photograph’s horizontal frame, the bottom of which shows just enough sidewalk for a passersby to walk on. On either side of the storefront, large text reads “LAST FEW DAYS,” obviously

70 referring to some kind of clearance sale. To produce his image, Gibson followed what Jardin dubs a “minimalist approach to street photography,” a process whereby the photographer sets up the camera, frames a scene, waits for the “right” subject to enter into the camera’s frame to

“complete” the anticipated or desired composition, and then makes an exposure (Jardin, pp. 22–

24). He writes: “‘Last Few Days’ was taken in Brighton in 1998 and was a very deliberate—and waited—photograph” (Gibson, p. 180). The “right” subject, in this case, unsurprisingly follows the street photography formula of juxtaposition: “I was lucky, the ‘casting’ was perfect, and it was exactly what I wanted. It is not a cruel photograph but I accept that it is a raw photograph.

The man depicted is elderly and it was not his last few days but very likely his last few years”

(Gibson, pp. 180–181). Gibson admits that this photograph has been published widely “and in one photography magazine it prompted someone to write: ‘Perhaps when Mr Gibson is older, someone will photograph him like this and he will not find it quite so funny’” (p. 181). Gibson’s response to this ethical appeal, however, clearly demonstrates that he would find no issues if the roles were reversed: “I find this photograph more poignant than funny because it is an inescapable fact for all of us. And it grows ever more relevant” (p. 181). Instead of heeding the viewer’s response as an opportunity to reexamine the ethical implications of “Last Few Days” through another’s standpoint, Gibson dismisses such appeals by prioritizing his own interpretations and intentions: he invokes what the photograph means to him and him alone.

Elsewhere in his book, Gibson acknowledges the uneven power dynamic between street photographer and subject at the moment of photographing, and he discusses the possible intended and unintended misuses of the resulting images. He states, “It is not the role of the street photographer to alienate people either when photographing them or later in how the photograph is then used” (p. 180). Gibson goes on to argue that “street photography has been rejuvenated in an age overwhelmed by images, particularly online, but its serious practitioners have responsibilities, both to themselves and the wider photographic community” (p. 180). However, this is the extent to which Gibson takes the argument, stating that “these are not rules exactly but there are

71 definitely values in street photography for the greater good,” without explicating what these values “for the greater good” might be outside the representationalist framework (e.g., not photographing in unflattering ways; Gibson, p. 180). Gibson exemplifies the insufficiency of both the representationalist method of role reversal and the representationalist notion of responsibility.

Responsibility is not about “accurately representing” a subject, but about relations and how they produce effects. The human-centeredness of representationalist models return questions of ethics to individual interpretation and intentionality and do not consider processes of materialization that exceed what an artist or photographer “intends.” Responsibility, Karen Barad (2012) argues, “is not an obligation that the subject chooses, but rather an incarnate relation that precedes the intentionality of consciousness” (p. 81). Responsibility

is an iterative (re)opening up to, an enabling of responsiveness. Not through the

realization of some existing possibility, but through the iterative reworking of

im/possibility. Responsibility does not follow from any set of distinctions or individualist

conceptions of the nature of the subject. Rather, responsibility flows out of cuts that bind.

(p. 81)

Thus, ethical responsibility is not concerned with accurate or “real representation,” but with real effects: how the relations that unfold from the opening or constraining of response-ability produce effects—the cuts that bind—that matter, in other words, that have ethical implications.

Jardin acknowledges the material and relational aspects of street photography, and she locates these in instances of confrontation. Similarly, Gibson admits that “objectively [street photography] could be considered furtive, strange and at times intrusive or annoying” (p. 180).

Nevertheless, Gibson affirms that these facts about street photography should not be “deterrents but merely aspects that should be recognised” (p. 180). Knowing that street photography can come across as strange, intrusive, or annoying “need not be obstacles to taking street photographs, but more a construction of values, which can become personal and evident in the type of photographs you take” (p. 180). “Ethics and manners,” Gibson argues, “are important

72 aspects of street photography because ultimately they show in the pictures” [emphasis mine] (p.

180). Like Jardin, Gibson’s emphasis is on the photographer rather than the subject: for him, ethics and manners are important not necessarily for the sake of the subject’s well-being, but because they can make or break the photograph. Like Jardin, Gibson thinks that “the ethical principle underlying the practice is simply respect for other people” (p. 180). And, like Jardin,

Gibson thinks respect for photographic subjects has to do with how they are represented. Gibson states that “a sense of humour is a fine attribute and it is justifiable to poke gentle fun at humanity in its absurdities and paradoxes” (p. 180), but that “It is not acceptable to depict people cruelly or in an unflattering way. That is my ethos” (p. 180). And, while the personality of the photographer determines the kinds of images they take, for Gibson, “kindness, empathy and celebration should take precedence” (p. 180). Gibson does not shy away from admitting that “over the years,” he has not “strayed from” his self-described and self-imposed ethos (p. 180). “It would hurt me if in some way I had caused hurt by my photography,” Gibson professes (p. 180).

Nevertheless, Gibson quickly self-contradicts himself when he recalls a situation that arose in response to the circulation of “Last Few Days,” the photograph discussed above. One of the places to which “Last Few Days” traveled was “an exhibition about the elderly and some friends of the man depicted recognized him” (Gibson, p. 181). Gibson notes that he “therefore had some indirect correspondence with him [the man depicted] and he was apparently not happy about the photograph” (p. 181). While Gibson wrote that this photograph was imbued with his values and that “it would hurt me if in some way I had caused hurt by my photography” (p. 180), he dismisses the old man’s discomfort and uses a legalistic model of ethics to support his own claims: “But the photograph was taken in a public place—and crucially it was not being used commercially to sell a product” (p. 181). For Gibson, if someone is in a public place, then it is acceptable to photograph them, and if a photographer does not intend to financially profit from the resulting photographs, then it is acceptable to circulate such photographs. Why? Because doing so is legally permissible. While Gibson admits that “it is not the role of the street

73 photographer to alienate” (p. 180), the stranglehold of the legal argument persists, almost cancelling out the possibility of an ethics that goes beyond questions of consent, privacy, and legality.

The Legal Argument and Its Limits

Gibson is not alone in his recourse to legality as a model of ethics. As Jardin thinks through the ethical dilemmas that arise in relation to street photography, she considers whether photographing those in public who are “not supposed” to be there is permissible. She writes:

If, for example, I photograph lovers who are not “supposed” to be together but are in a

public place, then I see nothing wrong with it. It’s their choice to display affection

publicly, knowing that security cameras at every street corner are filming them. I will

certainly take liberty to make a beautiful photograph of the moment if serendipity allows

me to cross their path. (p. 8)

As Jardin’s reasoning demonstrates, a legalistic model equates law with ethics, and treats laws in themselves as ethical signifiers. If something is legal, then it must be ethical. Relying on the legal argument to justify public forms of photography—and to dismiss objections to being photographed in public—is not a new phenomenon. As early as 1907, an editorial in The

Independent followed a line of reasoning similar to Jardin’s: “As regards photography in public it may be laid as a fundamental principle that one has a right to photograph anything that he has the right to look at” (“The Ethics and Etiquet [sic],” 1907, p. 108). Today, this line of reasoning is just as prevalent, as can be observed in this almost identical argument: “Your basic right is actually pretty simple: if you’re in a public place and you can see it, you can shoot it”

(Klosowski, 2013, para. 3). Of course, one may be in a position to “shoot” what one “can see”; the question is whether one should. And if one imagines that one indeed should “shoot it,” and if one assumes an ethical disposition, the next question would be, how? There are numerous ways one can approach a photographic subject ethically and creatively without disallowing appeals by the subject. In the previous chapter (Chapter 1), I discussed possibilities for ethical engagement

74 with regard to potential lines of redress. I argued that street photography ethics is not a simple matter of asking for consent or deciding whether it is legally permissible to photograph those who are in public, but rather about critically considering the various levels at which street photography practices produce effects of ethical consequence. That is, ethical engagement does not end if or when consent is secured or at the moment of deciding to photograph (whether or not such a decision is derived from a legalistic model). Ethical engagement begins before these moments, for example, by cultivating a disposition that does not take for granted what is sanctioned by law.

Ethical engagement extends beyond these moments as well, for example, by critically considering the relational and intra-implicated aspects of photographic practices. Throughout the remainder of this dissertation, I consider such relational and intra-implicated aspects, which extend beyond the domain of human intentionality. The approach to ethics I propose thus departs from the human- centeredness of representationalist and legalistic models.

The idea that one cannot expect to go unphotographed while in public is unfounded.

Certainly, there is always the possibility that one could be photographed when in public.

Nevertheless, on the psycho-sensory level, the idea that there are street photographers who would embrace, or at the very least accept, the subject’s desire to remain unphotographed produces a possibility for navigating public space quite different from the one produced by a legalistic model. In other words, whether or not photographers can be held accountable produces a different atmosphere for those who occupy or travel in public space. Knowing that any recourse on the part of the subject will be dismissed or downplayed on the grounds of legality likely deters many from making claims to begin with. There are some photographers, such as Philip-Lorca diCorcia, who are so aggressive in response to subjects’ objections, it is as if they are saying, if you are in public then you deserve to be photographed. Here one can again observe the rhetorical resemblance between legalistic and representationalist models of ethics, the latter of which would contend that if you dress a certain way, you are asking to be photographed. Jardin makes this point several times throughout her book (pp. 18; 20; 28; 38). In one case, she writes, “How do you know if it is

75 a strong subject? … Part of it has to do with your subject’s physical appearance. I avoid photographing people wearing baggy clothes or backpacks. I find people wearing elegant clothes much more interesting” (Jardin, p. 20). Similarly, the author of The Independent editorial mentioned above argues, “When one appears in public it is always with the expectation and often with the purpose of being seen, and nowadays [one] must also anticipate being photographed”

[emphasis mine] (“The Ethics and Etiquet [sic],” p. 108). The author of this editorial makes the assumption that people in public are usually there to be seen, neglecting that for many, being in public is not a choice and may simply be a means of travel. The author also equates human vision with that of the camera, neglecting their material differences: the presence of cameras produce affective and psycho-sensory experiences unlike ones involved in person-to-person contact, and they produce images that materially and temporally extend beyond what human vision is capable of unaided. In Camera Relationality (Chapter 4), I discuss the materiality of the camera and why considering such materiality matters for ethics. In later chapters (Chapters 5–6), I discuss why an ethics of street photography must take into account the afterlives of images, since camera vision—unlike unaided human vision—produces photographs that cannot be secured and that may later be taken up in ways radically different from what a photographer intends. While some scholars and practitioners of street photography use the legalistic argument to determine the ethical role of the street photographer, others use the prevalence of surveillance argument.

The Prevalence of Surveillance Argument and Its Limits

It is becoming ever more difficult to circumvent surveillance technologies and mechanisms as they are becoming more prevalent everywhere. These technologies and mechanisms include surveillance cameras, security checkpoints within and outside of airports, and data collection and other forms of digital tracking. They also include “tokens of trust,” such as photo IDs, membership cards, and the all-too-familiar “agree to terms and conditions” process required at almost all points of digital contact (one is compelled to give—or trade off—this

“consent” in exchange for access to wireless networks, websites, mobile phone applications, etc.)

76 (Lyon, 2002). It may seem that most people have already lost control of their own images— whether through photographic reproduction or through what Kevin Haggerty and Richard Ericson

(2000) call the “data double,” which I discuss further in the concluding chapter (Chapter 7).

Many use this assumption to argue that it is futile to attempt to regulate, let alone resist, such loss of control to surveillance mechanisms. As Gibson argues, “Many people, given a choice, do not want to be photographed on the street, although in reality they are usually unaware of being photographed” (p. 180). For Howarth and McLaren, the prevalence of digital technologies such as

CCTV and Google Street View means that the relevance of objections to being photographed, such as seeking legal recourse, is put into question (p. 10). As noted earlier, for Jardin, subjects

“knowing that security cameras at every street corner are filming them” gives her license to photograph those who are “not ‘supposed’ to be together but are in a public place” (p. 8).

According to this formulation, the role of the street photographer is subsumed by the general state of widespread surveillance. In other words, the prevalence of surveillance somehow diminishes the street photographer’s responsibility to photographic subjects.

However, that surveillance mechanisms are prevalent and security cameras have become commonplace should not mean they are unproblematic or that they do not need problematization.

I argue instead that the increasing prevalence of surveillance mechanisms is what makes it pertinent to critically engage in the topic rather than adopt a fatalistic attitude. Instead of implying that readers and street photographers should acquiesce and accept the status quo, an ethically- engaged pedagogy must point towards the possibility, or even necessity, to interrogate, trouble, and resist such widespread surveillance. In other words, the conditions that make possible this ongoing increase of surveillance mechanisms and the conditions to which such mechanisms give rise must be placed under analysis (see Chapter 7).

As with surveillance practices, the power dynamics implicit in street photographic practices are uneven, and more often than not, they are tipped in favor of those behind the camera. Street photographers occupy a more powerful position than their subjects at the moment

77 of capture especially if, in addition to holding the means to photograph (the photographic apparatus), they do so surreptitiously (as in the candid approach to street photography). They can

“sneak on” (Gilden) (Howarth & McLaren, p. 13), “stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop” (Evans) (p. 9), or “hunt” (diCorcia) (Baker, 2010, pp. 210–211) someone in front of their camera frame. The street photographer also occupies the more powerful position in relation to controlling the circulation and visibility of the photograph. As works of art, street photographs often find their way into both online and offline spaces. Magazine features and other online or offline periodicals, books, gallery exhibitions, museums, exhibition catalogues, and so on, can yield widespread visibility. And, in a legalistic sense, as works circulated for “art,” and not “commercial” or for- profit purposes, the photographer (or their agency)—and not the subject—usually gets to choose how widely these works are circulated. In the previous chapter (Chapter 1), I discuss the example of diCorcia, who used the legal argument to win a court case against the aggrieved subject of one of his photographs. This allowed the continued circulation of the image. Thus, in ethical analyses, it is crucial to consider if and when street photographers enact surveillance mechanisms and photographic practices enact surveillance.

Moreover, as with most images uploaded to the web or cloud databases, street photographs can produce additional channels for tracking. Because contemporary photographic technologies such as phones and digital cameras do not simply produce images but also data, an ethical disposition must take into account non-visual forces operating in the photographic process, as data may be used in ways that exceed the photographer’s intentions. Metadata can be extracted and integrated for reverse geo-tagging, biometric analysis, and other algorithmically driven processes. Thus, it is not simply the image itself—its content, what it depicts—that requires ethical deliberation, but also any data it produces that may lead to further surveillance activities (see Chapter 7).

Surveillance practices are increasingly integrated into the dynamics of everyday life—not only in streets and malls, hospitals and airports, and buses and trains, but also inside the

78 classroom (Yujie, 2919), the personal car (Byrne, 2019), and, of course, the mobile phone.

Therefore, surveillance, like ethics, is an everyday issue. And, because surveillance is no longer limited to visual data, it is no longer limited to photographic processes (Haggerty & Ericson,

2000). The recent emergence and spread of COVID-19 has become an opportunity for governmental institutions to push for the increase of surveillance measures, whether through policy that allows for the use of web browser history without a warrant, or by the wider integration of technologies that then double as tracking devices into daily practices.

Governmental entities collaborate with private technology companies to develop these multi- purpose technologies, even though these companies’ interests align not with the public but rather with the market. Private technology companies financially benefit from this increase in surveillance mechanisms; they can build the infrastructures required by governments and also benefit from the increase of data ownership (Zuboff, 2019).

Because surveillance is an everyday issue, critically engaged street photography pedagogy must be positioned in resistance to assimilation into these practices, as well as against defeatist, fatalistic, and unproductive responses to oppressive power structures. Rather than being subsumed by the general spread of surveillance, street photography ethics can become even more relevant. Education about street photography’s processes, has the potential to more explicitly link everyday practices of the micro scale to surveillance practices of the macro scale. Focusing on the interrelations of these practices—on how one feeds, reinforces, or disrupts the other—affirms the possibility and necessity to intervene: Do one’s practices or the practices of the institutions in which one is employed grease the surveillance machine or somehow disrupt it? Do one’s practices take for granted the inevitability of (increasing) surveillance or do they contest it? In my discussion of the relationship between everyday and surveillance practices (Chapter 7), I propose a relational approach to surveillance that emphasizes the connections between military, governmental, and corporate institutions through the notion of infrastructural thinking (Parks &

Starosielski, 2015), and the racializing surveillance practices that emerged in conjunction with

79 European colonial expansion and transatlantic slavery through the notion of a critical biometric consciousness (Browne, 2015). In that chapter, I argue for considering the ethico-pedagogical implications of developing and enacting counter-practices of resistance through and within street photography pedagogy.

The Reliance on Street Photographers’ Practices and Statements

While some scholars express their notions of ethics in relation to street photography explicitly, others express these notions implicitly through their readings of the practices of, and statements made by, street photographers. First-person accounts of the experiential dimensions of street photographic practices can have pedagogical and analytical value, as they can provide some insight into the dynamics of the practice. Westerbeck (1994), for example, traces the development of street photography’s distinctive features to early practitioners who “discovered their idea of what a photograph should be by looking into the camera itself, improvising their art form as they went along” (p. 34). In itself, relying on what street photographers say to develop an understanding of the genre is not necessarily problematic. It can be a helpful way of getting insight, particularly because street photographers often describe the experiential aspects of their practices. However, without critique, these descriptions may become normalized. Normalizing street photographers’ accounts of their own practices becomes especially problematic when the activities to which they refer to are potentially harmful to others.

Curators Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren (2010) begin their book Street

Photography Now by citing Walker Evans, who once instructed photographers to “Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long” (p. 9). Rather than lingering on the implications and relationalities entailed by activities such as staring, prying, or eavesdropping, Howarth and McLaren claim that “no better advice has ever been given to street photographers” (p. 9). There is no mention, for example, of the voyeuristic or violating nature of activities that are characterized by an intrusion on the other.

Howarth and McLaren not only forgo critical analysis; they present Evans’s statement as

80 exemplary of successful street photographic practices. Howarth and McLaren’s statement that “no better advice has ever been given to street photographers” legitimizes and encourages staring, prying, or eavesdropping as a means to gain knowledge. Similarly, and without much qualification or reservation, Jardin confesses that “as street photographers, we are all a bit voyeuristic.” (p. 69). Howarth and McLaren further emphasize the centrality of Evans’s adage by using it as a framework to discuss the challenges street photographers have faced more recently:

“Tightening privacy laws and fears about terrorism have created an environment in which to stare, pry, listen or eavesdrop is increasingly to invite suspicion” (p. 11). If there is no better advice than that given by Evans, what this latter statement implies is that recent challenges make it difficult to practice street photography as successfully as Evans was able to. However, this perspective forecloses the possibility of other potentially less intrusive street photographic approaches.

Howarth and McLaren also cite Bruce Gilden, who said: “I work on negative energy. If you get me mad in the street, I’m flinging a camera in anyone’s face” (as cited in Howarth &

McLaren, p. 12). Further describing his approach, they cite his “sneakiness”: “I have to be a little bit sneaky because I don’t want [people] to know that I’m going to take a picture of them …

Sometimes they think that I’m taking something behind them.” (p. 13). Nevertheless, instead of questioning the nature of his aggressive approach, they describe him as “Fast, fluid, intuitive and fearless” (p. 12). Howarth and McLaren admit that “photographers do not exist in a moral bubble and those who behave as if an unfettered right to point a camera at a stranger is somehow enshrined in the Magna Carta or the Bill of Rights do not help the delicate contemporary situation” (p. 12). But while Gilden appears to behave this very way, Howarth and McLaren describe his practice uncritically and describe him in favorable terms.

Meanwhile, Howarth and McLaren describe William Klein’s approach to street photography this way: “Klein thrived on confrontation and was wholly unconcerned at offending people, whether out in the street or with the gritty looks of his prints” (p. 12). Similarly, Yee

81 (2008) states that Klein “preferred an aggressive approach, often provoking his subjects to respond by thrusting his camera in their face” (p. 13). However, all three authors discuss these as aesthetic, rather than ethical, dimensions of street photographic practices: art-making justifies activities that may otherwise be frowned upon.

Conclusion

I have argued here that relying on street photographers’ practices and statements to conceptualize the genre can be problematic. Leaning on street photographers’ practices and statements is potentially harmful (e.g., voyeuristic, intrusive, or predatory) when they are taken at face-value, whether they are merely relayed or they are presented as successful approaches to be emulated. When scholars valorize such activities and statements, they are normalized. They come to sustain intrusive practices on the one hand, and construct what becomes characteristic of sound street photographic practice on the other. While readers are not passive; uncritical, aesthetically motivated readings normalize, authorize, and encourage potentially harmful activities under the pretext of artistic practice. These readings present potentially harmful activities as unavoidable aspects of street photography: not only are they rendered appropriate and permissible, they come to seem indispensable to street photography.

In this chapter, I surveyed contemporary approaches to ethics in street photography. I began with an overview of the context out of which street photography emerged. I examined the difference between considering what street photography is, and what it enables. I then examined the limits of ethical arguments in street photography rooted in representationalist or legalistic approaches, or in a comparison to surveillance. I discussed the ethical implications of relying solely on the ethical approaches of street photographers when the approaches are problematic. In the rest of this dissertation, I argue for a relational approach to an ethics of encounter. This approach focuses on relations and their effects, which extend to nonhuman forces—light (Chapter

3), cameras (Chapter 4), photographs and photographic archives (Chapters 5–6), and surveillance infrastructures (Chapter 7).

82 Chapter 3

Light and the Photographic Encounter

In this chapter, I argue that light, in a relational process with other forces and entities, participates agentially in photography. I discuss how light works on the body in a relational process that produces distinctive situations. Light has the agential potential to engender, guide, inspire, influence, deter, constrain, or shift the course of an encounter. Since light has the capacity to affect the encounter, an ethically-engaged pedagogy takes into account light’s agential potential in street photography practices and analyses. Such a nonhuman-centered relational approach requires extending ethical engagement beyond the moment of a photographic encounter.

I develop an ethics of encounter as a pedagogy of slowing down and tracing, rather than presuming, relations and their effects.

Street photography here not only refers to the artistic genre and its attendant technical, aesthetic, and interpretive dimensions; it actually comprises manifold practices of photography in the street, including, but not limited to, artistic practices. In other words, in addition to its artistic manifestations, street photography includes micro scale practices (e.g., everyday, vernacular photography; snapshot photography; amateur photography; protest photography; citizen photojournalism; practices of counter- or sous-surveillance; documentary photography) as well as macro scale practices (e.g. photojournalism; commercial photography; security and CCTV camera photography; state and non-state surveillance practices; large scale photographic mapping projects such as Google Street View and Google Earth). Expanding one’s understanding of what street photography entails corresponds with the relational dimensions of the genre. Artistic practices do not take place in vacuum but are involved in the socio-cultural and politico-historical conditions under which they operate. In other words, street photographic practices of the micro scale both affect, and are affected by, those of the macro scale. Any ethical approach to street

83 photography must take into account the relations between both scales, which are interdependent, not separate.

Expanding what street photography includes is not meant to conflate diverse photographic practices or to erase their distinct modes of operations. Rather, it is meant to foreground how diverse photographic practices’ relations produce particular meanings and effects, and to emphasize the absence of any inherent boundaries designating each practice, because such boundaries are neither fixed nor stable. In other words, practices of the micro and macro scale often overlap and intersect in ways that render strict distinctions inadequate for ethical deliberation. Expanding what street photography includes enables analytic approaches to avoid overdetermining meaning and capacities, reducing causes to prescribed effects, or taking for granted the narratives attached to each practice. It enables one instead to take into account the relations and relational processes by which photographic phenomena and practices emerge. In this way, it becomes possible to examine how practices of the micro scale are implicated in those of the macro scale and vice versa; how, for example, the conditions entailed by increased surveillance affect the range of possible everyday photographic practices. Or, how citizen photojournalism can disrupt or put into question state-surveillance practices or corporate- and mainstream-media journalism. Or, how citizen-produced images intended as means of resistance or calls for activism become assimilated into the dominant narrative or employed for state surveillance, tracking, and prosecution.

Lantern Laws and the Agentic Capacities of Light

U.S. narratives of surveillance have mostly either emerged from, or can be traced back to, two figures and their conceptualizations of surveillance. The first figure is George Orwell, who wrote about Big Brother and the total surveillance society in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four

(1949), and the second is Michel Foucault, who theorized Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon in

Discipline and Punish (1975). As a corrective to this lineage, in her book Dark Matters: On the

Surveillance of Blackness, Simone Browne (2015) argues that what is largely missing from these

84 narratives of surveillance is its intimate and historico-material relation to transatlantic slavery. In other words, what has been neglected in these accounts is a constitutive dimension of surveillance: its dependence on racializing processes. Browne argues that for all of Orwell’s and

Foucault’s insights—and the theorizations that derive from them—into the mechanisms of surveillance and how it transforms and expands through time, neglecting the racializing dimension of surveillance is to miss the very mechanisms by which it operates. Browne argues that surveillance techniques are designed to manage Blackness and the nonwhite body and, by doing so, reify boundaries along racial lines.

Browne’s historico-material-discursive analysis considers the relationalities among multiple and heterogenous entities that simultaneously operate to produce and enact surveillance mechanisms. Browne examines the archives of chattel slavery; the plans of eighteenth-century slave ships, plantation rules, runaway slave documents, lantern laws, branding, and more, to demonstrate how the techniques involved in such practices work on the body and enact boundaries along lines of race, gender, and ability. By addressing the practices and objects of chattel slavery, Browne’s analysis takes into account nonhuman forces (e.g., branding irons, lantern lights, archives) that are constitutive components of surveillance mechanisms’ construction and enactment. Importantly, Browne does not take for granted the particular capacities of any one entity; taking into account that an entity’s capacities shift as it enters different sets of relations. For example, enacted at the slave barracks or the auction block, branding was a practice of marking the enslaved body by burning the skin with hot irons.

However, Browne’s approach does not overdetermine the branding iron’s agentic capacities; it allows room for understanding how branding functions differently within any particular assemblage. This approach corresponds with the contingent dimensions of inhabiting a world always in the making, or in a process of becoming. The branding iron variously functioned as a mechanism by which to punish; a way to classify, separate, hierarchize, and tag for purposes of trade and control; and a way to track and manage mobility by rendering certain bodies visible or

85 out of place. But while in these assemblages marks on the body signaled enslaved, “fugitive,” or runaway slave, in others, these same marks came to signal pride, freedom, and resistance for those who managed to escape.

Browne considers nonhuman entities neither as instruments nor background. Instead, by considering that nonhuman entities exercise agentic capacities, and by integrating them into the analysis without overdetermining their agentic capacities, Browne traces the historico-material antecedents to contemporary mechanisms of surveillance. She demonstrates that surveillance continues to function by making whiteness prototypical and by rendering Black and nonwhite bodies as out of place.

Lantern laws were instituted and enacted in eighteenth-century colonial New York City as a means by which to regulate the mobility of nonwhite bodies. These laws “sought to keep the black, the mixed-raced, and the indigenous body in a state of permanent illumination” (Browne, p. 67). They stipulated that, after dark, any nonwhite person must carry a lantern if not accompanied by a white person, thus extending the visibility of daylight into the night:

Lantern laws made the lit candle a supervisory device—any unattended slave was

mandated to carry one—and part of the legal framework that marked black, mixed-race,

and indigenous people as security risks in need of supervision after dark. In this way the

lit candle, in a panoptic fashion, sought to “extend to the night the security of the day.”

(Browne, p. 78; Foucault, 1975, as cited in Browne, p. 78)

This state of permanent illumination, or what Browne calls “black luminosity,” refers to “a form of boundary maintenance occurring at the site of the black body, whether by candlelight, flaming torch, or the camera flashbulb that documents the ritualized terror of a lynch mob” (p. 67). As such, Browne argues, black luminosity “is an exercise of panoptic power that belongs to, using the words of Michel Foucault, ‘the realm of the sun, never ending light; it is the non-material illumination that falls equally on all those on whom it is exercised’” (pp. 67–8, with reference to

Foucault, 1975). However, Browne counters that “perhaps … this is a light that shines more

86 brightly on some than on others” (p. 68), since these laws meant that any white person was deputized to discipline the nonwhite body perceived to be out of place. Browne continues,

We can think of the lantern as a prosthesis made mandatory after dark, a technology that

made it possible for the black body to be constantly illuminated from dusk to dawn made

knowable, locatable, and contained within the city. The black body, technologically

enhanced by way of a simple device made for a visual surplus where technology met

surveillance … and encoded white supremacy, as well as black luminosity, in law. In

situating lantern laws as a supervisory device that sought to render those who could be, or

were always and already, criminalized by this legal framework as outside the category of

the human and as un-visible, my intent is not to reify Western notions of “the human,”

but to say here that the candle lantern as a form of knowledge production about the black,

indigenous, and mixed-race subject was part of the project of a racializing surveillance

and became one of the ways that, to cite [Katherine] McKittrick, “Man comes to

represent the only viable expression of humanness, in effect, overrepresenting itself

discursively and empirically,” and I would add, technologically. With these lantern laws

in place and overrepresented Man needing no candle to walk after dark, these laws, then,

were overrepresenting Man as the human. (McKittrick, 2006, as cited in Browne, pp. 79–

80)

Browne’s analysis not only takes into account the agentic capacity of light, but also the relationalities that are a part of the construction of racialized surveillance practices, relationalities not limited to humans. Browne’s reading does not take for granted the narrative of surveillance; instead, by taking into account the diverse forces in the production of surveillance mechanisms, including, in this case, light, and by considering the material effects of light—its agentic capacity—Browne demonstrates how illumination becomes a form of identifying certain bodies and not others as out of place, thus complicating the notion of surveillance as race-, gender-, or class-neutral. In this and the remaining chapters, I argue that an ethics of encounter, as a

87 dispositional form of ethics for street photography, can take into account relations—and their effects—exceeding the bounds of human intentionality.

Writing About Light

Since relations produce effects, and relations extend to nonhumans, then for any ethics to be viable, it cannot dismiss nonhumans from analysis. Cartesian thinking and the binaries inherited from that kind of thinking treat humans as agents but (nonhuman) matter as an instrument or thing to be controlled or mastered (Coole & Frost, 2010). Such binaristic thinking can be discerned, for example, in the way writers discuss light and its relation to photography with anthropocentric, utilitarian, instrumentalist, or deterministic language.

Street photographer Valeri Jardin (2018), for example, says that “there is no ‘bad light’ in photography. There is easy light, and there is light that will make you work harder. It’s all about making the light work for you and photographing a subject that will work well in it” (p. 52).

Rather than considering light a co-participant in the photographic process, the phrase, “making light work for you,” suggests a relation where light is an instrument and the human the agent or actor who shapes the situation through pure determination. Photography magazines such as

Outdoor Photographer and Popular Photography often offer “instructional guides” that discuss photographic techniques and approaches. Like Jardin’s approach to light and photography, these instructional guides sometimes underscore the importance of “mastering” (Mastering Light, 2004;

Bernabe, 2014, para. 2) “conquering,” “overcoming” (Valind, 2014, para. 2), or “controlling”

(Geffert, 2013, para. 5) light. Light comes to be understood as that which can be fully knowable with the right kind of training: a passive entity, a tool by which the photographer achieves desired results. Using such language to describe light suggests a person dominating a thing. In other instances, these instructional guides underscore the importance of “using” or “making the most”

(Natural Light, n.d.) of light. While the former set of terms suggest clear hierarchical relations, and the latter hint at a somewhat collaborative approach, both examples presume a separation between person (photographer) and thing (light). Both examples assume each entity enters the

88 photographic encounter fully formed and exits unchanged by the relations entailed by the encounter. Along with these two set of terms and the relations such language entails, some instructional guides underscore the importance of “following” (Simon, 2016, para. 6) or “working with” light. The relations entailed by such terms as “following” or “working with” suggest a photographic process in which person and thing co-produce the photographic situation. While this co-productive sense of the relation between light and photography most closely resembles the approach I propose in this chapter, I argue that such a relation is not necessarily the result of conscious choice. In other words, light co-produces photography whether or not one consciously follows, works with, or is in relation to, light.

While the language of mastery or control over nature that characterizes some technical approaches to photography suggests that the human subject is the rational agent who produces photography by utilizing nonhuman objects, I argue in this chapter that light, in relation to other forces and entities, participates agentially in the photographic encounter in ways that cannot be fully captured by a language of mastery that presumes human-nonhuman separation. In photography’s chemical process, for example, light combines with other entities to produce the image. In Memoire on the Heliograph [originally published in 1839], photography inventor

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1980) describes the process in this way:

Light in the state of combination or decomposition reacts chemically on various

substances. It is absorbed by them, combines with them, and imparts to them new

properties. It augments the natural density of some substances, it even solidifies them and

renders them more or less insoluble, according to the duration or intensity of its action.

This is, in a few words, the basis of the invention. (p. 5)

While this chemical process can be to some degree prescribed, the manner in which light acts as it combines with paper, chemicals, environment, and so on, could always diverge from the prescribed plan; this necessitates repeated attempts in some instances or, in others, what in creative processes are often described as happy accidents. The pinhole camera, for example, relies

89 on this very unknowability. When one practices pinhole photography, one sets up a camera in which a tiny opening lets in light that will then imprint an image onto a piece of film paper inserted in the camera. Once one determines the desired location, positioning, and angle of the pinhole camera, one then leaves it there for the available light to do its work (since exposure depends on long duration). One may select a specific location and, in some instances, speculate with some degree of accuracy on how the nature of light in a specific timeframe and location might work to produce an image. However, one cannot fully predict the actual, final image. When practicing pinhole photography, in other words, one often anticipates not the actual results, but being surprised by the results.

The pinhole camera is modeled after the camera obscura, which predated photography as the process by which to fix an image. In the camera obscura, light, entering through a small circular opening, projects an inverted image of what lies on one side of the opening onto the other, usually a surface on which the image can be seen or traced. Light, in relation to a specific organization of apparatuses and architectural structures, produces the image. In contrast to the contemporary descriptions of light discussed above, early experimenters with photography described light in ways that hint at its agentic capacities and constitutive role in photography.

Niépce, for instance, used the term heliograph, which means “the writing of the sun,” to name his early-nineteenth-century photograph (Smith, 2013, p. 2). Henry Fox Talbot (1844–1846) used

The Pencil of Nature as the title to “the first photo-illustrated book” (p. 3). Decades later, Man

Ray (1934) used “The Age of Light” as the title to an essay in which he discusses photography.

These were not just metaphorical associations—as the etymology of the word suggests, photography literally means “lightwriting” (Batchen, 2002, p. 212)—but rather descriptions of light as a component part of a relational process in which other forces and entities combined or competed to produce photography.14

14 Katie Flint notes: “In the decades that followed the inventions of photography, to write about the new medium often entailed employing vocabulary in a way that evoked novelty and strangeness of both process

90 Art educators Cass Fey and Liz Bashore (2000) recognize that light composes a central aspect of photography; however, they discuss it largely from technical and formal-aesthetic perspectives. In their instructional resource from 2000, “Examining the Art of Photography,” Fey and Bashore offer an analysis and discussion of Tseng Kwong Chi’s photographs through which

“students will develop and sharpen observation, be exposed to the language of photography, practice interpretive skills, and address issues suggested by the photograph” (p. 26). One aspect

Fey and Bashore consider to be crucial to an analysis and discussion of photographs is light, since for them, it is “one of the most powerful photographic influences. … It shows details, creates shadows, and often contributes to the mood or feeling of the work” (p. 30). When observing photographs, Fey and Bashore suggest asking the following questions:

How would you describe the light in this photograph (for example, natural, artificial,

bright, harsh, soft, etc.)? What leads you to this conclusion? From what direction is light

coming from? How do you know? Describe the shadows. Are they subtle or do they

create strong contrast? How does the light affect the way we see Tseng Kwong Chi’s face

and attire in this self-portrait? Does light contribute to the mood or feeling of the work? If

so, how? (pp. 30–31)

The last of the pedagogical questions Fey and Bashore pose hints at how technical and formal- aesthetic dimensions influence the affective reception of photographs. In addition to considering the technical and formal-aesthetic dimensions of light in photographic practices and analyses, an ethically-engaged street photography pedagogy also considers its relational dimensions.

Light, in a relational process with other forces and entities, produces a photograph. I now turn to how light works on the body in a relational process that produces distinctive situations.

and product. At the centre of this discourse lay the language of light. The narrative of photographic technology in the nineteenth century is, for the most part, one of light’s relationship to motion, considering how to make the best use of natural light as it centered the camera’s aperture and fell for a moment or more onto a prepared surface within” (2017, p. 8).

91 Light, in other words, has the agential potential to engender, guide, inspire, influence, deter, constrain, or shift the course of an encounter.

Light and Movement

On the one hand, light, in relation to other forces and entities, produces photographs and affects photographs’ formal-aesthetic qualities, and thus, reception of them. On the other hand, light also produces the impetus to photograph. And, in specific assemblages, light not only produces the impetus to photograph, but also guides movement, orienting and reorienting the body (just as the camera does, as I discuss in the next chapter).

Whether in the chemical process by which images become fixed on a light-sensitive surface, paper, metal plate, or film, or in the digital process by which images become registered on a camera’s sensors(s), light is necessary for producing photographs. However, this only describes the production aspects of the photographic process. As I argue in my discussion of camera relationality (Chapter 4), because photography is a relational process that need not result in photographs, an ethical disposition for street photography can neither be product-oriented nor ocular-centric. That is, an ethical disposition not only examines light in relation to the moment of pressing the shutter or printing the image but extends this examination to how light is involved prior to, as well as after the moment, of photographic production.

Whatever source of light is available in the environment in which photographers find themselves influences the kinds of images produced. One refers to the available light, whether natural or artificial, to determine the necessary exposure settings required to produce a specific image or a particular aesthetic experience. Assuming that one is not using a camera’s automatic exposure setting, the available light suggests how one calculates the exposure settings and adjustments necessary to produce an image with certain aesthetic effects. A sunset or brightly-lit shop window at nighttime might provoke a photographer to create a silhouette image. To create a silhouette image, the exposure is set to the background, not the subject in the foreground. In other

92 words, to appear silhouetted in a photograph, the subject is “improperly” exposed on purpose.

Jardin explains such a process in this way:

Ideally, your exposure is set for the highlights or the background. Failure to do so will

expose your subject properly, and you will lose the silhouette while blowing out the

highlights in the background. Exposing for the highlights is easily done if your camera is

set to spot metering. You can also use average metering and trick your camera by

stopping down your exposure compensation so that your subject remains dark. (2018, p.

57)

But whatever is (aesthetically) achieved through this process, light’s participation does not end with influencing exposure calculation, but carries on to its reception. The nature of the light available might lead one to adjust exposure settings to produce images with unanticipated aesthetic dimensions that in turn influence its reception later on the affective level. As art critic

Hilton Als emphasizes,

a canvas, a photograph, or a moving picture might have an emotional resonance aside

from one’s own emotional history … an image might move one to a reaction because the

form or color might project an emotional resonance by virtue of the manner in which it is

done. (1985, p. 28)

While many cameras offer manual exposure capabilities, many others, including the phone camera, offer automatic exposure capabilities. But even with the use of automatic exposure, which eliminates the exposure calculation process, the available light still influences formal- aesthetic aspects of a photograph, and therefore its aesthetic reception. As Jardin puts it, “Harsh light will give you a dramatic look, late afternoon light will give you long shadows, fog will give a mysterious feel to your image, rain will open new possibilities and nighttime is one of the best times to hit the streets” (p. 52). But aside from light’s influence on exposure and photographic reception, light also influences, inspires, or guides movement.

93 One may experience a situation in which the specific conditions of light in that moment compels one to take out a camera to photograph. One may, upon encountering lighting that is

“just right,” end up wishing for a means by which to photograph. In some occasions, one may feel it necessary to delay one’s departure from a given location, to linger in a particular area, hoping for the possibility that the light will be just right and enable a desired photograph. On other occasions, the light may be so bright that one is compelled to physically move from one place to another, to turn away from or toward the light source or the shadows it casts. To produce a particular image or achieve a particular effect such the silhouette, one may feel it necessary to move around or invite a photographic subject to change location. In the absence of a natural source of light, one may resort to asking one’s “subject to move close to the light source, and use it as a giant soft box” (Jardin, p. 63). These are some of the ways in which light inspires or guides movement. Some photographers, for example, go out to photograph wagering that they will encounter instances in which light might issue a call: They “will walk the streets mile after mile, day after day, chasing the light, looking for stories” (Jardin, p. 3). However, “most frames will be uninteresting. The light is perfect at times, but the subject lacks interest” (Jardin, p. 3). Light might inspire one to photograph even in the absence of interesting subject matter, and a lack of appropriate light may provoke one to reconsider how or when to photograph compelling subject matter. Light, in other words, is one of the elements to which street photographers respond. As

Jardin argues,

The simplest way to do street photography is by simply walking the streets of any city,

small or large, and reacting to a specific scene, light, or subject. You may be struck by

the way the light is illuminating lovers sitting on the riverbank, an interesting expression

or gesture, a color and so on. (p. 17)

On some occasions, the lack of sufficient light, at night, for example, might demand the use of an external light source, which may be “shop windows, streetlights, mobile screen lights, neon signs and so on” (Jardin, p. 63). This might mean the use of the camera flash, which

94 produces a different kind of photographic situation—one that, as I argue later in this chapter, potentially harms others. Examining the effects of the flash on photographic subjects, Kate Flint

(2017) asks, “How do we understand the experience of witnessing, or being subject to, this sudden, brief illumination and this interruption of time: what … is it like to be at the receiving end of flashlight” (p. 2)? Flint states, “It may be to feel exposed; it almost certainly entails somatic discomfort,” and cites “Edward Henry Machin, in Arnold Bennett’s 1913 comic novella

The Regent, [who] suffers ‘the sudden flash of the photographer’s magnesium light, plainly felt by him through his closed lids’” as “a striking example of flash’s physiological impact on the body” (p. 2). The intrusiveness of the camera flash can make itself felt in a restaurant, classroom, museum, theatre, or a similar public social setting where the light is insufficient. In these places, attempting to photograph may release the automatic flash; upon encountering this, one may feel panic and the impulse to quickly turn around, cover up, or somehow block the source of light that is likely disturbing or disrupting the mood or scene. Being on the receiving end of the camera flash, one may experience moments of temporary blindness, those dark afterimage circles that disrupt one’s vision and fade away only with the passing of time.

An Ethics of Encounter

The photograph thus does not result from a purely mechanical relation of pressing a button, releasing the shutter, or fixing or inscribing an image on film, paper, or camera sensor. As

I have argued thus far, photography also entails movement and calculation in relation to other forces and entities: light, cameras, photographer, photographed, environment, and so on— particular assemblages in which many forces intra-act.15 To photograph, one responds to various forces and entities and enters into a set of relations, or assemblages, in a process that may or may

15 Developed by feminist theoretical physicist Karen Barad (2003; 2007; 2012), “intra-action” reworks the Cartesian interaction: rather than two or more separate entities interacting, intra-action does not assume a prior separation between entities, but rather refers to how meaning and phenomena emerge from within these intra-actions, not external to them. I explain the approach further in Archival Ethics and the Afterlife of Photographs (Chapter 5) and Archival Ethics and Iconic Images (Chapter 6).

95 not lead to a photograph. Photography, I argue in Camera Relationality (Chapter 4), is a relational process that need not always lead to photographs. And, understanding photography as something other than product-motivated has ethical implications I also take up in the following chapter.

Figure 1

A Single Frame From Photographer Takayuki Narita’s Series, Rose Garden (2014-2015)

Note. Photograph courtesy of Takayuki Narita.

One may take a stroll outside on a sunny day, pass by a rose garden, and decide to stop to photograph. Or, if it is sunny outside, one may take a walk, decide to take rest in a rose garden, and feel compelled to photograph how the sun envelopes the roses. Or, on a sunny day, one may decide to take a walk outside, happen upon a rose garden, and feel moved to photograph. Or, if it is sunny outside, one may decide to visit a rose garden and possibly take some pictures. Or, if it is

96 sunny outside, one may take a camera to go photograph a rose garden. Or, one may take a walk, notice people photographing a rose garden, and stop to observe people taking pictures. Or, one may take a walk on a sunny day, notice others photographing a rose garden, and decide to join them in taking pictures. Or, if it is sunny outside, one may take a walk and pass by a rose garden, notice people taking pictures, and stop to photograph them taking pictures and interacting with each other and/in the rose garden. Any one of these or other scenarios may precede the photographic event. It is the last scenario, however, that describes the process that led Japanese photographer Takayuki Narita to create the series Rose Garden (2014-2015), including the image below (Figure 1).

Light, as I have discussed thus far, participates in photography in manifold ways. The degree to which light participates has to be traced rather than presumed, but my argument is that it does participate. Crucially, light’s participation in photography takes place in relation; that is, in interaction with other forces and entities, both human and nonhuman. That is, when light exercises agentic capacities, it exercises these capacities through its interactions with other entities, rather than because of its intrinsic properties. An ethical approach for street photography entails acknowledging nonhuman agentic capacities on the one hand, and focusing on relations and their effects on the other. Thus, I propose an ethics of encounter as a mode of relating that moves beyond the technical, formal-aesthetic, and ocular dimensions of street photography, and instead foregrounds the interrelations, intra-implications, and mutually-constituting forces— including the sensory and bodily dimensions of these relations—that affect and shape an encounter. Consider the sensory experience of traveling by and/or through a rose garden on a sunny day: the scents, the smell of roses, of the soil, of other bodies occupying the space, of sweat, and of various kinds of fumes and car emissions; the temperature and weather conditions; the physical movement with, against, and between other bodies, other people, but also apparatuses, concrete and flowers; the sounds of traffic, chatter, possibly bees. All these participate and to some uncertain degree shape the encounter. Smell, sound, touch, texture: senses

97 and sensations that exceed the ocular are also component parts of the encounter. All these component parts, in a particular articulation of relations—an assemblage—produce the photographic event.

An ethics of encounter thinks in terms of relations at the level of production, circulation, and reception, where nonhuman entities have the potential to exercise agentic capacities and thus require ethical deliberation.16 I use the term agentic capacity rather than “agency” because

“agency is not something possessed by humans, or non-humans for that matter,” it is not a property that someone or something has, but a capacity to be exercised, “an enactment” (Barad,

2012, p. 55). Agentic capacity, by contrast, entails that the capacity to be agentic emerges from a specific configuration of a set of relations, which therefore must be traced rather than presumed. The very idea of searching for agency seeks to locate its presence or absence as a property of entities. It simply asks whether or not someone or something has agency.

Searching for agentic capacity, however, entails “tracing the contingent appearing (or not) of capacities for agency within any particular field of forces” (Coole, 2013, p. 458). This instead asks when, and to what degree of force, agentic capacity is exercised within a specific set of relations (that, in turn, produce effects contingent on those relations).

In Narita’s photograph, one can trace, for example, how light guides movement: one person is wearing both a hat and sunglasses, signaling to the particularly sunny day, with an iPad in hand pointed slightly upward toward the top part of a rose tree; another person is holding up an umbrella, obviously to create a pocket of shade to shield the iPad’s reflective screen, without which it may be too dark to view. In Narita’s photograph, there are people and things, people doing things. There is an assemblage of people and things, rather than two distinct entities, people versus things. There are competing and congealing desires rather than “people taking pictures.”

16 Thinking in terms of relations at the level of the encounter in moments of production, circulation, and reception means considering forces and entities operating before, during, and after the encounter: how light, cameras (Chapter 4), photographs and photographic archives (Chapters 5–6), and surveillance infrastructures (Chapter 7) participate in producing particular situations that may at times be harmful.

98 There is an assemblage in which component parts intra-act to produce the photographic event. A representationalist, technical, or human-centered reading of this image, of the photographic process, or of (photographic) desire might locate the emergence of the image in human choice rather than in a relational process whereby humans and nonhumans co-participate and co-create.

A representationalist approach might read for the content of the image—that is, its “subject matter”—and try to speculate on what the photograph is meant to represent. A technical approach might read for the formal-aesthetic qualities of the photograph and try to assess where the sun hits and to what effects. A human-centered approach might focus on figuring out what the photographer means or intends to communicate. What gets left out from such readings are nonhuman forces that operate with, against, within and between humans in the photographic process. In a nonhuman-centered approach, such as the one I propose, the desire to photograph is entangled with other desires and is produced in relation to, or in conjunction with, other desires.

Photography does not merely result from a “rational” subject making a decision to press the shutter, but rather from the interactions between multiple forces and entities—a host of sometimes-competing desires. Desire here does not stand for lack, the desire for, in the psychoanalytic sense, but rather “that which enables us to desire” (Buchanan, 1997, p. 88). Desire can be understood in terms of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s desire-as-machine, where a body is “the capacity to form new relations, and the desire to do so, which means it too is a machine” (Buchanan, pp. 82–83).17 The interactions between several entities—roses, trees, garden, garden trails, and the city infrastructure of Osaka, Japan; sunny, clear, inviting weather conditions; available technologies (camera, iPad, umbrella); congregation of people

(photographer, umbrella holder, garden visitors); as well as the mood, background, and Narita’s

17 Buchanan explains the Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) desiring-machines thus: “Contact is made via what Deleuze and Guattari call desiring-machines. It is our desiring-machines that make possible our transitively organized desires-for. The process of becoming-other can be thought of as the attempt to swallow a desiring-machine, to internalize it completely and become one with the BwO by removing all mediation. When it is swallowed, instead of making connections, forming new relations, entering into new arrangements of composition, which is the desiring-machines function under normal conditions, it involutes. It thereafter forms a relation only with itself” (p. 88).

99 prior experience—is the assemblage that produces Rose Garden. In this photographic- assemblage, then, it is not only the human who exercises agentic capacity: the image is not simply the result of a human choice to take a picture. Thus, the rose is not a passive or inert object, waiting to be captured by the human subject. Neither is light: it is not the background against which the human operates or something coopted in the service of taking an image; the human desires, but also, the rose desires, the sun desires, and the assemblage itself desires.

Suggesting that light (among other nonhuman entities) has agentic capacities, or that nonhumans are component parts of an assemblage, however, does not mean that all component parts exercise agentic capacity with the same degree of force. Rather, it is to suggest that these nonhuman component parts do intra-act—in correspondence with or in spite of human intentions, and regardless of the human’s conscious awareness of them—to co-produce the encounter. The concrete and pathways on which Narita traveled may not be the most authoritative components of the Rose Garden assemblage, but they are nonetheless component parts—along with the photographer who desires to photograph, the camera that desires to be pressed, the light of the sun in combination with the roses in the garden that invite attention, and so on. Thinking in terms of relations is non-reductionist in that it does not essentialize or totalize. In other words, it is not concerned with what things are but what they do.

It does not presume, for example, that agentic capacity is an essential property of light, suggesting that it will always act in the same way and with the same degree of force. It does not reduce causes and effects to a single entity, which, in human-centered approaches, tends to be the rational (human) subject or agent. Thinking in terms of relations is not concerned with overdetermining light’s agentic capacity, but rather with tracing how such capacity emerges in relation to other forces and entities—cameras, photographer, photographed, environment, and so on—to produce effects. The desire to photograph, then, cannot be traced to a single motivating will within the human. Market desire, political desire, cultural desire, and so on may also be involved, and if so, each would entail different relations.

100 While, for street photographers, in one instance light may inform the desire to photograph, in another it may arise from a desire for police accountability—such as in the case of some forms of protest photography. In the instance of protest photography, the visibility granted by light and camera is sometimes complicated by other material-discursive practices. For example, police may literally smash a camera or use the resulting images to track and prosecute protesters (legally, extra-legally, or by other means). Even in the case that police do not confiscate a camera at a protest, resulting photographs published online to encourage activist responses may be used instead as evidence to prosecute those who are photographed. Protest photography training thus involves techniques and strategies for remaining undetectable and avoiding later identification and prosecution. For example, by wearing face coverings at protests or blurring and obscuring the faces of protestors and interviewees in images later using digital processing.

Photographs have an evidentiary capacity, but their capacity to function as evidence is contingent on the situation in which they are put forward. Photographs that could exonerate become the very same ones used to incriminate and prosecute. The evidentiary capacity of photographs should not be dismissed; however, this capacity cannot be taken for granted and must always be analyzed against the conditions within which it is put to use. As professor of

American Studies Nicole Fleetwood (2015) demonstrates, the very same images that were meant to support the case against George Zimmerman were repurposed to justify the racially motivated killing of Trayvon Martin:18

At the same time that the prosecution stumbled, the defense borrowed the strategy of

“Justice for Trayvon” protesters by using images of Martin to build their case of why

Zimmerman would have feared for his life when confronting Martin. Their argument was

18 Trayvon Martin was 17 years old when he was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch member in Sanford, Florida at the time. Even though he admitted to shooting and killing Martin, Zimmerman was eventually acquitted.

101 that Martin’s photographic record—especially through social media—evidenced why

Zimmerman would have seen Martin as suspicions and therefore why Zimmerman would

have taken such extreme actions to protect himself and his community, as a “stand your

ground” defense. (p. 27)

The desire by police to amass large amounts of data or “evidence” thus is not motivated by a desire for a more accurate account of events but rather to support already-established narratives that mark nonwhite bodies as threats. The obsessive collection of “evidence” can be done in order to justify police brutality—or even murder—by portraying those on the receiving end of such brutality as criminals, or monsters immune to ordinary commands or non-lethal force.

Monetarily-motivated and guided by deadlines, corporate and mainstream media journalism often serves to reinforce such portrayals (Hall et al., 1987). An individualist, self-serving photographic practice fails to take into account that circulating pictures of protestors online can have a direct relation to someone else’s incarceration, or even death. An ethical disposition instead thinks relationally about effects beyond those in the immediate interest of the photographer and takes into account how photographs produce effects differentially depending on who is pictured, where, and when. The same set of images can function in divergent ways within assemblages composed of different people, systems, processes, desires, interests, and so on.19 For this reason, an ethically-engaged pedagogy analyzes images not as bounded entities, but as always in the making. Meaning that how images function and the meanings attached to them result from iterative, relational processes. For example, even the refusal or acceptance of a given narrative attached to images helps resist or sustain that narrative. Multiple forces and entities intra-act to produce effects, this is why an ethically-engaged pedagogy traces, rather than presumes, relations and their effects.

19 The component parts of an assemblage can work back on the assemblage (DeLanda, 2006). The circulation of an image can have effects; on the photographer, photographic subjects, or viewers. An image can become evidence that exonerates or a way to legitimize force. Or, an image of a rose garden may have effects on the rose garden, for example, by attracting visitors or encouraging its preservation.

102 Erich Salomon: Light, Surreptitious Photography, and the Candid Aesthetic

The process entailed by thinking in terms of relations, of course, takes time: it requires one to pause, linger with encounter, and trace how and where meaning, phenomena, and effects emerge from relations, rather than quickly assign causes to a single entity or assimilate meaning into already-established narratives. Enacting an ethically-engaged mode of relational analysis requires a pedagogy of slowing down and tracing, rather than presuming, relations and their effects. An ethically-engaged pedagogy does not seek to “uncover the nature” of things or present them as fully knowable or immutable (Bennett, 2004, p. 366). This is not a pedagogy guided by the hermeneutics of suspicion (to expose is to know) or by humanist notions of mastery over nature (to master is to know). Thinking in terms of relations does not fix upon the agentic capacity of any one entity, which would support or maintain a presupposed or already-established narrative; nor does it take for granted meaning attached to popular narratives—“this is agentic force without a narrative embedding” (p. Coole, p. 456). Thinking in terms of relations is instead a kind of close reading that requires one to trace instances in which agentic capacity emerges, including how such emergence relates to those undertaking photographic practices and analyses.

German photographer Erich Salomon (1886–1944) is often cited as one of the first photojournalists (Freund, 1980). As I argue below, lingering with the relations (within encounters, events) surrounding his photographic practices produces meanings that may go unnoticed if one reads such practices quickly. One of the qualities of the flash, for instance, is that it signals its own presence. When encountering a photograph one may be able to observe the use of flash “in the bleached-out foreground that often results from the explosive force of the flash”

(Flint, 2017, p. 10). Or, as Flint notes, if “the use of flash results in a reflection of the light source on windowpane or polished surface, one is directly reminded of the artifice, the crucial technology involved in the illumination” (p. 9). But the flash can also signal to the presence of a camera or photographer even as the photograph is being taken, alerting those in the vicinity through the flash’s somatic force and luminosity, of their presence. “Accounts of dazzled,

103 temporarily blinded retinas,” says Flint, are reasonably common, “for flash makes the body pay attention to the properties of visual technology (p. 2). This very force, this capacity of the flash to bring attention itself, led Salomon to not only avoid its use, but also denounce it—imploring other photojournalists to do the same:

The work of a press photographer who aspires to be more than just a craftsman is a

continuous struggle for his image. As the hunter is a captive of his passion to pursue his

game, so the photographer is obsessed by the unique photograph that he wants to obtain.

It is a continual battle against prejudices resulting from photographers who still work

with flashes, against the administration, the employees, the police, the security guards,

against poor lighting and the enormous problems of taking photographs of people in

motion. (Salomon, 1931, as cited in Freund, 1980, p. 122.)

Salomon had to negotiate different ways to gain access to spaces in which photography was neither welcomed nor allowed in order to “take secret snapshots of court-cases” and, with his concealed camera, to covertly photograph “politicians in conference” (Freund, p. 119; Batchen, p.

7). That Salomon photographed covertly explains the set of difficulties he lists in the passage cited above. To successfully evade “the administration, the employees, the police, the security guards,” and enter into spaces in which “newsworthy” events unfold but cameras are forbidden, and then to use the flash, with its self-exposing qualities, would contradict Salomon’s desire to remain unnoticed. Salomon would need to avoid using the flash in “poor lighting” or even to solve “the enormous problems of taking photographs of people in motion” if he was to remain unnoticed. But a concealed camera, poor lighting, and people in motion coupled with the absence of the flash produced, according to Gisèle Freund (1980), author of Photography and Society, the

“kind of candid shot that would revolutionize photojournalism” (p. 119). “Candid camera,” according to Geoffrey Batchen (2002), “was a phrase coined by the editor of Graphic in 1929 specifically to describe Salomon’s images” (p. 7). In one sense, then, Salomon’s committed renunciation of the flash seems to be motivated by, and corresponds to, the nature of his

104 photographic work and aspirations—that is, to photograph covertly and to safeguard photojournalists’ ease of movement in certain political and judicial spaces. In another sense, however, this renunciation of the flash embraces candid photography’s promise of producing what Freund calls that “unique photograph” (p. 122), “lively because, without the flash,

[Salomon] had caught the guests unaware” (p. 129). While Salomon was particularly aware of the flash’s penetrative capacity, he was not concerned with how it affected the photographic subject, but rather with how it affected the photographer. In other words, he eschewed flash not because of the potential affective and somatic discomfort flash could induce on a photographic subject, but rather to secure the photographer’s future; that is, the photographer’s ability to continue to photograph, and to do so undisturbed.

Reading Salomon’s practices quickly, one might conclude that he invented the candid style of photojournalism. But by pausing to examine the intra-acting components, the flash co- produces what is attributed to Salomon alone. That is, it is not simply the photographer’s intentions that birthed a form of surreptitious documentary photography and influenced “the look” of authenticity often attached to candid photographs. Instead, such a surreptitious approach to photography at this juncture emerges form a particular assemblage in which multiple forces and entities intra-act: the flash light, by way of its force and capacity to compensate for, or counteract, the slow exposure capabilities of early photographic apparatuses; the environment that deters photography and compels Salomon to photograph covertly; the regulatory, punitive policies and security measures that characterize governmental and judicial spaces; Salomon’s disposition, prior experience, and motives; and so on. In other words, a set of choices in response to a relational process that unfolds between various human and nonhuman forces produces the encounter. Through this relational analysis, one may learn that this “look” of authenticity contributes to what turns out to be only a myth: the idea that photographs can represent reality objectively; that unposed, surreptitious photographs are somehow more real than those in which subjects are aware of being photographed (Freund; Batchen).

105 Since meanings, capacities, and therefore effects shift as entities move into different sets of relations, thinking in terms of relations necessarily departs from any deterministic view of the essence of things and instead focuses “on the shifting associations between and within entities that are incessantly engendering new assemblages within open systems” (Coole, p. 456). By tracing, rather than presuming, instances in which agentic capacity emerges in relation to other forces and entities, the focus shifts from considering what things are, to what they do. In other words, the focus shifts from human choice (e.g., acquiring consent) to real effects. As I have argued, ethics is not about making judgments—whether one has “good” or “bad” intentions—but about tracing relations and their effects. Thus, an ethics of encounter is not about “mastering” or

“controlling” light in order to produce a specific encounter (see Jardin, 2018). Rather, an ethics of encounter focuses on how light, for example, participates in a set of relations to produce the encounter, and thus participates differently within different assemblages. As Browne (2015) demonstrates in the opening example, lantern light means something different for those who were required to carry it than for those who were deputized to use it as a racializing surveillance mechanism. The extent to which light participates is not evenly distributed but depends on a specific articulation of a set of relations. Thus, when one suggests that light has agentic capacity, it is not a matter of elevating the nonhuman or granting it some otherworldly power. It is rather that light, in relation to other forces and entities, shapes and informs the kinds of encounters produced. This is why agentic capacity needs to be traced and qualified rather than presumed. An ethics of encounter thus moves away from human-centered approaches that return ethics to questions of privacy and consent, specifically in relation to issues of litigation, and instead foregrounds the co-constitutive and co-implicated dimensions of street photographic practices.

That is, it moves away from asking who has the “right” to photograph, and instead asks how light functions differently according to different sets of relations to produce effects occasioned by those distinctive relations.

106 A pedagogy of slowing down and including nonhuman agentic capacities in the analysis is not a numerical or aesthetic process of adding more elements to the analysis or cataloguing combinations of agentic force. Rather, this inclusion is part of a relational analysis that will be incomplete if it does not account for nonhuman agentic capacities. Browne’s (2015) retheorizing of surveillance demonstrates the ethico-pedagogical significance of including nonhuman agentic capacities as part of a cross-cutting, relational mode of analysis. Given that humans and nonhumans are always already in relation, an ethics of encounter considers how they co-produce the situations that in turn affect them.

Jacob Riis: Light and Truth

Practicing in the 1880s, Jacob Riis is considered one of the first practitioners to employ the camera flash to effect social reform. His sentimentalist approach to photography, which appealed to middle-class viewers, included light both as a technical solution and for its symbolic value. As Elspeth H. Brown and Thy Phu (2004) note, “Working within an older tradition of sentimental literature that relied on discourses of ‘sunlight and shadow’ to showcase the mysteries and miseries of modern urban life, Riis catered to both sensational and moralistic sensibilities” (p. 12). Riis approached light in a number of ways. In one sense, Riis used the flash as a technical means by which to photograph darkly lit spaces otherwise impossible to photograph. In another sense, Riis used light in its Enlightenment conception as the binary opposite of darkness, where light is equated with knowledge, and where the visibility granted by light reveals hidden “truths.” It is this latter sense of light Riis used to present his work as a narrative of reform.

However, reading Riis’s work strictly in relation to its social reform dimensions—in other words, from the perspective of Riis’s self-proclaimed intentions to effect social change— misses the ethical dimensions of his work. Considering Riis’s work primarily in relation to its social reform dimensions takes for granted its necessity or inevitability. In his book Phototruth

Or Photofiction? Ethics and Media Imagery in the Digital Age, Tomas H. Wheeler (2002)

107 describes Riis’s work as an example of social documentary photography with a mission to effects political and social change.

Documentary photographers—particularly social documentarians—have a personal point

of view and sometimes a specific agenda. Jacob Riis [1849–1914] was hellbent to effect

social change. He was outraged over the horrendous living conditions that awaited

immigrants in New York City’s slums. His photography was very subjective, and his

mission (which was both political and social) was to stimulate action against a system

that allowed such indignity and inhumanity to exist. (p. 84)

Similarly, Robert Hirsch (2008) describes Riis as a pioneer of documentary photography who uses the genre’s evidentiary and narrative capacity to communicate information and deliver messages. Hirsch states:

Modern documentary photography practice developed during the 1930s in the pioneering

work of Jacob Riis in the slums of New York City and Lewis Hine’s depictions of

immigrants arriving at Ellis Island and children being forced to work in inhuman

conditions instead of attending school. Documentary photographs provide evidence, often

in a narrative form, of real people, events, and places for the purpose of communicating

information or delivering a message. (p. 10)

Wheeler and Hirsch present Riis’s work as transhistorical fact, without further examining the conditions within and from which Riis’s work emerged. By doing so, Wheeler’s and Hirsch’s readings foreclose the pedagogical possibilities for an ethical inquiry into Riis’s practices in favor of a cohesive narrative of social reform via aesthetic means.

Not taking into account the historical conditions surrounding Riis’s practice risks obfuscating its ethical dimensions. Elspeth H. Brown and Thy Phu (2004) critique readings of

Riis that ignore “the affective dimensions of his work in favor of an emphasis on the ‘social fact’”

(p. 12). While Brown and Phu read Riis’s work affectively, they do so from his perspective and thus do not challenge the ethical implications of his practice. Using Silvan Tomkins’ (1995)

108 notion of affect, Brown and Phu argue that Riis’s work can be thought of as “centrally concerned with the production and circulation of feelings designed to produce an activist viewer, one whose disgust at the ‘dirty stains’ of immigrant life become transformed first into pity, then indignation, and then the drive to change social conditions” (Brown and Phu, pp. 12–13). Yet Brown and

Phu’s reading takes for granted that such “dirty stains” are calculated framings meant to classify and typify the Other (see further below). In contrast, the ethico-pedagogy of slowing down considers the historical context of the Riis’s reform photography as part of the colonial state project of racial segregation and management.

Terry Barrett (1986), art critic and educator with a focus on photography, introduces the idea of “ethical evaluations” as part of a new system for categorizing photographic interpretation.

Other categories include descriptions, explanations, interpretations, aesthetic evaluations, and theoretical photographs. Barrett’s hypothesis is that, while photographs usually occupy more than one of these categories, designating the framework in which photographs operate helps determine how photographs can be accurately and productively interpreted. Barrett’s category system is designed to sidestep the binary thinking that often halts deeper forms of analysis when it frames photographs as either scientific or artistic, “straight” or “manipulated,” “purist” or “pictorialist,” fact or fiction (Barrett, pp. 53–54). Barrett rightly criticizes categories that divide photographs by subject matter, such as “the human condition,” “still life,” “portraits,” “the nude,” “nature,” or

“war,” arguing that such category systems tend to conflate varied photographic practices to the detriment of critical or sufficient analysis (p. 54). Barrett’s expanded category system augments previous systems and provides further “access points” into understanding the meanings of photographs. Explicating the category of ethically evaluative photographs, Barrett offers the following:

Photographs which function as ethical evaluations always describe, often attempt to

explain, but also and most importantly imply moral judgments, generally depicting how

things ought or ought not to be. Most photographic advertisements, for example, present

109 us with aspects of the advertiser’s conceptions of “the good life” or assert what products,

life-style, and attitudes ought to be desired. (p. 57)

One of the examples that Barrett locates within this category is the Jacob Riis’s social criticism, including his 1890 photography book, How the Other Half Lives. For Barrett, Riis’s work implies moral judgment. Within the interpretive framework Barrett offers, moral judgment takes place when viewing or reading photographs that make ethical statements, whether overtly or implicitly, or that demand a photograph’s viewers themselves make ethical statements. But this is Barrett’s analytical limit. What his approach does not account for includes the experience of those photographed; the ideological dimensions of Riis’s moral self-positioning; and Riis’s moralizing use of light and the camera flash.

For an ethically-engaged pedagogy, examining Riis’s use of light, and the effects of light in his practices, cannot be done without considering their relation to his background and his relationship to the police and the media. This examination must also consider the socio-cultural and political circumstances from which poverty conditions emerge in the first place. The conditions Riis documented demand and sustain racial divisions and hierarchies through particular imaging and imaginings of the Other, imaging and imaginings that Riis himself employed as a source of income with lit-up photo slides bringing “slum tours” to his middle-class audience, who looked from afar but rarely visited such locations.

Riis was a Danish immigrant who worked different jobs to make money. He was first a carpenter and briefly a miner, but after regularly being cheated, he sought other means of employment. Riis was eventually hired as an editor and reporter. To supplement his income, he began advertising with magic lantern slide projections. He was later hired by the New York

Tribune and was promoted to a police-reporter, working in a press office across from police headquarters. Riis then assumed the role of crusader and reform journalist before becoming a photographer (Westerbeck & Meyerowitz, 1994).

110 The camera only came into his toolkit when Riis crossed over from “yellow-press journalist” to “crusader and reformer” (Westerbeck & Meyerowitz, 1994, p. 241). Meanwhile, flash photography was invented as Riis was already giving lectures and publishing articles on the living conditions of immigrants. According to Westerbeck, Riis believed he was particularly well- suited to investigate these conditions not just because of his 22 years as a police reporter, but because he himself had experienced living as a poor resident of New York after emigrating from

Denmark in 1870. Photographs became the visual dimension with which Riis sought to enrich, or render more convincing, his lectures. He presented photographs and his publications, including

How the Other Half Lives, as lantern slides (Westerbeck; Flint, 2017). As Reginald J. Twigg

(1992) notes,

In 1890, [Riis] published How the Other Half Lives, a compilation of photographs,

statistics, demographic charts, narratives of his “adventures” in the “ghettos,” and highly

moralized rhetoric designed to draw attention to New York’s tenements and their

inhabitants. Riis also gave a series of slide lectures, often with musical accompaniment,

in which he combined the book’s ideological treatment with humor and melodrama to

produce highly moralized entertainment for his middle-class audiences. (p. 310)

Riis himself learned to practice photography out of necessity. First, it became increasingly challenging for him to delegate the photographic work to amateur volunteer assistants who refused the demanding conditions of his “late-night crawls through the slums”

(Westerbeck, p. 241). Then, Riis tried hiring a professional to carry out activities that the amateurs could no longer bear doing. But this professional scammed Riis, who, “out of sheer exasperation … decided to learn how to make his own photographs” (Westerbeck, p. 241). Riis entered photography already having an idea of how he would use it—as the visual means by which to call attention to immigrant conditions and effect social reform. To do so, he would use photography to appeal to the sensibilities of his middle-class audience by operating within sentimentalist aesthetics and rhetorical conventions with regards to photographic objectivity.

111 Riis photographed the over-crowded, darkly lit, unsanitary New York tenements where immigrants resided (Freund, p. 111). While Riis’s photographs are often assumed to have been unstaged, a portion of his photographs were in fact staged to some degree (Flint, 2017). At the time Riis was photographing, cameras were still large enough to require a tripod. Further, the flash was not the electronic flash common today, but rather a combustible chemical compound.

The bulky camera and its equipment mean it is likely that those being photographed were aware of his presence (Flint, p. 60). Riis often traveled with other people, too. As Flint notes, “Few could have been unaware of the arrival of several people together with a cumbersome camera, tripod, and flash equipment” (p. 106). Further, according to Flint, “Riis’s figures were by no means always as arbitrarily and candidly posed as might at first glance appear” (p. 106). Indeed, in some of Riis’s photographs, this staging is more apparent.

In his photograph “Ready for Sabbath Eve in a Coal Cellar—A Cobbler in Ludlow

Street,” for example, Riis’s associate Peter Hales insists that the awkward placement of the broom in one corner of the photograph was there not by accident, but quite the opposite: it was an intentional and calculated decision meant to add, rather than distract from, the central subject and general theme (Flint). Still, while in some instances this kind of staging took place, in others, it did not. “To obtain his flash shots,” says Westerbeck, Riis “often sneaked into a tenement or a dive, set up his equipment under cover of the semidark, fired off one exposure, and beat a hasty retreat before the blinded subjects could recover their senses” (p. 242). His subjects, “surprised by the sudden blinding flash … were often caught in unflattering poses, with their mouths open or their eyes blinking” (Freund, p. 113). Even with large equipment, the tenements where Riis photographed were often too dark to give away the presence of photographer and equipment.

These were tenements in which “touch and smell, rather than sight, reveal the viscerally unpleasant nature of what lies to hand or underfoot,” and in which “the photographer is literally taking a shot in the dark” (Flint, p. 101). According to Westerbeck it was “in the total darkness of such places [Riis] worked … sightlessly … in cellars with no windows and hallways without gas

112 lamps” (p. 336). He “invaded tenements at night to take their inhabitants unawares with his flash”

(Westerbeck & Meyerowitz, p. 336). It is not surprising that Riis would have photographed both with and without staging, as he might have had the opportunity to direct the scene in some instances but not in others. However, while it may seem that Riis’s uses of the camera flash were inevitable, the fact that he staged a portion of his photographs and not others demands ethical inquiry.

That Riis himself staged a portion of his photographs means that in principle he was not averse to non-candid photography. But he maintained his practice of surreptitious flash photography. In Riis’s unstaged photographic situations, several degrees of intrusion took place.

There was the intrusion on the space itself, of entering uninvited. There was the intrusion of photography via exposure or visibility. And then there was the intrusion of the flash on the senses; and not only the harshness of the flash as it disrupted subjects’ vision with its blinding capacity, but also the foul smell of the magnesium powder that lingered in the room after an exposure was made. These unpleasant experiences were imposed on Riis’s subjects and the dwellings they inhabited. In fact, the situations and challenges to which the early flash in particular gave rise were well-known among photographers, who themselves occasionally suffered the instability and volatility of this early flash:

The technology for flash photography was then so crude that photographers occasionally

scorched their hands or set their subjects on fire. Even if these problems were

successfully avoided, the vast amounts of smoke produced by the pistol-fired magnesium

cartridge often forced the photographer out of any enclosed area or, at the very least,

obscured the subject so much that making a second negative was impossible. (Lord,

2020, para. 1)

Unlike Riis, who was aware of flash’s unpleasant sensory experience but decided to briefly tolerate it anyway, Riis’s subjects did not have the luxury of easily escaping the aftermath of these photo shoots. As Kate Flint notes, “What distinguishes flash photography from all other

113 forms … is its suddenness; its creation of momentary, intense artificial light that shatters the continuity of darkness, of shadow, or dim illumination that precedes and follows this shocking interruption” (2007, p. 6). Moreover, when Riis was a hired photographer, as when he worked for the New York Tribune, Riis would have likely felt it necessary to create the desired photographs by any means necessary. In other words, guided by market interests, journalistic reporters like

Riis may feel compelled to produce images that reify and reproduce racially motivated state agendas. While ostensibly journalism is about “truth-telling,” mainstream media institutions and press journalists often have a relationship with police and the state. As Stuart Hall, et al. (1987) argue in Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order, when a press journalist is trying to make deadlines, it becomes easier to parrot narratives given by the police, narratives that often derive from, and reinforce, state interests. As a photojournalist working for a media institution, Riis’s interests were also tied with those of the institution that employed him. To this day, mainstream media routinely vilify victims of police violence by amplifying the police’s uncorroborated accusations (Greenwald, 2015).

In some photography arrangements, staging mitigates the intrusive effects of the flash.

Along with some form of dialogue between photographer and subject, staging at the very least eliminates or minimizes the element of surprise. As Flint notes, in instances in which such staging took place, Riis’s “subjects can be seen as collaborators in helping him achieve his desired effect”

(p. 109). However, Riis

was a muckraker whose background was in police reporting. He had the greatest faith in

the images that were most sensational. This was the real reason that a photograph made

out in the open, in a public place like the street, seldom pleased him as much as a flash-

powder assault on a lodging house cellar. (Westerbeck & Meyerowitz, 1994, p. 244)

The flash served Riis’s agenda. While it can be argued that in a technical sense, Riis used flash out of necessity, the elimination of staging was not itself necessary. In other words, that Riis eliminated communication from his process—that he did not let the other respond—was not an

114 accidental failure, but rather purposeful participation in narratives exoticizing the Other. Riis’s photographs can be understood as part of a genre Uli Linke (2014) calls “slum images.” Such images draw “on a shared set of iconic signs” (Linke, p. 1224). “While the symbolic mediation of the visual material permits multivocal ambiguities,” Linke argues, “the cultural apprehension of what is ‘seen’ is guided by racializing codes” (p. 1224). In other words, when slum icons circulate, “the radical otherness of slum inhabitants is ‘rediscovered’ in the sensuous depictions of exotic naturalism, the metaphoric renderings of cultural essences, and the iconic representations of primal bodies and premodern vitalities” (pp. 1224–5). Riis did not immerse himself in the conditions in which he photographed; instead, he pandered to middle-class sensibility and worked alongside police and state institutions in their quest to manage Black and immigrant populations, reifying boundaries along racial lines. Reginald J. Twigg (1992), reading Riis’s work through a

Foucauldian lens, argues,

Much of the rhetoric of How the Other Half Lives expresses middle-class anxiety about

the political threat of the “Other Half” but frames that anxiety in a managerial discourse

that renders the Other visible for public inspection and regulation … While [the

introductory passage of How the Other Half Lives] draws attention to the fact that the

“urgency” of the “tenement problem” results from public neglect, Riis carefully channels

the subsequent anxiety into a terministic frame where important political questions about

the justice or morality of social inequality are deflected. The assumed permanence of the

tenement naturalizes the ghetto as a transhistorical fact, hence erasing it as a political

consequence of the entrepreneurial and individualist values he shares with his audience.

… Riis’ gaze produced a distinction between the public and private domains whereby the

making of the “Other Half” publicly visible helps to protect the private interests of his

audiences. Indeed, so long as the “Other Half” can be made visible, yet unable to return

the gaze, their political power can be checked. (pp. 310–311)

115 In this way, the flash again suited Riis’s agenda. Because Riis’s work was among the first of its kind, some readers and viewers may argue that there were no alternative photographic methods; in other words, that he did not know any better. Yet practicing around the same time and working with similar themes, goals, and subject matter, Lewis Hine approached photography quite differently. The way Hine communicated with his subjects and used his camera and flash demonstrates that there were alternatives to the way Riis worked. Hine did not sneak up on his subjects, nor did he use the flash light to elicit an aesthetic or rhetorical effect. Instead, Hine communicated with his subjects, and framed his portraits in a way that was meant to maintain a sense of dignity for his subjects (e.g., by shooting from below such that subjects appear striking).

Thus, Riis’s photographic approach was not inevitable, but rather the result of a series of choices and a specific relationship to photography and its ancillary equipment. Arguing for the necessity of differentiating between Riis’s work and Hine’s, though their work is usually lumped together under the genre of social documentary photography, Kate Sampsell-Willmann writes:

Riis was wedded to the idea of Social Darwinism and, in essence and because of that

doctrine, blamed the poor for their poverty. Like Hine, Riis photographed to accomplish a

specific political goal—tenement reform—but his motivation was more akin to Protestant

outrage and journalistic exploitation, informed by environmental explanations for

continued poverty. The tenement did not provide an environment from which people

would be well suited to compete in the great social struggle. Hine, however, viewed his

subjects not as victims of an inexorable struggle for the limited resource of wealth, but

rather as individual and dignified human beings caught in a social system that de-

emphasized the dignity of work and individual worth outside of wealth. Rather than

photographing the places where vice was spread and the people to whom it spread, Hine

photographed people who retained spirited hope despite the conditions surrounding them.

(2014, p. 390)

116 By slowing down and considering Riis’s practice in relation to its historical context, it is possible to consider the ethical implications of his practice beyond the lens of his intentions.

Beyond the Coloniality of Photographic Objectivity

It is possible that Riis wanted to preserve a degree of authenticity by photographing surreptitiously, and interpretations that center on Riis’s social reform efforts treat his photographs as accurate depictions rather than prescribed framings that contribute to narratives racializing the

Other. But as I began arguing in the previous chapters (Chapter 1–2), the notion of the camera, and by extension, surreptitious/candid photography like Riis’s as a truth-telling practice is both inaccurate and misleading. The candid approach assumes that photography has the capacity to reveal reality “truthfully” and without rhetorical mediation. Seeking authenticity in Riis’s work aligns with the candid approach, as it adheres to Enlightenment-based notions of light as able to reveal or expose some hidden truth. For those faithful to the candid approach, there is an aesthetic appeal to the “look” of authenticity. Representational practices like Riis’s can be understood as

“staged authenticities” (MacCannell, 1976, pp. 91–108), whereby “native objects or faraway places are contrived to look as white consumer publics expect them to look” (Linke, 2014, p.

1234). The goal of staged authenticities is to bank on the currency of “truth.”

What motivates an investment in photographic objectivity? Who does an investment in photographic objectivity serve? What are the ethico-pedagogical implications of an uncritical faith in photographic objectivity? Notions of scientific objectivity as a means by which to rationalize racially violent practices predated, but was bolstered by, the development of colonial photographic and archival practices. As I discuss further in later chapters (Chapters 5–6), because the notion of photographic objectivity is historically intertwined with European imperialism and colonial knowledge production, an ethically-engaged pedagogy mistrusts and renounces a faith in photographic objectivity. Such mistrust and renunciation can be understood as ethico-pedagogical practices of refusing dominant narratives attached to images to legitimize racially violent practices under the pretext of photographic objectivity. Employing the notion of photographic

117 objectivity as a pretext to legitimize racial violence is itself a relational process that relies on a set of assumptions, exclusions, and framings. Instead, an ethically-engaged pedagogy traces the relations and effects surrounding photographs and the narratives attached to them.

Given the impossibility of photographic objectivity and the violence of its historical emergence as fact, an ethically-engaged pedagogy considers practices that unsettle notions of authenticity within the candid approach. As I discussed in the previous chapter, one can still get the “look” of authenticity, if that is what one is after, by creatively staging scenes (as, for instance, 1930s French photographer Robert Doisneau is famous for having done). It was in common understanding among other early practitioners like Doisneau that the photograph is a particular framing and not always a truth-teller, and that the camera can manipulate an image.

Thus, some of these early practitioners engaged in more ethically relational photographic methods to achieve similar aesthetic results (Doisneau did). Thus, it is not inevitable that Riis photographed as he did. For example, Riis could have communicated beforehand with subjects about future photographic activity without noting when that activity would take place, if what he sought was to retain an ostensible semblance of authentic reality. This example is meant to illustrate that beyond asking for consent, there is a range of relationalities that are generous and hospitable to the other. Beyond a transactional, individualist notion of consent, an ethically- engaged pedagogy thinks relationally in photographic practices and analyses.

The camera does not merely record reality, and photographs do not merely reproduce reality. Rather, photography participates in the production of that reality; in Riis’s case, through a process of narrativization that reproduces not actual conditions or actual states of things, but the racializing processes that benefit some to the detriment of others. Yet the narrative that Riis was a truth-teller, that photography is objective, and that photographs are unmediated representations of reality still prevails. Russell Lord (2020), Freeman Family Curator of Photographs, wrote about

Riis’s photographic work for the New Orleans Museum of Art:

118 When the reporter and newspaper editor Jacob Riis purchased a camera in 1888, his chief

concern was to obtain pictures that would reveal a world that much of New York City

tried hard to ignore: the tenement houses, streets, and back alleys that were populated by

the poor and largely immigrant communities flocking to the city. (para. 1)

Certainly, Riis’s photographic approach was less an attempt (however implausible) to mirror reality objectively than an attempt to deliver particular framings that reproduce and reinforce racializing narratives. Yet Lord describes Riis as a hero-like figure who, despite the “intensity” and “perilousness” of his photographic undertaking, proceeded to photograph in the name of shining a light on the truth. Lord continues,

A photograph may say much about its subject but little about the labor required to create

that final image. For Jacob Riis, the labor was intense—and sometimes even perilous. In

the service of bringing visible, public form to the conditions of the poor, Riis sought out

the most meager accommodations in dangerous neighborhoods and recorded them in

harsh, contrasting light with early magnesium flashes. (para. 1)

This reading takes for granted Riis’s version of events. It also neglects that such seeking out of the “most meager accommodations in dangerous neighborhoods” follows a logic of selection that reifies racializing narratives of the poor, producing images that “were marshaled as evidence in the case made against them by the social workers and the sociologists” (Hartman,

2019, p. 19). Riis’s reform photography, and its logics of selection, was not unique to him.

Reformers used photography not to document, but to reify already established racializing narratives about the poor. How can ethically-engaged pedagogies read images beyond the lens of a photographer’s intentions? How can ethically-engaged pedagogies analyze images that were violently conceived with care? How can ethically-engaged pedagogies read beyond and against the violence of colonial archives?

In Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval, Saidiya

Hartman (2019) engages analytical modalities that exceed both the ocular and realist historical

119 approaches to archives. By attending to the limits of the archive, the impossibility of its closure,

Hartman offers anti/decolonial ethico-pedagogical modes of analysis.

How can ethically-engaged pedagogies approach material that is strategically excluded from archives? Rather than engage an endless search or an exercise in discovery—which is colonial in its orientation—Hartman (2008) engages what she calls “critical fabulation,” a speculative historical exercise of critical (re)imagination. Critical fabulation, Hartman notes,

“jeopardize(s) the status of the event, to displace the received or authorized account, and to imagine what might have happened or might have been said or might have been done” (p. 11). An ethically-engaged pedagogy is not concerned with uncovering a hidden truth, but rather it is concerned with the ethical implications of modes of analysis and doing away with colonial knowledge production. To what extent does the mode of analysis undertaken violently script narratives about the material encountered, and to what extent does it let the material be part of the analysis?

Hartman (2019) engages what she calls a “mode of close narration,” “a style which places the voice of narrator and character in inseparable relation, so that the vision, the language, and rhythms of the wayward shape and arrange the text” (p. xi). By inhabiting the world of those depicted in reform photographs through a haptic and multisensory mode of engagement, Hartman attends to what Tina Campt (2017) describes as the unspoken relations that structure archives.

Attending to the unspoken relations that structure archives, Campt notes, is done “by setting them in a kind of ‘sensorial’ relief that juxtaposes the sonic, haptic, historical, and affective backgrounds and foregrounds through and against which we view photographs” (p. 8).

Importantly, Hartman’s (2019) is not an exercise of setting the record straight or rescuing those depicted from obscurity. Rather, it is an exercise of rethinking “archival documents so they might yield a richer picture of the social upheaval that transformed black social life in the twentieth century” (xiv). Elsewhere Hartman (2008) notes that

120 narrating counter-histories of slavery has always been inseparable from writing a history

of present, by which I mean the incomplete project of freedom, and the precarious life of

the ex-slave, a condition defined by the vulnerability to premature death and to gratuitous

acts of violence. (p. 12)

The unknowability of events can be a generative ethico-pedagogical space of looking back as always already tethered to the present. Hartman’s (2019) close narration models a reflexive self- implication at each step of photographic analysis—enacting ethics as the extension of action beyond the moment.

Hartman reminds readers that “the reformers and sociologists come in search of the truly disadvantaged failing to see [them] as thinkers or planners, or to notice the beautiful experiments crafted by poor black girls” (p. 4). Hartman writes:

The reform pictures and the sociological surveys documented only ugliness. Everything

good and decent stood on the ruins of proscribed modes of affiliation and ways of living:

the love unrecognized by law, households open to strangers, the public intimacy of the

streets, and the aesthetic predilections and willful excess of young black folks. The social

worlds represented in these pictures were targeted for destruction and elimination. The

reformers used words like “improvement” and “social betterment” and “protection,” but

no one was fooled. (pp. 19–20)

By narrating what is excluded from reform photographs, Hartman demonstrates not merely a more accurate historical account, but the relational process of knowledge production—which goes against colonial knowledge production practices. In addition to considering what is excluded from the archive, Hartman also considers what is (abundantly) included. Rather than seeking out spaces in which everyday modes of living and relating unfold, or laboring to find the ingenuity present even in unforgiving circumstances, early 20th-century reformers, “propelled by moralistic narratives,” favored images that fit archetypal visualizations of the poor and disadvantaged (p.

19). Images of kitchens, “white sheets draped on the clothesline, leaking faucets, filthy water

121 closets, and crowded bedrooms” took precedence over spaces of transition, movement, ephemerality, and intimacy (p. 19). Hartman lingers with the hallway as one such transitional space that cannot contain all that transpires within it, “a space uneasy with expectation and tense with the force of unmet desire” (p. 23). Hartman writes of the hallway:

It is the liminal zone between the inside and the outside for the one who stays in the

ghetto; the reformer documenting the habitat of the poor passes through without noticing

it, failing to see what can be created in cramped space, if not an overture, a desecration,

or to regard our beautiful flaws and terrible ornaments. This hallway never appears in the

lantern slide show. Only the ones who reside in the tenement know it. (p. 23)

Hartman demonstrates that documentation is not always or necessarily a supplementation of information, as taken-for-granted definitions of documentary photography would have it

(Wheeler; Hirsch). By over-documenting the same scenes and overemphasizing a myopic view, documentation can also function as a negation of information. Moreover, as a counter-historical practice of refusing dominant narratives, Hartman offers an epistemology of the hallway as a modality to attend to that which is deceptively insignificant, or that which is rendered insignificant because it does not fit within archetypal interpretive frameworks. The hallway can be understood as what Campt (2017) calls a mundane detail “whose seeming insignificance requires excessive attention” (p. 8). Another detail to which Hartman attends is the relationship between reform photographs and the captions that attempt to overdetermine their meaning.

For Lord, Riis’s use of captions signals an awareness of the role titles play in guiding the reception of photographs, maintaining that Riis’s use and choice of captions strengthens the works: “Riis knew that such a revelation could only be fully achieved through the synthesis of word and image” (Lord, para. 2). It is not inaccurate to suggest that text and image—caption and photograph—may possess a mutually reinforcing relationship. However, the process of

122 captioning is not a neutral one, and it is rarely merely descriptive.20 In the case of reform photographs,

The captions transform the photographs into moral pictures, amplify the poverty, arrange

and classify disorder. … The caption seems to replicate the image, to detail what resides

within its frame, but instead the caption produces what appears. It subsumes the image to

the text. (Hartman, 2019, p. 20)

A human-centered approach that takes for granted the photographer’s intentions risks reifying the racializing functions of reform photography captioning practices. An ethically-engaged pedagogy thinks relationally about captioning practices and traces, rather than presumes, the meanings imbued in photographs through text.

Photography does more than simply reveal; it is able to deceive. The Enlightenment notion of photographic objectivity neglects that what becomes accepted as evidence is contingent on a set of relationalities, rather than an objective and unmediated transfer of information. Thus, an ethical disposition does not subscribe to the myth of objective photography and does not take for granted the authenticity of photographs. Instead, an ethical disposition examines the relations surrounding the production of photographs and the subsequent narratives that become attached to photographs as they circulate. An ethics of encounter is less concerned with examining the

“representation” of the encounter than with examining the conditions that give rise to the encounter in the first place, and the conditions that enable, invite, or impose particular readings of that encounter. In different assemblages, light has different effects. For this reason, an ethically-

20 The “text constitutes a parasitic message designed to connote the image, to ‘quicken’ it with one or more second-order signifieds. … It is impossible however … that the words ‘duplicate’ the image; in the movement from one structure to the other second signifieds are inevitably developed. What is the relationship of these signifieds of connotation to the image? To all appearances, it is one of making explicit, of providing a stress; the text most often simply amplifying a set of connotations already given in the photograph. Sometimes, however, the text produces (invents) an entirely new signified which is retroactively projected into the image, so much so as to appear denoted there” (Barthes, 1977, pp. 25–27). For more on the relationship between text and image; denotation and connotation in the production, circulation, and reception of photographic meaning; and a discussion of text in relation to the press photograph, see Barthes’s chapter, “The Photographic Message,” in his book Image, Music, Text (1977).

123 engaged pedagogy traces, rather than presumes, relations and their effects. In the analytical process, it approaches entities not in terms of property but rather in terms of capacity.

Considering practices in terms of what they can do rather than what they look like or how they have been defined, it is possible to locate the overlap between individual street photographic practices and state mobilized surveillance practices. Jacob Riis, by participation in a “managerial discourse that renders the Other visible for public inspection and regulation” (Twigg, 1992), enacts the mechanisms of lantern light surveillance by literally marking the Other as out of place through flash photography and lantern slides. In Chapter 7, I discuss why it is ethico- pedagogically significant to consider the relationship between street photography and surveillance practices.

Hartman (2008; 2019) enacts the ethico-pedagogy of slowing down, not simply by tracing relations and their effects, but rather by recreating absented relationalities—not as a practice of setting the record straight, but as a practice that goes beyond colonial archival logics and the linear temporality of realist historical accounts. Hartman models an analytical approach of reading beyond the frame of reform photographers by reading outside their logics. Hartman’s approach is not only anti/decolonial, in that it resists or works outside colonial knowledge production. But by refusing the violent logics that structure colonial archives, Hartman provides reparative analytical modalities.

Bruce Gilden: Blinding Light and Aesthetic Desire

Contemporary American photographer Bruce Gilden admits that he regularly uses the flash because it helps him visualize his feelings about New York City: “the energy, the stress, the anxiety, you know, that you find here” (WNYC, 2008, 1:01). Gilden says he works “so close that sometimes people think I’m not photographing them. When I’m photographing them, they look behind them” (WNYC, 2008, 0:50). Many of the subjects in Gilden’s (2008) project NYC look undeniably startled. To take photographs for the project, Gilden would walk around Manhattan in

New York City, a city with which he is intimately familiar, camera in hand, looking for what he

124 calls “characters.”21 Once he found a character, Gilden would promptly but stealthily get his shots. Because Gilden wanted to achieve the startled look, he photographed at close range, sometimes flinging the camera in his subject’s face. Gilden’s subject was thus doubly startled: by the sudden movement of a camera thrust in their face, and by the somatic and sensory impacts of the camera flash. The flash amplifies the already shocking effects of the camera’s sudden movement at close range. Howarth and McLaren (2010) argue that the very intrusiveness of the camera flash “is what gives his subjects their hallmark startle” (pp. 12–13). Howarth and

McLaren cite Gilden professing his own “sneakiness” and habit of “flinging a camera in anyone’s face” (p. 13). They do not comment on the ethical implications of sneaking on and flinging a camera in a subject’s face for aesthetic purposes (e.g., producing an unhospitable situation, causing shock and somatic discomfort, prioritizing one’s interests over the well-being of others).

Ultimately, Howarth and McLaren seem impressed by Gilden’s self-proclaimed “pride” (p. 12).

“Fast, fluid, intuitive and fearless, Gilden has described his vigorous way of moving through the streets as like a dance,” they describe admiringly (Howarth and McLaren, p. 12). Gilden thus uses the camera flash not because he is oblivious to its intrusive and disruptive effects, but precisely to employ such effects toward aesthetic ends. While Howarth and McLaren also recognize the possible harmful effects of Gilden’s use of the flash, they do not stop to critique or deconstruct such uses, but rather state them as artistic facts.

In a particular assemblage one might think of as Manhattan–Gilden’s disposition–a culture prioritizing artistic value over real effects–flash, flash’s penetrative capacity ultimately becomes coopted to aesthetic ends. Importantly, an ethically-engaged pedagogy slows down and takes into account the iterative processes by which artistic practices that may harm others become

21 Gilden often refers to his subjects as “characters,” therefore rendering them “types.” Barker et al. write, “In the history of social analysis, the analytic use of types, characters or other sociologically meaningful individuals has tended to oscillate between a myopic focus on the individual and the generation of abstract analytic generalizable ‘types.’ As Wynn perceptively notes in a survey on the use of ‘characters’ in sociology, the problem is quite straightforward: abstract ‘epistemic characters … provide theory without foundation and … empirical individuals may provide rich facts but no analytic power’” (Wynn, 2011, p. 536, as cited in Barker et al., 2013, pp. 160–1).

125 normalized through readings that prioritize the artistic and separate it from the ethical. How does the pedagogy of slowing down, as an ethical disposition, relate to understanding Gilden’s practices beyond the immediate, psychosomatic effects on subjects—though these are not inconsequential—to also include the ways in which street photography scholars and practitioners reproduce narrative that normalize harmful activities under the pretext of artistic practice (see

Chapters 1–2)? Readings of Gilden’s practices that gloss over the multilayered impacts of his approach to street photography relegate or erase the ethical in the presence of the artistic—as if analyzing artistic practices means automatically forgoing their ethical dimensions. I argue that because it is impossible to divorce the artistic from the ethical, that the artistic always has ethical dimensions, an ethically-engaged pedagogy does not rest on reading for aesthetic dimensions and considers ethical dimensions. The ways in which the ethical dimensions of artistic practices play out or the degree to which ethical dimensions manifest in artistic practice has to be traced rather than presumed, which requires pedagogical approaches of slowing down and lingering with the encounter and the relations surrounding the encounter, including, but not limited to, nonhuman agentic capacities.

Conclusion

An ethical disposition for street photography neither puts aside nor disregards consequences by prioritizing aesthetic dimensions. An ethics of encounter takes into account effects that exceed the visual and formal-aesthetic, necessarily including the sensory and somatic dimensions of experience.

In the following chapter, I propose that street photography is a relational practice that does not always involve the production of visual artifacts. Understanding street photography as a practice that does not always involve the production of photographs leaves open the space for practicing street photography otherwise.

Chapter 4

Camera Relationality

One may wonder what, in the context of street photography ethics, cameras have to do with ethics. In this chapter, I argue that cameras can enable a relational process that may or may not lead to the production of visual artifacts. I discuss the materiality of the camera, how it can affect the encounter, and the ethico-pedagogical implications of considering a camera’s agentic capacities when undertaking analyses. I argue that because street photography is a multisensorial practice, it requires sensational pedagogies (Springgay, 2011).

The Apparatus in Street Photography

In Chapter 1, I discussed the ethical implications of technology development and deployment; the ways in which the material and discursive forces that construct a technology— from the backgrounds and orientations of its creators, to the materials used to construct it, to the policy regulations that structure its uses—to some degree shape how the technology comes to produce effects (Winner, 1980). In his book Towards a Philosophy of Photography, communications philosopher Vilém Flusser (2000) argues that in an age dominated by images and no longer by text, it is imperative to understand that image-making technology is designed in a way that structures user experience and limits experimentation. The camera—the apparatus, in

Flusser’s terms—functions according to a program, what Flusser calls “the rules of the game” (p.

30). The camera is programmed to enable a seemingly limitless number of choices, but, Flusser argues, the possible choices are already scripted in the camera’s program. Flusser writes:

It looks here as if photographers could choose freely, as if their cameras were following

intention. But the choice is limited to the categories of the camera, and the freedom of the

photographer remains a programmed freedom. Whereas the apparatus functions as a

127 function of the photographer’s intention, this intention itself functions as a function of the

camera’s program. (p. 35)

What creates the illusion that the camera enables a photographer to choose freely is that the camera is designed like a “black box,” in that “no photographer, not even the totality of all photographers, can entirely get to the bottom of what a correctly programmed camera is up to”

(Flusser, p. 27). Flusser writes, “It is precisely the obscurity of the box which motivates photographers to take photographs. They lose themselves, it is true, inside the camera in search of possibilities, but they can nevertheless control the box” (p. 27). Photographers can operate the camera without knowing what is inside of it, what makes it work (p. 27). Because humans program cameras, Flusser argues, it is tempting that cultural criticisms of cameras focus on “the human intention that willed and created them” (pp. 71–72).22 Cameras then get “decoded as an expression of the concealed interests of those in power,” for example, “the interests of Kodak shareholders, of the proprietors of advertising agencies, those pulling the strings behind the us industrial complex, the interests of the entire U.S. ideological, military and industrial complex”

(p. 72). Flusser argues, however, that what is crucial for understanding a world dominated by images and no longer text is not a critique that aims to uncover the monetary and ideological interests of camera developers and programmers. Instead, what requires critique, is the camera’s automaticity (p. 73).

While Flusser’s argument may appear to leave no room for human agency, his proposal is in fact to make room for the human for whom the increasing automaticity of apparatuses overdetermines and structures experience. Flusser notes that apparatuses were at their inception designed to perform human actions automatically, “independently of future human involvement”

22 Such an approach that centers on human intention is tempting as a target for cultural criticism, Flusser argues, for two reasons: “First, it absolves the critics of the necessity of delving into the interior of the black boxes: They can concentrate on their output, human intention. And second, it absolves critics of the necessity of developing new categories of criticism: Human intention can be criticized using traditional criteria” (Flusser, 2000, p. 73).

128 (p. 73). As apparatuses become more automatic and the “human being is being more and more sidelined,” the inner workings of apparatuses, including cameras, are increasingly made obscure

(p. 73). Automaticity makes it easier to control use as it eliminates, or significantly reduces, experimentation and creates the appearance of freedom of choice. In Flusser’s terms, considering human agency is not to be equated with prioritizing human intentionality. Rather, it is an ethical invocation that has pedagogical dimensions: Flusser calls for critical and participatory engagement with the apparatuses that dominate human relations. When photographers photograph according to a camera’s program, they are feeding material back into the apparatus, thus helping it grow and its stakeholders reap profit (Goldsmith, 2015). For Flusser, there is a way out of this: for photographers to learn about the apparatus and to use it outside its prescribed parameters.23

Whether or not a camera is operated by a human, it is not neutral: it contains within it the program (the rules of the game) that prescribes possible uses. While Flusser examines the ethical implications of attending to the programming of the camera (apparatus), in this chapter I examine the ethical implications of attending to the material, experiential, embodied, and relational dimensions of photographing with a camera. In the next section, I discuss the ethical implications of attending to the materiality of cameras.

Camera Materiality

While for Vilém Flusser (2000), the content of the camera is to a degree already scripted in the camera’s program, as production processes end up shaping some its function, for many scholars and practitioners of photography, the camera is a means to an end, a passive tool by which the photographer achieves desired results. Valerie Jardin (2018), for example, urges photographers to “just remember that your camera has no vision, and the success of the photograph is 100 percent up to you and you only,” and says that the camera “should become an

23 Later in this chapter, I discuss the photographic practices of Vivian Maier and Horace Engle, who can be understood to have practiced outside the scripted program as they never published any photographs.

129 extension of your vision: You should forget that it is even there, and never let it get in the way”

(p. 9). Jardin thus conceptualizes the camera as a neutral dimension of photography, an extension of what the photographer is already able to see or visualize. For Jardin, the camera itself does not see, it has no vision of its own. However, for artist Trevor Paglen (2014), it is not just a human

(photographer) who is able to see through the technology, the technology itself also sees. Paglen conceptualizes photography as a “seeing machine,” one that “is intended to encompass the myriad ways that not only humans use technology to ‘see’ the world, but the ways machines see the world for other machines” (para. 3). Seeing here does not refer to vision in the ocular sense, but rather the capacity to carry and circulate information or materials. In other words, seeing machines are not limited to the technologies that produce images, nor are they limited to the humans who operate or view said images through various imaging systems. Instead, seeing machines also encompass “the images (or data) produced by such imaging systems, the digital metadata associated with those images, as well as additional systems for storage, archiving, search and interpretation (either human or algorithmic)” (para. 3). Cameras are designed to function in scripted ways, and increased automaticity obscures this scriptedness in a way that limits experimentation beyond the camera’s program. Rather than “forgetting that the camera is even there” (Jardin, p. 9), an ethical disposition acknowledges the role the camera plays in the photographic process.

In an interview with Rong Jiang (2007), photographer Stephen Shore describes how the material dimensions of the apparatus itself and its mode of operation inspired a new photographic process, a different kind of encounter. Asked about the shift in his approach and the resulting body of work, which the interviewer notes diverge from Shore’s earlier work, Shore says: “I did more pictures of buildings and streets than I did of still life and people. That was for two reasons.

One is that simply the camera lent itself more easily to it” (Jiang, 2007, para. 33). Thus, the apparatus itself entails certain relations and modes of relating, where the invisibility of the apparatus might entail a different kind of relationality—a deferral of response-ability.

130 Small, quiet, and fast-exposure cameras enable more surreptitious forms of photography and at times, perhaps even compel the photographer to move closer to their subject while remaining unnoticed. As Jardin notes, “A smaller camera will be less intimidating for your subject” (p. 28). She also writes that “not bringing the camera to your eye makes you less conspicuous,” so “flip screens are also very helpful” (pp. 19–20), and that “you can get close to your subject, right over his or her shoulder even, and the viewer will feel as if he or she is looking through the subject’s eyes” (p. 19). Prior to the development of fast exposure capabilities, photographing movement was difficult: “The slow exposure times of early photographic processes impeded the creation of a photographic record of the liveliness of urban life or, indeed, of physical movement of any kind” (Tucker, 2012, pp. 7–8). Such fast exposure capabilities expanded the range of what could be photographed, allowing for an increased degree of mobility on the part of the photographer and the capture of rapid-motion scenes. Fast exposure capabilities thus enabled street and other photographic practices such as modern photojournalism, as did the small-format camera, such as the Leica 35 mm, which was developed in 1914 and became available for purchase in 1925 (Mora, 1998). Cameras thus influence the kinds of relations that take place between photographer and photographed, and also the possible modes of being in relation to others and to the environment in which a photographer photographs.

Large, loud, and slow-exposure cameras, which often require the use of tripods, can announce their presence as they enter the scene. “Everyone knows that the arrival of a camera on the scene creates a hubbub—it might serve as a magnet for one event or distance and disrupt another,” says Ariella Azoulay (2010, p. 12). The camera, Azoulay continues, usually

divides those present into different positions: those who congregate around it and react to

its presence, and those who go on minding their own business; those who wish to present

it with something; others who address the photographer directly; and those who disperse

as a response to its invasion or attempt to block its field of vision. (p. 12)

131 In some instances, says Lisa Henderson (2003), the very presence of the camera “may reduce the threat of the stare by identifying its proprietor as a photographer, with a mission to look and a right to be there in the first place—for example, as a tourist or a representative of the media” (p.

93). In other instances, Henderson continues, “enough people may be photographing to render the act unremarkable. In still other cases, the camera is the very source of suspicion” (p. 93). These larger, slower cameras can stand out.

These cameras thus, in some instances, also alert to the presence of the photographer.

Some photographers recognize and incorporate this self-disclosing dimension of large cameras into their practice. While the handheld Leica was available in the 1930s, Brassaï, for example,

“persisted in working with a camera that used small glass plates instead of film … and [that] required a tripod and long exposures” (Howarth & McLaren, 2010, p. 13). This “cumbersome equipment” meant that Brassaï was not hiding from his subjects; they knew he was there and taking photographs of them (Howarth & McLaren, p. 13). For Brassaï, the surreptitiousness that small cameras such the Leica offered did not align with the spirit of his approach: rather than photographing subjects covertly, Brassaï’s practice centered on the exchange between photographer and subjects in the presence of the camera in a particular environment. As Howarth and McLaren note, the visibility of Brassaï’s camera equipment “suited him since he was more interested in getting [subjects] to cooperate in creating pictures than in capturing them unawares”

(p. 13). Thus, the camera itself is able to inform the kind of relations that take place between photographer and subject.

A few other examples further illustrate how such relationships between subject and photographer are informed by the camera. Diane Arbus, for example, “adopted a medium-format twin lens reflex [which], crucially, provided a waist-level viewfinder that allowed her to keep eye contact with her subjects throughout the process” (Howarth & McLaren, p. 13). The detective camera, which remains concealed from those being photographed, produces yet another set of relations between photographer, camera, and subject. The detective camera is designed to be

132 concealed. Unlike the encounter produced with a waist-level viewfinder, the detective camera, when used surreptitiously as it is intended,24 produces an encounter in which the other’s ability to respond (response-ability) is deferred. If a camera is concealed from view, how can a subject respond to the fact of being photographed as it takes place? While small or concealed cameras may in some instances entail a deferral of response-ability, the visibility of other cameras—their own capacity to alert subjects to their presence—may provide opportunities for subjects to approach the photographer and/or contest being photographed as the photographic process unfolds.

Figure 2

Google Street View Vehicle and Camera

Note. Left: The Google Street View vehicle. Right: Google Street View’s custom-made panoramic camera. Courtesy of Dan Winters for The New York Times.

24 I examine the relations involved in non-scripted uses of detective cameras below, in a discussion of Horace Engle’s photographic practices.

133 Google Street View is a visual-topological mapping system that offers street-level images corresponding to spatial locations on Google Maps’ two-dimensional map (Figure 2). The Google

Street View camera is composed of multiple lenses that allow for 360-degree photography. This camera, in other words, has only one area that eludes its view: where the camera lenses meet with the mount on the vehicle. Unlike a photographer on the ground, the Google Street View camera operates while mounted on a motor vehicle and moves at a speed that surpasses the mobility afforded by walkways. While those being photographed may notice and approach a photographer on the ground to contest such activity, Google Street View’s speed of movement radically limits opportunities for contestation.25 Still, different kinds of contestation and modes of resisting

Google Street View take place. Some people follow the Google Street View vehicle, though only up to the point at which the vehicle drives away. Others “moon” the camera, raise their middle fingers, or cover up their faces. Because the Google Street View camera photographs on the move at a relatively high speed, unless stuck in traffic or stopped at a traffic light, it captures the effects of the camera on a scene, including the responses it provokes, as they unfold in real time (Figure

3).

25 Further, while Google claims that people who are in Google Street View pictures have the opportunity to contest being photographed by submitting an online request to the company, that would entail such people to be able to locate their pictures on the map in addition to having access to Google.

134 Figure 3

Screenshot from Google Street View Interface

There is a degree of choice that goes into determining which photographic apparatuses best suit a project envisioned by a photographer, and this choice not only influences formal- aesthetic possibility—for example, wide-angle or telephoto lenses produce distinctive formal- aesthetic qualities—but also the kinds of relations that take place. For instance, camera choice allowed for Brassaï’s collaborative approach or Arbus’s practice of eye contact (Howarth &

McLaren). This choice can also point toward a deferral of response-ability, as in the surreptitious uses of small handheld cameras or hidden detective cameras. Cameras are thus not passive tools, as human-centered, mechanistic, utilitarian, or instrumentalist views would have it. Instead, they are agential and implicated in the photographic situation; they have the capacity to suggest,

135 interrupt, or impose relations. Cameras and other recording devices do not enter situations and remain separate from that situation; they are not merely inserted and then removed as though they were never there. They do not record a separate reality that exists beyond them, waiting to be represented or reproduced; they produce the situations that compose the reality of which they are a component part. This does not mean that recording devices have the power to bring reality into existence. Rather, it means that they are implicated in that reality.

While the camera is not passive—it does not act in the same way across different situations—the degree to which it acts, and the relations it enables or restricts, need to be traced rather than presumed. Just like light, while a camera has an impact on a situation, this impact is not uniform. That a camera is agential does not mean that it always exercises agentic capacity, or that it always does so with the same degree of force, but rather that it does have such a capacity and thus must be included in the analysis of photographic situations. This is why, for an ethical disposition, analyses of photographs cannot simply rest on reading content or formal-aesthetic dimensions. They must involve considerations of how the material dimensions of photographic apparatuses influence the encounter, as well. In the next section, I argue that the notion that photography requires an audience to be meaningful diverts from the multisensory dimensions of street photography, which do not center on vision and which have pedagogical dimensions.

Photography Without an Audience

Why does one photograph? It might seem obvious that there is no single answer to this question. People who photograph do so for different reasons. In the previous chapter, for example, I discussed how in some cases, light creates the impetus to photograph. However, embedded in contemporary photography discourse is an assumption that what most motivates people to take photographs is the presence or prospect of an audience (Hirsh, 2008), and that, as a precondition, photography requires an audience (Hairman & Lucaites, 2016). In the photography textbook Light and Lens: Photography in the Digital Age, Robert Hirsch (2008) poses the question, “Why is photography important?” (p. 19). He begins his answer by stating that people

136 photograph “to save and commemorate a subject of personal importance. … Regardless of motive, this act of commemoration and remembrance is the essence of photography” (p. 19). But moreover, for Hirsch, “Part of a photographer’s job is to interact and stimulate thinking within the community of artists and their world at large” (p. 20). Accordingly, Hirsch claims, “Without an audience to open a dialogue, the images remain incomplete and the artist unsatisfied” (p. 20).26 In their book The Public Image: Photography and Civic Spectatorship, Robert Hairman and John

Lucaites (2016) similarly claim that “without the audience, there is no need for the image, so in one sense they always have to be there, unseen, as the potential force that allows the camera to flash” (p. 25). Thus, for Hirsh and for Hairman and Lucaites, photography is only meaningful if it yields photographs. In other words, the goal of photography is the production of photographs. But does this view of photography fully express the photographic process? Does photography always require an audience, even if that audience is merely imagined? Does photography necessarily lead to the production of images?

Hirsh’s and Hairman and Lucaites’s views on photography are both human-centered and ocular-centric. In their understanding, it is strictly the human audience that gives rise to photography and provides the force from which the desire to photograph arises. In the absence of spectators, photography holds no value. And it is the visual images photography produces that give the practice meaning, and without which no links can be made to a real or imagined

26 This is a human-centered position, as it locates the spectator at the center of photographic value and links the photographer’s satisfaction with access to an audience; photographic value and audience become mutually determinant factors. But what about photographers who do not publish? This human-centered approach tends to assimilate photographers’ practices to fit within this narrative: The photographers did not publish because they could not—not because they would not. Therefore, according to this approach, the tendency is read their photographs as trying to achieve something along the lines of what already- published, canonical photographers try to achieve (see Chapter 5). For example, many readings of Vivian Maier’s work, particularly profit-motivated ones, try to fit her work within familiar narratives (Bannos, 2017).

137 audience. Thus, such a view is also capitalistic: it prioritizes product over process, where the product—an image—is conceived of as a commodity with exchange value.27

In this chapter, I argue that photography need not center on vision and the production of artifacts. I propose that an ocular-centric and product-motivated view of photography is both ethically and pedagogically limited: it does not account for the multisensory modes of relating involved in photographic processes, which exceed the realm of vision and the visual. An ocular- centric and product-motivated view does not account for embodied experience, wherein the body learns as it comes into contact with other bodies (Springgay, 2001).

Embodied Experience: Photography Beyond the Ocular

Photography, not unlike other practices, can be done for oneself rather than for an audience. A camera can enable relations to others but also to oneself. Some forms of life writing, such as keeping a diary or journal, are processes that do not seek an audience. One does not often write diary or journal entries with the intention for them to be read. Journaling, for instance, may be a means by which to unburden oneself in the absence of other outlets. The diary or journal may also be an autobiographical means by which to experiment; to brainstorm about one’s circumstances and possible futures. The diary or journal is not simply about tracking—though it may be a means of holding oneself accountable. It is also a way to examine one’s own processes and experiences; a means by which to open up possibilities and lines of connection toward the creation of new relations. In other words, the diary or journal is not simply a record of daily experience, nor just about memory and reflection; it may also involve a speculative, creative process. The diary or journal thus may be a form of praxis, a means by which to theorize about

27 Several practices, such as walking as a way of knowing, complicate the view that photography has to involve producing photographs. These kinds of practices gesture toward a notion of the camera as an apparatus that creates particular kinds of relations; for instance, “a purely psycho-sensory contact with the world” (Scott, 2007, p. 17). The camera is an apparatus that produces records, but also an apparatus that produces situations, a relationality to others and the world. The camera not only produces photographs, it involves/creates relations. Photography, in this way, can be understood as a relational practice rather than one centered on the production of artifacts.

138 one’s life in order to live it better; to reflect on the world in order to change it. In this way, life writing can have pedagogical dimensions that take place without the presence of, and often actively hidden from, an audience.

Like journaling and other process-motivated practices, photographing without the expectation of an audience can have pedagogical dimensions that exceed the ocular-centrism that characterizes product-motivated accounts of photography focused on so-called tangible end results. The power of an audience, real or imagined, is not to be underestimated. Some actors who transition from theatre to film, from performing in front of a live audience to performing in front of a camera, describe the power of an audience, even when that audience is merely imagined. An imagined audience can be a source of inspiration for artistic practice. Yet many musicians explain that releasing songs is not the main motivation of their creative process. Likewise, while there can be pleasure in the act of sharing one’s photographs with an audience and in an audience’s reciprocity, photography is not just meaningful when done with an audience in mind. Moreover, photography involves more than the human-to-human relations suggested by the audience- centered view.

It is difficult for those adhering to an audience-centered view to read the photographic practices of Vivian Maier and Horace Engle outside of such a narrative. Both Maier and Engle became popularized posthumously for their photographic work. Both Maier and Engle photographed extensively but never published, or sought to publish, their work (Bannos, 2017;

Leos, 1980).28 From a product-motivated perspective, Maier’s and Engle’s practices do not make sense. Why would any photographer not want to publish or share their photographs? What photographer would not want to receive some kind of recognition for their work? In Chapter 5,

Archival Ethics and the Afterlives of Photographs, I discuss how Engle’s work began circulating

28 Horace Engle shared photographs in private correspondence, but he never sought for his work to be published (Leos, 1980). There can be pleasure in the act of sharing one’s photographs with an audience and in an audience’s reciprocity. Yet for an ethics of encounter, the fact that Engle never sought to publish his photographs is a cause to question further circulating them.

139 after his death, and how Maier’s photographs became acquired and popularized in a process of auctioning and narrativization that began after she was no longer able to pay rent for the storage lockers that housed her belongings and photographic collection.

Vivian Maier: Photographing Without Sharing

If one takes the product out of the street photography equation, what one is left with is the practice of photographing itself and what this entails: walking, sensing, calculating, thinking, feeling, perceiving, etc. Whether or not photography leads to the production of artifacts, it is a means by which to be in relation, which involves specific relations that different cameras enable or constrain.

Maier’s photographic corpus includes a large number of portraits. In some of her photographs, her subjects appear aware of her presence: they are directly facing the camera or looking in the direction of the camera lens. In others, the subjects appear candid given the physical distance between subject and photographer. In still others, with examination, it is possible to detect a degree of staging. In some cases, this staging was done seamlessly and requires studying the photographs closely for clues—a stolen glance, a performative gesture, a smile that has now proved hard to conceal. In others, her staging makes the photographs look like film stills. In all these different approaches to portraiture, Maier was constantly creating opportunities to be in contact with others, using photography to be in relation or using the camera to enable different modes of being in relation.

In addition to portraits, Maier also photographed objects and architecture. Maier was forming relations not just to others but to the cities and environments in which she photographed.

Maier photographed how a city is shaped by the interplay of natural-cultural forces, often depicting her place in that relation with the use of reflections and shadows. Maier reacted to how light and the shadows it casts meet buildings, but also reacted to what is left when a bulldozer meets a building. She responded to the specificity of the light of a signpost reflecting on a puddle

140 of water, creating the illusion of a jagged, Kafkaesque castle from a fictional world. Maier often created imaginative scenes through framing rather than with intervention in an environment.

An obsessive attachment to practicing street photography is not unique to Maier. In

Chapter 2, I discussed obsession as a recurrent characteristic street photography scholars and practitioners attach to the genre. Scholars often portray the quintessential street photographer as obsessive, a quality so intertwined with the practice that street photographer David Gibson identifies it as a “prerequisite” for practicing street photography or learning to do it properly

(2014, p. 24). Such obsession corresponds to the qualities scholars attribute to successful street photographs, such as capturing fleeting juxtapositions, unexpected combinations, and unusual events (see Chapter 2). A degree of dedication is required to get these shots. Walking long hours, walking all sorts of hours. Walking without a known or predetermined destination. Letting oneself be compelled by the camera to travel into places that one may not otherwise visit.

Moreover, street photography scholars often attribute readiness, quickness, patience, and perceptiveness to street photographers (Howarth & McLaren, 2010). “Public life is unpredictable,” Howarth and McLaren (2010) state; “the best practitioners must sometimes move at the speed of light to capture a split-second collision of line or form, other times have the patience to wait all day on the same corner before the right compositional elements come together” (p. 12). Likewise, for Jardin (2018), not only does street photography require “constant attention” (p. 87), but also “quick decisions” (p. 72). She notes that fleeting movements or bodily gestures such as “facial expressions, body language and display of emotions” can trigger a street photographer into action (p. 35), and that while “the best photographers are discerning,” they are also “consistent in the quality of their work” (p. 15). Howarth and McLaren cite Cartier-Bresson, who likewise notes that for photography, “A velvet hand, a hawk’s eye; these are all one needs”

(Howarth & McLaren, p. 12). Thus, while the obsessive attachment to photographing in the street entails dedication on the one hand, on the other it entails a degree of anticipation and discernment. While the obsession with street photography has to do with what some describe as

141 the “hunt” for successful street photographs or a calculated means of achieving successful photographs, obsession also reflects a more-than-conscious desire: a desire to interact with the unknown, to form new relations, and to respond to the fecundity that life on the street has to offer.

As Jardin puts it, “We scan around us non-stop for hours during our photo walks. Capturing life on the streets becomes a way of life” (p. 87). Thus, street photography as “a way of life,” or a mode of relating, involves certain dispositions and activities, where the body and other senses, not just vision, are implicated in the practice. In Chapter 3, I discussed how it is not only a photographer who desires, but also nonhuman forces and entities involved in the photographic process. Photography does not result from a rational subject making a decision, but rather from a convergence of intra-acting forces and entities in which the photographer is a component part.

In his book, The Lure of the Camera, Charles S. Olcott (1914/2011) describes how he developed an obsession with photography in response to the relations the camera enables:

These two photographs, taken with a camera so small that in operation it was completely

concealed between the palms of my hands, revealed to me for the first time the

fascination of amateur photography. The discovery meant that whatever interested me,

even if no more than the antics of my children, might be instantly recorded. I had no idea

of artistic composition, nor of the proper manipulation of plates, films, and printing

papers. Still less did I foresee that the tiny little black box contained the germ of an

indefinable impulse, which, expanding and growing more powerful year by year, was to

lead me into fields which I had never dreamed of exploring, into habits of observation

never before a part of my nature, and into a knowledge of countless places of historic and

literary interest as well as natural beauty and grandeur, which would never have been

mine but for the lure of the camera. (p. 1)

It is telling that Olcott describes his attraction to photography as the lure of the camera rather than the lure of the photograph. While the lure of the camera may include its capacity to document, this capacity is not limited to mere documentation. As Olcott notes, in addition the

142 ability to document whatever the photographer finds to be of interest, the camera enabled not only new knowings, but also new ways of knowing and being in relation to the world (Ellsworth,

2005).

Photography is an embodied, relational practice that need not result in a photograph. The photographic process takes place as “a sensorial assemblage composed of a range of diverse entities,” including but not limited to “the camera, the photographer, the person, thing or landscape to be photographed, the light and the atmosphere, the surrounding props, the onlookers,

[and] the photographic memories that are activated prior to taking a photograph” (Carabott,

Hamilakis, & Papargyriou, 2015, p. 11, as cited in Hamilakis & Jones, 2017, p. 82). Crucially, this is a sensorial assemblage “which may or may not lead to a photographic afterimage”

(Carabott, Hamilakis, & Papargyriou, p. 11, as cited in Hamilakis & Jones, p. 82). Thus, while the camera is an apparatus that produces records, it is also an apparatus that produces situations, a relationality to others and to the world.

Walking as a Way of Knowing

Maier’s practice is not unlike other practices that have historically placed the body at the center of knowing; artist and educator Stephanie Springgay (2001) points to walking as one. The flâneur responded to the alienation of modernity by developing a practice of spectatorship through wandering. The flâneur “was portrayed as a disinterested, leisurely observer (invariably male) of the urban scene, taking pleasure in losing himself in the crowd and becoming a spectator” (Tester, 1987, as cited in Springgay, p. 644). The Situationists, who “sought to abolish the separation of art and life” by “changing the passive spectator into an active participant,” developed a practice called the dérive: “an aimless drifting on foot through urban spaces that would in turn produce alternative patterns of exploration and protest against the alienation of life under modern capitalism” (Springgay, p. 644). Moreover, according to Springgay, the practice

“of ethnographic wanderings and the theorizing of psychogeography have also brought important issues of gender and identity to the surface, emphasizing walking as a way of becoming a

143 ‘citizen,’ and walking as negotiation and with regard for the Other” (p. 644). In other words, walking can be a way of being in relation, a way of knowing via encounters with other bodies.

Drawing on the work of Peter de Bolla (2001), Elizabeth Ellsworth (2005) explains that knowing, in contrast to knowledge, is “more of a state of mind than an object owned” (p. 152) and “always exists as a potential in the space between sensation and cognition” (Springgay,

2001, p. 638). As such, “the body is implicated in the act of constructing new knowings and ways of knowing” (p. 638). It becomes possible, with this in mind, to read Maier’s and Engle’s practices as something other than a means to an end in which the end (image) stands in for knowing. Rather, the image does not stand in for “knowledge,” and knowing takes place instead in the embodied and relational process of street photography. Since street photography is non- ocular-centric and does not necessarily lead the production of visual artifacts, street photography pedagogy then also cannot be ocular-centric or product-motivated. Since learning takes place through senses and sensations that exceed vision and the visual (Springgay, 2011), street photography requires what Springgay (2011) calls sensational pedagogies. Sensational pedagogies, she explains,

challenge educators to recognize the importance of corporeality, emplacement, and

sensation in learning—of the body’s encounter with other bodies (human and non-

human), of its location in space and time as enmeshed and intertwined, and that sensation

is not simply a matter of an awakening to non-ocular ways of knowing, but recognizes

the politics of knowing sensationally. (p. 651)

An ethically-engaged pedagogy does not prioritize ocular ways of knowing and recognizes that knowing is sensational. Street photography is a relational practice that engages more than vision and the visual. Maier photographed extensively without ever publishing any of her photographs.

Later in the course of her photographic practice, Maier ceased to even develop or print photographic negatives (Bannos, 2017). While Maier photographed extensively, she decentered the photographic product in her practice and eliminated what Hirsh (2018) and Hairman and

144 Lucaites (2016) consider a central step in the photographic process: sharing photographs with an audience. Instead, Maier’s practices centered on what photography enables in the form of possible encounters. Maier’s extensive photographing, coupled with her non-sharing of photographs, suggests an attachment not to a final product, but to what the camera enables, a way to be in relation, street photography as a way of knowing.

Horace Engle: Beyond the Script of the Detective Camera

The detective camera, a late 19th-century invention, is a camera disguised as another object (e.g., a box or briefcase) and designed to enable surreptitious photography. The intended function of the detective camera, in other words, is to photograph subjects without their awareness. British inventor Thomas Bolas developed the detective camera for the police in 1880, receiving a patent for his invention a year later (Coe, 1978). Because the detective camera proved efficient for purposes of espionage, it also took the name “spy camera.” Shortly after the introduction of Bolas’ detective camera, other inventors around Europe and the United States adopted the concept and began developing their own versions of the detective camera (Coe).

Concealed in both form and function, detective cameras took the shape of opera glasses, hats, books, watches, picnic hampers, ties, and canes (Coe, p. 60). The detective camera appeared variously as the photo-cravate, the photo-livre, the Ticka watch camera, the Demon Detective

Camera, and the Stirn Concealed Vest Camera (Coe, p. 60).

Horace Engle (1861-1949), an American amateur photographer, used the Stirn concealed vest camera (Figure 4). Also called the “buttonhole camera,” Stirn brothers’ patented Concealed

Vest Camera first appeared in disk form and was hidden behind a stiff fake shirtfront with the lens disguised as an ornamental button. The camera was later modified to become slim enough to fit under a regular vest or shirt, disposing of the fake shirtfront. A long string was attached to the camera, enabling the photographer to trigger the shutter and operate the camera while remaining concealed under the photographer’s coat. It was quite simple: “It offered no choice of lens openings or timed shutter settings, and produced a negative only 1-5/8 inches in diameter, but the

145 lens was sharp enough to permit enlargements of fifteen diameters” (Leos, 1980, 14). The concealed vest camera operated without a viewfinder, requiring instinctual exposure calculations on the part of the photographer and engaging multisensory, distributed bodily responses not centered on seeing.

Figure 4

C. P. Stirn’s Patent Concealed Vest Camera Advertisement

Note. Advertisement for the C.P. Sterns, Concealed Vest Camera, published in the April issue of Scribner’s magazine, 1889.

146 Whether consciously or not, the body is implicated in its milieu. Stating that this camera restricted sensation to the ocular is inadequate since the body is shaped by its relations. The detective camera in this sense does not merely produce surreptitious forms photography, as its prescribed function purports, it produces a relationality between photographer and environment.

In fact, just as Engle photographed people with the detective camera, including relatives, children, and friends, he also photographed “farm animals … pets, landscapes, the family orchards, even specimen trees” with the same camera (Leos, 1980, p. 99). The detective camera participates in the encounter, producing particular ways of being in relation. And the fact that

Engle never published or intended to publish any of his photographs (Leos, 1980, see Chapter 5) suggests a practice provoked by the materiality of the camera itself and the relationalities it entails. An audience was not necessary for Engle to practice photography as a mode of relating via use of a viewfinder-less camera. Engle’s use of the detective camera to photograph nonhumans suggests that Engle cared less about surreptitious photography than about the act of photographing itself and the multisensory mode of photography the concealed vest camera enabled. Different cameras provide different modes of being in relation. Some cameras, like the detective camera, engage and respond to different senses and sensory cues than other cameras.

Therefore, when analyzing photographs and photographic practices, an ethical disposition considers how cameras affect encounters. An ethical disposition rests not on analyses that only center on technical and formal-aesthetic dimensions; subject matter; historical context; similarity to other canonical “masters” of photography (see Chapter 5); the photographer’s intentions; or ideological agendas. An ethical disposition also takes into account that street photography is more-than-ocular—that it is a relational process that engages senses beyond vision.

Sensory Photography

Not only do ocular-centric approaches miss how the body and other senses are involved in street photography, they also leave no room for modes of photography that do not center on vision. Often neglected, for instance, is sensory photography, which describes the photographic

147 process whereby blind and visually impaired photographers use senses other than vision to create photographs (Bhowmick, 2015).29 Sensory photography can enable dialogue or communication through image sharing, opening up new ways of relating to blind and visually impaired photographers. Partho Bhowmick is a photographer, the founder of the Blind with Camera photography project for the blind and visually impaired, and author of See As No Other:

Photographs by the Visually Impaired (2005). In this book, he notes that photography “is not just the use of a camera.” Rather, it is a process that engages all the senses “in one’s purpose to understand oneself, dialogue with others, and impact or alter perception” (2005, p. 11).

Photography can be a means by which to communicate through visual artifacts, but it also has sensational and pedagogical dimensions with which photographers engage whether or not they produce visual artifacts. Hirsh’s (2008), and Hairman and Lucaites’s (2016) suggestion that central to photography is the presence or prospect of an audience addresses the production, documentary, and communitive dimensions of the photographic process, but it leaves out any sensory or pedagogical dimensions. Engaging with an audience can bring a photographer together with other people and enable them to think and feel together, but that is only one dimension of photography.

Conclusion

Photography need not always result in photographs to be shared. If one approaches photographic analysis from a product-motivated, audience-oriented view, one may mistakenly assimilate non-product motivated practices into more familiar archetypes and narratives frames.

In Chapter 5, Archival Ethics and the Afterlives of Photographs, I discuss the ethical implications of dismissing the possibility that photography can be practiced without an audience—real or imagined—in mind. I argue that it is ethically significant to allow the possibility for

29 The terms “blind” and “visually impaired” encompass a spectrum of visual impairment—people born without sight, people who have partial sight, people who were born sighted but became blind early or late in their lives, and people who are partially sighted (Bhowmick, 2015).

148 understanding photography as a relational process from which the production of visual artifacts is an incidental by-product, rather than the central motivating force.

While on the one hand, sensory photography has documentary and communicative dimensions, on the other it engages the senses such that the photographic process itself has pedagogical value. That is, sensory photography can open up new realms of experience, bodily movement, and modes of encounter—it can enable one to travel while listening, feeling, touching, and sensing spaces and other bodies through the presence of, or via, the camera. When practicing sensory photography, information is gathered through non-visual senses, intuition, and cognitive abilities (Bhowmick, 2015, p. 13). Touch, smell, taste, and sound. Feeling texture, warmth of light, differences in temperature, or distance from one object to another (Bhowmick).

Tactile and audio clues, “minute details of surroundings, insignificant puffs of air, barely audible noise, and changes in the tone of one’s voice” (Bhowmick, p. 16)—all this matters for sensory photography.

Figure 5

Photograph by Bhavesh Patel (2010)

Note. Photograph courtesy of Bhavesh Patel.

149 Bhavesh Patel, a blind photographer, describes a photographic process informed by sound and listening: “I followed the direction of sound as the pigeons flapped their wings and flew, and took these photos based on the audio clue that more sound meant more pigeons are flying” (Bhowmick, p. 46; see Figure 5). Memory is also involved in the creative process.

Layering information gathered by the senses to transform mental images into photographs,

Bhowmick notes that those practicing sensory photography “translate their awareness into mental images by adding layers of their memories of the senses” (p. 15). Sensory photographic processes can reintroduce photography even to those quite familiar with the practice; it can open up new ways of seeing and visualizing that a focus on eye-vision obfuscates. As Bhowmick relates,

While working on Blind with Camera, I have realised blindness by seeing too much. Like

me, most sighted people are blinded by the image-centric emphasis on a visual

interpretation of knowledge, truth and reality. We fail to value other senses, so our

sensibility is narrowed, and our experience, flattened. (p. 100)

Since photography is not strictly ocular or centered on seeing and the visual, it requires non- ocular-centric modes of analysis that engage senses beyond vision. I propose non-ocular-centric modes of analysis in Archival Ethics and the Afterlives of Photographs (Chapter 5) and Archival

Ethics and Iconic Images (Chapter 6).

Chapter 5

Archival Ethics and the Afterlives of Photographs

Why is it ethically significant to expand the range of practices understood to constitute street photography? What is at stake in recognizing that photography may not always require an audience as a precondition? What happens when one uncouples the experiential dimensions of photography from those capitalistic, product-motivated dimensions that center on accumulation and exchange? What shifts when one accounts for the agentic capacities of recording devices and other apparatuses of capture in street photography? What is the significance of going beyond vision and the visual to make room for the other sensory modalities always already involved in photographic and analytic practices—those ignored in ocular-centric accounts of street photography?

Photography, as I argued in the previous chapter, can be better understood as a relational practice, one that may or may not lead to the production of visual artifacts. Photography practitioners often photograph in order to produce images to be shared and circulated, yet photography does not require an audience in order to be meaningful. It produces visual records, yet it also enables a relational process that goes beyond the visual. In the previous chapter, I argued that the agentic capacity and materiality of cameras and recording devices—in combination with other forces and entities—enable the composition or decomposition of relations. In this chapter, I argue that an agentic capacity of cameras and recording devices that is ethico-pedagogically significant is their physical, material, tangible trail—not just their indexical traces. This trail is what I call the incidental by-product of practicing photography or the side effect of a relational process that involves a camera or recording device. In other words, the archive as incidental by-product is an archive that, at its inception, was not made to be found or circulated. Vivian Maier and Horace Engle’s photographic archives can be understood as

151 incidental by-products of practicing photography. Both Maier and Engle photographed extensively, but they never published, or sought to publish, their work (Bannos, 2017; Leos,

1980). Maier and Engle’s attachment to photography, coupled with their non-publication of photographs, suggests an attachment not to a final product, but to what the camera enables, a way to be in relation (see Chapter 4).

In this chapter, I argue that an ethical disposition for street photography allows that photographs are sometimes merely by-products of relational practices involving cameras. When photography is equated strictly with the production of photographs, space to understand street photographic practices otherwise is foreclosed. When one approaches found images through familiar narrative frames with a disposition that dismisses the possibility that photography can be pursued for purposes other than producing photographs, it becomes easy to assimilate such images into familiar categories (e.g., “canonical masters”). Invested in producing and maintaining coherent narratives that fit within normative conventions of the genre, this process of assimilation ignores signs left behind by “discovered” photographers who could no longer secure their photographic archives. In contrast to such a process of assimilation, an ethically-engaged pedagogy for street photography does not simplify the complex in favor of a coherent narrative that conforms to already existing familiar frames of reference. Rather, an ethically-engaged pedagogy slows down and attends to the conditions of an archive’s (re)emergence as such. This ethically-engaged pedagogy also attends to what the structure of the archive is designed, or intended, to exclude. To read outside/against/through/beyond dominant narratives requires time.

An ethically-engaged pedagogy takes time and reads beyond dominant narratives through nonhuman-centered, multisensory, and critically experimental modes of analysis.

This chapter and the next complement one another. In both chapters I propose ethico- pedagogical approaches to encountering photographs and photographic archives. But while in this chapter I examine archival ethics in the context of encountering found photographs, in Chapter 6,

152 I examine archival ethics in the context of encountering iconic images, which have the capacity to mask the processes by which they acquire such a status.

Archival Ethics

Archives can take many forms and serve divergent functions. Archives may contain records, photographs, objects, and so on. They may be formed for purposes of preservation, historical reference, or further research and study. Archeological sites, for instance, may be understood as archives or serve archival purposes. Archives need not be official (e.g., state archives, police records, or records of legislation), they may also be personal (e.g., family photo albums, school records, or mobile phone and personal computer photo galleries). Data of all kinds may be archived, and data sets mined to create consumer profiles and “data doubles” (Hagerty &

Ericson, 2000; see Chapter 7). In this chapter, I am less concerned with delineating the contours of what can be considered an archive than with the notion that an archive can be an incidental by- product of photographic practices. By incidental by-product, I mean an archive that is created from a collection of photographs never intended to serve as a repository for posterity.

Photographs that result from a relational process involving a photographic apparatus (e.g., street photography) may not even have been intended for an audience (see Chapter 4). The archive-as- by-product emerges from photographs as an incidental consequence of practicing photography— one may photograph not just to produce photographs, but to use the camera as a means of being in relation. As such, encountering an archive of unclaimed photographs cannot be approached de facto as a repository that desires to be claimed.

An archive is not a “supremely static container of still images,” but “a curiously dynamic environment” (Lager Vestberg, 2008, p. 56). An ethically-engaged pedagogy takes into account the archive as porous, unstable, an unfixed space that acquires meaning depending on those who engage it and how they engage it. Because of this, what an archive is has to be understood through how it functions: what it does or can do. Colonial archives emerged as projects of racial oppression and exploitation. An ethically-engaged pedagogy recognizes the colonial dimensions

153 of archival practices and enacts modes of engaging outside and against colonial knowledge production. In the remainder of this chapter, I examine the ethical implications of capitalistic approaches that rely on a colonial understanding of photographs as property. I then offer alternative modes of engagement to read beyond and against dominant narratives.

Archival Ethics and the Detective Impulse

There were two photographs. On the back side of one photograph was a descriptive text.

The description included a date, location, and activity; the names of the visitors; the name of the guide leading the activity; and the names, class grades, and high school affiliations of the photographers. The text appeared to provide a cursory description of the scene depicted in the photograph, details that may to some degree have guided how viewers interpreted the image. The text on the back side of the second photograph did not have the same descriptive relation to the image as the first photograph I encountered. In the lowermost left-hand corner, its text detailed only the location, year, and event during which the photograph was taken. This descriptive text, however, was not the most intriguing detail, and its placement—relegated to the lowermost corner on the photograph’s back side—was overshadowed by the circular stamp that sat right at the center of the 8-inch by 10-inch print. This stamp, it became evident to me, also marked the back side of all the photographs loosely stacked in the box I encountered in the Pennsylvania

State University Archives.

Initially, what had drawn me to sift through this pile of photographs were the photographs themselves. The quality and finish of the prints attracted my attention; somewhat luminous but not overly glossy; the depth of black tones complemented the white and gray hues.

The content of the photographs—people, landscapes, and objects—was also attractive. The photographs and subject matter seemed neither to occupy immediately the formal-aesthetic conventions that characterize fine art photography nor the snapshot aesthetic that characterizes vernacular or amateur photography. They sat somewhere in between. But more of interest than the subject matter itself was the way the subject matter was depicted: there was a sense of

154 intimacy, quietness; there was a Rilkean30 solitude about them. Or, in visual, textural terms, there was a sense of stillness. My affective reception of these photographs was a result of their framing and the angles from which they were taken. The subject matter appears at once both close and distant; both from the point of view of the photographer from that of the viewer. I later came to learn that this particular aesthetic dimension was perhaps in part due to the use of a detective camera. This detective camera, a Stirn Concealed Vest Camera, operates without a viewfinder, requiring both instinctual exposure calculations on the part of the photographer and an appropriate physical distance to the subject (distance determines both depth of field and degree of focus). At that point, however, I had yet to learn this detail.

I visited the Pennsylvania State University Archives that day as a part of a graduate art education history course in order to examine archival material for the term’s final paper. I find it difficult now to recall whether my initial effort to further investigate this set of photographs stemmed from a personal desire to learn more about them or the need to fulfill course requirements. Whatever the case may have been, I felt compelled to investigate further. First, I turned over one of the photographs to determine what, if anything, was written on its back. What

I found was as intriguing as the photographs themselves because it was perplexing. This added to my investigatory detective impulse. The circular stamp found at the center of the photograph’s back read: “Photo by Horace Engle, Printed by Ed Leos. Lemont, Pa.” The question that immediately came to mind was why? Why were there two names? Why were these photographs made by one person and printed by another? I sifted through the photographs in an attempt to locate any other information that might end up being the missing puzzle piece needed to solve this little mystery. All I found was more of the same.

That these photographs were found in an archive seemed to indicate that one name belonged to the photographer, the other to an archivist, and that such a collection may have been

30 Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was a Bohemian-Austrian poet who believed that solitude protected creativity, and that creativity begat further solitude.

155 archived for purposes of preservation. Still, there was a dearth of information that might have indicated the nature of the relationship between the people whose names jointly marked each photograph’s back side. Who brought these photographs to this archive? Why was the photographer not immediately evident? With the lack of an apparent connection between the two names, something felt off. At that point, I had found the topic of my final paper.

As I further investigated this mysterious connection for the paper, I found that it seemed fair to describe Edward Leos as an admirer of Horace Engle. This admiration guided and fueled

Leos’s desire to preserve and circulate Engle’s photographic work. However, researching and writing this paper raised more questions than answers. The more I investigated the connection between the two and read Leos’s writing on the subject, the more inconsistencies emerged between Leos’s findings and the meanings he imbued on Engle’s life and work. What authorized

Leos not only to dig through Engle’s belongings, read his diaries and journals, and interview his family members and acquaintances, but also to publish and widely circulate Engle’s photographic work and life story? Would Engle accept and welcome Leos’s preservation of his work and narrativization of his life, or would he (more likely) disapprove? Why does Leos ignore the connection between the particular uses to which Engle put the detective camera and Engle’s disposition?

The questions that arose from that paper instigated another set of questions having to do with archival ethics more broadly. Does one’s attraction to photographs legitimize further circulating them? What leads one to engage in archival practices under the guise of historical preservation? What are the conditions that not only allow, but encourage, one to enact such preservation? To what extent must one listen to the signs that the deceased leave behind after they can no longer secure their work, signs that may not be evident in the photographs themselves, that cannot be gleaned through photographic interpretation alone? What are the ethical implications of treating family members as appropriate proxies for the deceased in the absence of their explicit authorization or in contradiction to the clues they have left behind? How sufficient are property

156 rights laws as ethical signifiers, and to what extent must one accept them as taken-for-granted facts?

Edward Leos was a professor of photojournalism at the Pennsylvania State University.

On March 5, 1971, Leos unexpectedly discovered Horace Engle’s work in a photojournalism lab on campus. What initially attracted Leos to the “small pile of photographs” sitting on a table in that room, he later recalls, was their circular frame (Leos, 1980, p. 13). Hoping to locate the source of such prints, Leos went to the adjoining printing lab. There, Leos found Jeanette Engle who, at the time, was a photojournalism student at the Pennsylvania State University. She was busy printing images that resembled those in the pile he had encountered. Horace Engle’s great niece, Jeanette, was the first person to take an interest in her great uncle’s photographs after his death.

Jeanette’s possession of her great uncle’s photographic negatives became possible after his death. But it was not merely his death that had triggered this transferal of ownership. Because what Horace Engle left behind was treated as property, if no members of his family felt a need or desire to hold on to them, his belongings would be “lost” by means of donation, sale, disposal, or decay. Jeanette’s aunt invited her to keep what she found to be of interest of her great uncle’s materials—photographs, clippings, notebooks, drawings, cartoons, business correspondence, postcard-sized film negatives—as the rest would be put up for sale (Leos, 1980). While photographs, as the incidental by-product of practicing photography, have an enduring quality—a quality that must be taken into account in archival encounters—photographs are not immune from destruction. As such, the very possibility of photographs being destroyed or otherwise lost may instigate, or at the very least embolden, a desire for archival preservation. Leos recalls:

After noting that the plates had survived a fire in which some of Engle’s papers had been

lost, Jeanette expressed fear that the fire’s heat might have rendered the emulsions brittle,

and that the images might craze and flake of [sic] their glass supports. The materials

remaining on the farm faced other hazards as well. The unheated attic subjected its

157 contents to extremes of temperature and humidity. This was also true of the corncrib,

where wind, rain, vermin, and occasional prowlers were additional dangers. There was

also the threat of dispersal. … Most of the material, Jeanette said, came from the

corncrib, whose contents, according to her estimate, was more than a pick-up truck could

hold. The corncrib, she felt, should be emptied soon, because she’s noticed that some of

the crates had been opened, and their contents scattered on the floor. (pp. 16–18)

Leos and Jeanette decided to save the photographs. “After a weekend of examining more of

Engle’s artifacts,” writes Leos, “Jeanette returned with her samples, and with word that her aunt was unperturbed by our intentions of removing this material and eventually placing it in a public archive” (p. 17). Leos describes in his book what happened next: Leos and Jeanette decided to take a few trips to transport Engle’s artifacts to University Park for purposes of inspection and preservation. Given the state of the material—which faced deterioration and possible theft—Leos and Jeanette felt an urgency to secure and print as many plates and film negatives as possible.

While Jeanette took charge of printing, Leos examined the papers found among Engle’s belongings.

Cross referencing information gathered from the papers with Jeanette’s frequent discussions with her aunt over the phone, Leos found that the phone calls offered more questions than answers. Jeanette sensed the reluctance with which her aunt met her inquiries into Horace

Engle. “Indeed,” Leos writes, “Jeanette was advised more than once to avoid becoming too involved with Horace” (p. 19). By the time Leos and Jeanette had planned an exhibition of

Engle’s work, her aunt had given up this discouragement: “Any uncertainty about the owner’s attitude [her aunt, at that point] had been quieted by Jeanette’s report from Glen Mills: her aunt, apparently impressed by the seriousness of Jeanette’s involvement, no longer cautioned her about becoming interested in Horace” (pp. 20–21). Considering that law—including property rights law—does not equal ethics (see Chapters 1–2), whose permission authorizes the circulation of one’s artifacts after one’s death? What qualifies as permission? Is the ethical question about

158 permission in itself (i.e., acquiring consent) or about the processes that bypass the need for permission in the first place? Does permission always take the form of explicit consent? Or are there signs below initial surface readings, signs that may produce meanings contrary to those legitimized by constructed narratives? When does the will to preserve merge with, or transform into, a will to track and surveil; to fulfil the voyeuristic desire to see while not being seen? To what extent does one fulfill one’s own fantasies by narrativizing another’s life and work?

Hints denoting Engle’s position about the publishing of his work can be found within the belongings he left behind. Leos’s own research findings demonstrate that Engle seemed neither to have intended to publish his photographic work nor to achieve the status of a professional photographer (one of the ways one gains the status of professional photographer is through publishing). Leos also believed that the lack of information about Engle’s photographic philosophy indicated that he was neither seeking profit nor fame. Leos himself admits that Engle did not want this “gift” of memorialization that Leos claims to bestow: through reading Engle’s papers, Leos learned “that in the extensive catalog of his interests only photography was practiced without worldly motivations” (pp. 9–10). While Leos more than once takes note of the signs signaling Engle’s lack of desire or intention to make his work available widely, he did not heed them. Leos asserted that Engle himself would be grateful to know that his work and life story were not merely preserved within his family, but on a much wider scale. Leos writes in the acknowledgments section: “It was Jeanette Engle whose curiosity unearthed the first Engle images and found them good. For that fact, and that understanding, I and her Uncle Horace are grateful” (p. 11). But Jeanette’s “interest in the plates,” as Leos notes, “had been limited to their pictorial appeal” (p. 18). Leos’s own interest in Engle’s photographs fueled and pushed the project forward. What did Leos find so attractive that he sought to historicize and memorialize

Engle’s life and work? Why did Leos’s interest, which started with Horace Engle’s photographs, morph or expand into an interest in Engle’s life?

159 Leos claims his attraction to Engle’s photographs was due to their prophetic dimension.

For Leos, Engle’s photographs foreshadowed the candid aesthetic so revered within street photography discourse, even though street photographic style was facilitated by the handheld camera, which only appeared decades after the late 19th century period during which Engle practiced photography.31 Leos writes, “It seemed that if Engle demonstrated that candid photography was possible before the day of fast films, fast lenses, and precise cameras, his work was at the fringe of photographic practice in the nineteenth century” (p. 16). Engle’s use of the

Stirn Concealed Vest Camera, Leos deduces, demonstrated that Engle’s “interest in his subjects was paramount” and corresponded well with his “concern with fidelity and spontaneity and alertness to the unexpected” (p. 136). However, while Leos contends that Engle’s aesthetic was a result of “the active judgment of the photographer,” Leos’s own speculative questions challenge this claim. For example, Leos asks whether Engle had, “in fact, been aware of [his photographs’] character and quality” (p. 17). While Leos’s question—whether Engle was aware of his own photographic style—is open ended in that it may yield divergent answers, his claims about Engle seem to conform to the narrative he assigns to Engle’s work: that Engle produced candid photographs before the approach became widely practiced. Leos understands Engle’s photography through an assimilationist frame of reference that relies merely on technical formal- aesthetic dimensions to connect Engle’s approach to the genre of street photography. Leos writes:

“While wearing his secret camera he seems to have tingled with an awareness of the moment’s significance, which is to be felt only years later by the more sensitive users of the small camera”

(1980, p. 49). In contrast to such an assimilationist approach, an ethically-engaged pedagogy goes beyond the visual, and beyond familiar narrative frames. An ethically-engaged pedagogy recognizes that the way one engages found images has ethico-pedagogical implications. As such,

31 Snapshot photography first appeared in 1888, “when George Eastman announced a roll film box camera with the slogan, ‘You push the button, we do the rest’” (Bannos, 2017, p. 23). However, it only became widespread around the time of the first world war.

160 an ethically-engaged pedagogy (re)assesses its relation to and investments in found photographs and photographic archives.

For Leos, Engle’s photographs and his use of the detective camera also provided a necessary corrective to the austere family portraits of the late Victorian period, an aesthetic and representational capacity Leos felt needed to be shared. While collectors would find interest in learning more about and acquiring Engle’s camera, more significant to Leos “was the capacity of his images to alter visual stereotypes and, ultimately, people’s understanding of the lives and attitudes of their forebears” (Leos, p. 16).32 “A generation portrayed in photographs as mannikins or poseurs was shown in Engle’s pictures to share our humanity. Such photographs,” Leos deduces, “should not remain private” (p. 16). Leos’s reading of Engle’s work became his rationale for preserving and circulating it. But is Leos overdetermining meaning? Does he use his own interpretation of Engle’s approach to create a familiar, linear, historical narrative about street photography?

At the early stages of his research into Engle, Leos thought that Jeanette’s aunt would provide much needed information about Engle’s photographs—they were neither dated nor titled—and about his life in general. Jeanette’s aunt did not recognize any of the locations depicted in the photographs, however, and it was to Leos’s surprise that the character of the Engle she knew contradicted the Engle written about in Engle’s papers (notebooks, diaries, letters, etc.).

For example, Jeanette’s aunt knew a Horace that was a “religious fundamentalist,” whereas

Leos’s impression of him was as a progressive. This, at least, is what he had gathered from

Engle’s photographs and verses. Leos was as fascinated with Engle’s work as he was with

Engle’s life. Leos believed that a man who had an aptitude for photography that preceded his time was surely a man worth studying. The deeper Leos dug into the traces of Engle’s life, the more intrigued he became. He was especially intrigued by Engle’s half-sister’s impression of him, an

32 As such, Leos treats photographs as unmediated documents of fact.

161 impression somewhat complicated by her daughter. Engle’s half-sister thought he was distant, reserved, and irresponsible, as he was always abandoning things in the hopes of finding something better, “always launching grandiose schemes—which never worked out” (Leos, p. 27).

When Leos asked about Engle’s time at Johns Hopkins University, she replied, “Who knows what he got into? He was involved in so many things, a very strange man” (p. 28). Her daughter, on the other hand, described him as intelligent and caring. She was, according to an exchange with Leos, convinced that Engle liked children since he was continually, but gently, commenting on their grammar and pronunciation, “explaining the error as well as the correction” (p. 27). Of course, in the absence of Horace Engle’s first-person testimony, Leos was bound to speculate about what shaped the Horace described by some who knew him.

Leos initially thought that his suspected aloofness had to be rooted in his upbringing. On the contrary, Leos’s findings demonstrated to him that Engle had a good childhood and bore sincere affection for his parents and relatives (p. 30). What seemed to be construed as irresponsibility seemed to have been mixed up with Engle’s passion for expanding his knowledge quickly (Leos, 1980). He earned diplomas from both Lehigh University and Johns Hopkins

University in five years. Engle designed his own education: “a vocational and theoretical training, resting on a cultural base which included Latin, German, mathematics, rhetoric, literature, physiology, history, drawing, natural philosophy, bookkeeping, and music” (Leos, p. 27). Leos described Engle’s diaries and journals as comprehensive records documenting much of his scientific research and business endeavors. Meanwhile, Engle’s correspondence portrayed both his professional and his personal life. When Engle wrote about photography, it was solely for technical reasons. He corresponded with photofinishers to supply precise instructions for their task of developing and printing his negatives. He also corresponded with camera manufacturers to request special equipment affordable to non-professional photographers.

Leos’s research journey culminated in the book Other Summers: The Photographs of

Horace Engle (1980). While Leos’s findings demonstrate that Engle seemed never to have

162 intended to publish his work, Leos’s acquired collection is now housed at the Pennsylvania State

University Archives; some prints are at the William Penn Memorial Museum of the Pennsylvania

Historical and Museum Commission; and thirteen of Engle’s photographs were gifted to the

Museum of Modern Art in New York. The first exhibition of Engle’s photographs at the William

Penn Memorial Museum in the early 1970s lead to “a circulating show [that] crisscrossed the continent, from Alaska to Arizona, from Louisiana to New York, from 1973 through 1977; and an exhibit was held at the Stieglitz Gallery of New York’s Sohophoto Foundation in June 1977”

(Leos, 1980, p. 9). Other Summers reads as though it is an homage to a dear mentor, or a memoir written about the discovery of an admirable ancestor. The first half of the book is mostly biographical, whereas the second half is novelistic. Both can be characterized as sentimental.

Leos champions his subject (Engle), and it seeps through his writing. Leos constantly searched for and presented counter-narratives to any negative impressions others had of Engle. Although

Leos was a photojournalism professor, and he himself practiced photography, Other Summers presents a biography of Engle’s life and a small archive of his photographs. It does not provide a critical analysis of Engle’s use of the detective camera for purposes outside of surreptitious photography (see Chapter 4). That Leos published Engle’s photographic work and biography is something Engle would likely have rejected, a supposition that even Leos’s Other Summers supports. For the Engle described in Other Summers, Leos’s admiration would likely have been unrequited.

While Engle used the detective camera to capture many of his photographs, issues that characterize surreptitious photography, like voyeurism, surveillance, and the male and racialized gaze, are not once mentioned in Other Summers—except in the foreword to the book. In the foreword to Other Summers, photography historian and theorist Alan Trachtenberg mentions, but neither complicates the tendency toward nor the desire surrounding voyeurism and voyeuristic practices (p. 5). Trachtenberg also plays into the language of preservation to elide the ethical questions that accompany archival practices. He writes, “Horace Engle and his pictures remain

163 enigmatic, but we know at least that he existed and left his mark” (p. 6). He goes to the length of arguing that “the story is as much Leos’s as Engle’s” (p. 6). Yet Leos’s approach neglects Engle’s own desire to photograph for himself and instead favors a predominant narrative about photographers: that they always photograph for an audience—real or imagined. These photographs were preserved through a strategic refashioning of the meaning of his work, as well as through the habitual dismissal of a photographer’s disposition when it happens to fall outside capitalistic understandings of photography that prioritize product over process. What is at stake here is not whether unclaimed photographs deserve preservation, but rather the ethical dimensions of preserving that which does not desire to be preserved. The ethico-pedagogical question is, then, what disposition allows one to disregard the likely desires of photographers in pursuit of “preservation”—to construct narratives that systematically contradict or ignore the photographer’s approach to photography?

A common approach to reading found images is to assimilate them into familiar frames of reference. Trachtenberg, for example, assimilates Engle’s photographic work to that of

“canonical masters” (p. 7). He writes, “Engle’s detective camera produced results which bear astonishing resemblance to the famous work of Cartier-Bresson, Brassai, Walker Evans, and

Robert Frank in our own age” (p. 7). This assimilationist hunt for coherent narratives within the art world mirrors and extends the colonialist hunt for finality and its tendency to control and preserve dominant narratives. As Akanksha Mehta (2019) argues, “Feminist (and) decolonial thought has taught us, time and again, that the often obsessive hunt for finality, for certainty, for explanations echoes colonial knowledge production. Narratives are contradictory; knowledge productions are ambivalent; there are no singular stories and clear ‘answers’” (p. 30). An ethical disposition is flexible upon encountering unclaimed photographs, allowing for multiple readings but also understanding that the position from which one encounters and reads these images itself influences meaning making.

164 Trachtenberg argues that “in our eyes if not his own … the small body of detective camera pictures … [is] his best achievement [and] what saves him from oblivion” (Leos, p. 7).

Yet perhaps the more ethically hospitable move—if more difficult for some, such as Leos—is to let them disappear into oblivion.

Archival Ethics and the Pedagogy of Slowing Down

While archives are not limited to photographs, at their inception, photography and archival practices were understood similarly and thus served to reinforce one another (Schwartz,

2007). Joan M. Schwartz (2007) argues that notions of photographic objectivity reinforced the idea of the archive as a container of facts, and documentation as an objective means of record- keeping and gaining knowledge. Understood “as an enhanced form of visual note taking, a tool of observation, and an accurate and reliable means of documentation,” photography “was a way of communicating empirical facts—‘brutal facts’—in visual, purportedly unmediated form across space and time” (Schwartz, p. 65). The prioritizing of empirical knowledge and scientific progress during the Enlightenment period “encouraged an empiricist approach to amassing not only artifacts but also facts” (p. 74). By the mid-nineteenth century, Victorians held both facts and artifacts up as central tools for collecting, organizing, and controlling knowledge, rendering photographs important means through which to know the world. Photography and archival practices also corresponded with ideas about travel and geographical movement as an

“intellectual method” and means for gaining knowledge (Schwartz, p. 65). In other words, photography was pivotal to Victorian culture’s use of visuality as a primary epistemology.

According to Schwartz, photographs and their visuality came to equal truth and objectivity.

Photography became a way to capture the world in detail, to bring the world home for study, to use as travel notes, or even to replace costly travel experiences. The photograph was understood as unmediated. “Photographic witnessing,” Schwartz points out, “was not only a way of studying places from afar; it was also a way of investigating peoples at a safe distance” (p. 68); it was understood to directly replace personal experience or the need to acquire an object itself.

165 However, such supposed photographic objectivity is in fact a strategic means of legitimizing narratives of racialized hierarchy under the guise of scientific precision and measurability. In other words, the very claim of photographic objectivity masks an unavoidable subjective process through which this idea of objectivity is enacted and mobilized. The colonial archive employs the notion of photographic objectivity to form narratives that legitimize colonialism, imperialist expansion, and racial slavery (see Chapter 7). Moreover, the hunt for finality and certainty are violent colonial archival practices that attempt to fix meaning and script narratives that legitimize, obscure, or downplay that violence. For this reason, an ethically- engaged pedagogy takes into account the relationship between the language of discovery, evidence, preservation, ordering, and making coherent and colonial formations of archives to tally, track, and manage the enslaved as property in the transatlantic slave trade and its wake.

For an ethically-engaged pedagogy, when encountering archives, the task is not simply to assess whether or not that archive is factual or accurate—since that entails uncovering a hidden truth—but instead to analyze the formation of those facts, the way they are used, and how they are meant to be consumed (Stoler, 2007). Rather than seeking to uncover a hidden truth, an ethically-engaged pedagogy “respect(s) the limits of what cannot be known” (Hartman, 2008, p.

4). An ethically-engaged pedagogy takes seriously what is missing from an archive. It asks what such an absence entails, rather than filling up what is missing with a pre-established narrative that is self-serving. An ethically-engaged pedagogy approaches archival limit as possibility for reading photographs otherwise and beyond dominant narratives (Hartman). An ethically-engaged pedagogy approaches found images as what Tina Campt (2017) calls quiet images. Campt notes, images are “‘quiet’ to the extent that, before they are analyzed, they must be attended by way of the unspoken relations that structure them” (Campt, p. 8).

In the next section, I examine the ethical implications of capitalistic, product-motivated approaches to photography by tracing the processes by which Vivian Maier’s found images became popularized. In the final section, I engage an intra-active reading practice of the same

166 processes. I engage these two readings as a pedagogy of slowing down and attending to the encounter with quiet images.

Archival Ethics and the Limitations of Property Rights Laws as Ethical Signifiers

Photographs are often understood in the Western art world to be items subject to property rights. In this section, I examine how contemporary settler colonial notions of property rights via a legalistic model of ethics that centers on acquisition and exchange framed the ethics surrounding the acquisition and sale of Vivian Maier’s photographs. I then propose thinking intra- actively as an ethical disposition for encountering found images, one that does not take for granted that photographs are always made to be shared.

I first encountered the name Vivian Maier in a review of the documentary film, Finding

Vivian Maier, directed by John Maloof and Charlie Siskel (2013). Even in this film, a narrative about this person was already framed: Vivian Maier, the mysterious nanny photographer, rescued from obscurity with a combination of luck and the ingenious entrepreneurship of John Maloof. In this film, Maloof documents his journey from unexpectedly finding Maier’s photo negatives to his search for her origins. Similar to the language of discovery, rescue, and preservation used in the Leos-Engle project, Maloof’s narrative is to save Maier and her work from obscurity. Like in

Leos’s Other Summers, in Finding Vivian Maier, Maloof asks historical and speculative questions; ethical questions do not come up. Leos refashioned Engle’s family members’ contradictory account to fit into the narrative he constructed about Engle’s work and life.

Similarly, in Finding Vivian Maier, Maloof refashions research findings to support the narrative of Maier as “a mysterious nanny, who secretly took over 100,000 photographs that were hidden in storage lockers” (Maloof & Siskel, 2013, para. 1). Thus, Maier became popularized as a heroic romantic figure, whose only mistake—or bad luck—was not publishing her pioneering body of photographic work. But how did Maloof’s “discovery” take place? It was not through an encounter with the photographer herself, who may then have expressed a desire to share the work she had not been able to share before. Nor was it through a chance encounter with the

167 photographs themselves. It was not through a private estate sale or a state archive. Rather, it was through an auction house in Chicago.

Pamela Bannos explains in her extensively researched corrective book, Vivian Maier: A

Photographer’s Life and Afterlife (2017), that at 81 years of age, Maier was renting five storage lockers in a North Side Chicago warehouse. However, she had stopped making rental payments by mid-2007. The year prior, ownership of the six-story storage facility that housed Maier’s belongings had changed. In accordance with the acquiring company’s policy, when Maier’s rental payment was thirty days past due, the locks on each of her units were removed and replaced with the company’s padlocks. This was the moment marking the beginning of a process whereby

Maier’s work was made available for others to imbue with meaning. Like Engle’s, Maier’s belongings were treated as property.

According to the doctrine of property rights in the United States, photographs belong to the person who creates them (Azoulay, 2008, p. 98). But the notion of property rights can be at odds with relational ethics approaches because property rights are individualistic and therefore insufficient as an ethical signifier. What happens when one can no longer secure one’s own

“property”? When property is treated as material with exchange value? As Ariella Azoulay

(2008) argues, “The properties of photography itself make it impossible for any single individual to claim exclusive property rights to a photograph” (p. 93). A number of others beyond the individual in fact make decisions about, among other objects that exceed the limits of property rights, photographs. In Engle’s case, family members became proxy decision-makers, determining the fate of what the photographer left behind after his death. In Maier’s case, the state decided to auction off her belongings while she was still alive once she could no longer make rental payments. In Engle’s case, the moment of death inaugurated a new situation in which family members negotiated archival ethics and made decisions of ethical consequence. In Maier’s case, it was the moment her belongings got transferred to the state, when she was no longer able

168 to monetarily secure them in a capitalistic system that functions in terms of profit margins, that others claimed the right to make decisions about these items.

But who has access to capital, to auction house trading? Must one take for granted the ethics—or lack thereof—of unclaimed-property-auctioning processes? Must one accept an ethics structured around property rights when such a notion is constructed as a legal means by which to maintain racial hierarchies? As Robin D. G. Kelly (2013), explains, in the United States,

political and legal foundations were built on an ideology of settler colonialism—an

ideology in which the protection of white property rights was always sacrosanct;

predators and threats to those privileges were almost always black, brown, and red; and

where the very purpose of police power was to discipline, monitor, and contain

populations rendered a threat to white property and privilege. (para. 9)

Although property laws designate photographers as the owners of their images, this ownership is temporary and conditional. Moreover, these property rights did not protect Maier. Rather, they protected the people who traded in her work, who turned her work into capital with exchange value. Maloof was not the only one to acquire Maier’s work and seek to profit from it. As part of the storage company’s process of dealing with unpaid and unclaimed storage units, “the manager placed two public notices, a week apart, in a local newspaper” (Bannos, p. 8). By law, notes

Bannos, the storage company had to list in the notice the name of the renter and a description of the items in the unit. The description of Maier’s possessions “attracted a motley assemblage of enterprising bidders hoping to reap profit” (Bannos, p. 8). One of them was Roger Gunderson, owner of an auction house called RPN Sales on Chicago’s Northwest Side. He had attended many such story unit auctions, using what he had acquired for resale at his own business. Unlike Leos, whose attraction to Engle’s work was a result of an experiential and affective encounter with

Engle’s photographs, Gunderson was motivated by acquiring whatever might be interesting enough to enable resale and profit.

169 Gunderson sensed from a limited look at Maier’s belongings that her storage units were of interest. He was fascinated by “an old traveler’s streamer trunk covered in stickers, one from

Paris” (Bannos, p. 8). Bannos explains that this encounter with the streamer trunk—an artifact that historicizes its own geographical movements by way of the stickers placed upon it—led

Gunderson to buy her five units’ worth of possessions for $260, without knowing exactly what the hundreds of boxes contained. The boxes, Gunderson later learned, contained personal correspondence, bills, documents, books, magazines, and “thousands of photographs of all sizes, perhaps one hundred thousand negatives, countless yellow Kodak boxes of slides and motion picture reels, and more than one thousand rolls of undeveloped film” (Bannos, p. 8). This is the moment during which Maier’s belongings became items for (re)sale, and thus available for multiple people to acquire.

Getting Maier’s items ready for sale, Gunderson sorted them “into small lots in what he called ‘pop flats,’ traylike cardboard boxes” (Bannos, p. 8). Gunderson took Maier’s belongings to four or five auctions, Bannos notes, and at each auction, Gunderson offered “eighty to one hundred pop flats of her books, magazines, newspapers, and other paper ephemera” (p. 9). It was during the last two auctions that Gunderson offered Maier’s photographic material. After that, the transferal and dispersal of Maier’s belongings and photographic work continued. Ron Slattery, who frequented Gunderson’s action house, was a member of “a lively web-based community of vernacular photography buyers and sellers who trafficked in mid-twentieth-century snapshots”

(Bannos, p. 10). At the first of these final auctions, Slattery “bid on and won so much of Maier’s materials that evening that he needed to take several trips to his car afterward” (Bannos, p. 10).

While this first photograph auction was light in terms of attendance, Gunderson remembers that

“as a result of word of mouth about the photographic work offered in mid-October, between ninety and 130 bidders and onlookers—a much larger audience that usual—attended the final auction” (Bannos, p. 10). Given the large attendance and keen interest in Maier’s photographic work, it sold for much more at the October auction (Bannos, p. 10).

170 According to Bannos’s account, while at the final auction, the bulk of the photographs were split between an art collector and a local businesswoman, prior to the auction, a 26-year-old real estate agent—John Maloof—had placed an absentee bid on the biggest box of negatives in the collection. Like Slattery, Maloof pieced out items for sale on eBay. Gunderson’s $260 purchase ballooned to $20,000 in sales. Bannos notes that “Maier, unaware of her expanding presence, had another year to live” (p. 11). Profiteering from Maier’s work began before her death and continued after it.

What kinds of narratives need be imbued in photographic work to normalize practices of

“preservation” and “rescuing artists from obscurity”? What kinds of narratives make it palatable to popularize another photographer’s work? Who do romantic narratives of posthumous fame serve? What is the process through which such ostensible efforts at preservation becomes normalized to the point that it is easy to take for granted that all who practice photography must do so to become well known and well respected? What enables ethical issues in photographic preservation practices to be largely “glossed over in favor of a heroic narrative,” one that benefits the person preserving or selling photos (Bannos, p. 1)? Those who traded in Maier’s work had to come up with a narrative that legitimized their acquisition and circulation of her work without admitting that it was done for profit. In this narrative, the only reason Maier did not seek to publish her work was because her difficult circumstances would not allow it. Maintaining such a narrative, however, requires dismissing from capitalistic modes of production and exchange

Maier’s agentic capacity to secure her own work and the meaning it had for her.

People who circulated and created narratives about Maier’s work relied on “conflicting and sometimes dubious testimony,” which created “a picture of an eccentric ‘nanny photographer’” (Bannos, p. 12). Maier’s inclination was to keep her personal life and her photographic work hidden, even from those who have tried to speak for her. Those who continue to trade in her work do not understand this strategic, self-imposed anonymity as a conscious agentic choice. Rather, according to Bannos, they employed her effort to remain anonymous in

171 shaping a narrative around the so-called “‘mystery’ of Vivian Maier” (p. 12). Many have happily accepted a narrative of Vivian Maier that both psychologizes her and romanticizes the preservation of her work—and acceptance of this narrative is made palatable by dismissing the decisiveness with which Maier refused to share her photographs. For example, Dea K. (2016), who writes of the “mysterious yet incredibly prolific photographer,” claims,

The fact that Maier’s personality was very specific contributes even more to the magic of

her work. It is not easy to imagine a photographer who never showed any of his pieces to

anyone, and this is exactly what Maier has been doing throughout her life. She was, in a

way, a solitary genius who found the peace and solace through her persistent work. (para.

7)

If it “is not easy to imagine a photographer who never showed any of his [sic] pieces to anyone,” then Maier must have been “a solitary genius who found the peace and solace through her persistent work.” In other words, if photography is understood to be done exclusively for audiences, then the reason Maier never published her extensive work must be because of a peculiar personality trait or because she worked as a nanny.

As in Engle’s case, art-trade circles have a tendency of assimilating found images into the categories of already popularized works. As Trachtenberg does with Engle’s work, Dea K. assimilates Maier’s body of photographic work within familiar aesthetic traditions in order to make sense of the fact that it was not intended for sharing:

Vivian Maier’s work speaks a lot about the world of street photography in the second part

of the 20th century and similarly to the pieces of Cartier-Bresson and [Berenice] Abbott,

her work displays a lot of natural spontaneity. Her portrayal of Chicago and New York

City as well as some exotic countries is rather refreshing because of its powerful

straightforwardness. (para. 7)

By foreclosing any space for considering Maier and Engle’s photographic practices otherwise, such processes of assimilation limit creative possibilities, reproducing scripted narratives about

172 what photography should look like rather than what it can do. Rather than understanding photography as merely a production of records to be circulated and traded, an ethical disposition allows photography to be a multisensory, relational process (see Chapter 4).

Maier continued to photograph extensively after she stopped making prints and even after she stopped developing her black-and-white film negatives (Bannos, p. 233). Yet those who seek to trace Maier’s lineage through documentaries such as Finding Vivian Maier actively disregard her “own conscious efforts to detach herself from her family” (Bannos, p. 276). Bannos points out that the fact that Maier took on the role of outsider through this detachment from family points to

“her independence and self-determination” (p. 276). Maier’s decisions to maintain privacy,

Bannos writes, “also seem vital to seeing her as a woman who did her best to control the way she was seen, as well as how she viewed and recorded her surroundings” (p. 276). Maier called men

“uncouth” (Bannos, p. 267), but her legacy came quickly under the control of men, and this, argues Bannos, must be taken into account when analyzing narratives around her life and work.

As with Engle’s admirers, Dea K. and other fans of Maier’s photography perceive the popularization of Maier’s work as commendable. These admirers take for granted the narrative of an artist saved from obscurity.33 Rather than developing an interest in Maier’s work stemming from the photographs themselves, those who initially bought her belongings did not know their content. What motivates many auction purchases is the opportunity of profit from resale. Thus, the mode of acquisition already casts doubt on any selfless motivations behind imbuing Maier’s work with value-creating meanings or characterizing her life-story in ways that render her photographs more interesting (and thus, more sellable). In other words, the “site of recovery”

33 Such acceptance of the popularized narrative about Maier can be summed up in the trailer to another documentary film about her work and life, The Vivian Maier Mystery (Nicholls, 2013). The film’s trailer describes Maier as “Mary Poppins with a camera” and “one of the most intriguing photographers of the twentieth century.” It also states that “she was a poet of suburbia, a secret street photographer before the term was really invented.” Her storage lockers, the trailer says, “proved a treasure trove for the finders,” and her story is called “a classic parable of the artist, unsung in life.”

173 (Campt, 2017) of Maier’s work is at odds with the assigned and popularized narratives of her work.

In the next section, I propose that an ethical disposition approaches photographs and photographic archives intra-actively—as an ethico-pedagogical mode of analysis that foregrounds the iterative, relational processes of knowledge production and meaning making.

Intra-active Archives

A concept developed by feminist theoretical physicist Karen Barad (2003; 2007; 2012), intra-action revises the Cartesian interaction. The term intra-action has ethical and pedagogical functions in that it is a mode of analysis that focuses on processes of materialization, meaning making, and knowledge production. Interaction assumes that relations take place between two or more separate entities, and that each entity retains its properties and capacities as it enters and exists relations. The term interaction thus assumes that the causal relationship between entities is well-defined, where one entity produces effects on the other. For example, the archivist or researcher is the agent who interacts with archival material and gives it meaning. In this sense, neither the archival material nor the mode of research is understood as part of the meaning- making process. However, this is not the case. Whether or not the archivist or researcher consciously admits to it, meaning is co-produced from a contingent set of relations that involves, but is not limited to, the human archivist or researcher. In contrast to interaction, the term intra- action does not assume a prior separation between entities. Rather, intra-action emphasizes how boundaries, meanings, and phenomena emerge from within assemblages, not external to them. In other words, “qualitatively shifting any atomist metaphysics, intra-action conceptualizes that it is the action between (and not in-between) that matters” (Dolphijn & van der Tuin, 2011, p. 14). As

Maier’s archival material transferred from one entity to another, neither its content, nor the meanings attached it, nor those who interacted with it, remained separate and unchanged by each encounter with it.

174 There were multiple intra-active moments that contributed to the process by which

Maier’s work acquired its popular assigned meanings and its exchange-value. To begin with, the archival potential of cameras and the materiality of photographs that outlive their creators each allowed ownership of Maier’s work to be transferred when it could no longer be secured. Next,

Maier’s personal possessions were made public through auctioning, according to property and state laws and the storage company’s own policies. The contents of Maier’s storage lockers were described in newspaper ads to attract resale businesses. Finally, the value of her work fluctuated as photographs and negatives traveled into different spaces and moved through iterative processes of narrativization: meanings attached to Maier’s work have been either reinforced or contested by those who encounter it in the news, online, in galleries and exhibitions, in photo books, in documentary films, and so on. Like other archives, Vivian Maier’s body of work is not a stable or fixed repository of artifacts, but rather produced and reproduced as it intra-acts with different spaces, processes, people, and interests. In other words, an archive is not a closed system; it is contingent and (re)produced through processes of intra-activity.

Barad (2003) argues that entities form as they intra-act, they do not enter relations fully- formed, and they are neither bounded nor stable. That is, entities are mutable and their meanings contestable. Unlike with interaction, the causal relationship between intra-acting components is not straightforward or linear. Rather, intra-action foregrounds mutually constitutive relations that are both material and discursive; that are part of a process of materialization—rarely limited to humans—through which entities, boundaries, meanings, and phenomena emerge. Thinking intra- actively means recognizing that rarely does a single force causes an effect. Entities, boundaries, meanings, and phenomena emerge through an iterative relational process, albeit one that is sometimes imperceptible. This process takes shape through a particular composition of force- relations. Thinking intra-actively means considering how multiple forces intra-act to produce a particular composition. Any part of this composition remains, to some uncertain degree, open to potential rearticulations, reformulations, and contestations. With regard to the notion of intra-

175 action, then, each encounter with an archive marks an occasion during which ethical deliberation and decision-making take place.

As I argue in Chapter 1, one way to understand ethics is as the extension of action beyond the moment, so that ethical engagement is not confined to a specific timeframe. Considering archival encounters through the notion of intra-action foregrounds the temporally extended dimension of ethics: it is no longer only those who first encounter a photographic archive who produce meaning, but also those who intra-act with it at later stages. In other words, one need not accept the narratives one receives at face value; one’s acceptance or rejection of a given narrative itself helps change or sustain the meanings attached to an archive. Examining Engle’s and

Maier’s photographs intra-actively becomes an ethico-pedagogical means by which to resist popularized narratives and the assimilation of creative practices into familiar frames of reference

(e.g., “masters of photography”).

In contrast to assimilationist approaches that compensate for a lack of corroborating information by constructing narratives, an ethically-engaged pedagogy approaches archival limit as possibility for reading photographs otherwise and beyond dominant narratives (Hartman,

2008). For an ethically-engaged pedagogy, the impulse to investigate found images can be enacted with care. The pedagogy of slowing down and tracing relations and their effects ca be an enactment of care, since it does not presume meanings and capacities are fixed within a collection of images; it does not only consider things form the lens of human intentionality; since those who conduct analysis are implicated in the meanings that become iteratively attached to a collection of images. Such an enactment of care can be done by a continued (re)questioning of one’s relation to and investments in the encountered found images/archives (Browne, 2015; Campt, 2017;

Hartman, 2008; 2019). Attending to the impulse to investigate with care is thus an enactment of ethics as the extension of action beyond the moment.

176 Conclusion

An ethical disposition requires critical skepticism—not fatalistic cynicism. It also requires a willingness to contest popularized or dominant narratives. An ethics of encounter is not merely invested in exposing hidden ideologies—it is not, for instance, limited to analyzing popularized narratives and exploring the interests that motivate their construction. An ethics of encounter also considers the conditions that allow and encourage such processes of narrativization. An ethics of encounter thus also accounts for the potential reformulation and reconstruction of meaning, where one’s ethical engagement is ongoing and how one perceives assigned meanings, matters.

In the next chapter, I discuss archival ethics in the context of iconic images. Iconic images, through their capacity to conceal the coding processes that imbue them with meaning, can shut down the kinds of critical readings that resist popularized narratives. As such, reading iconic images requires modes of analysis that go beyond assigned, popularized narratives, particularly when those narratives reinforce engrained, harmful practices. In the next chapter, I propose some modes of analysis suitable to an ethical disposition, modes that attend to what registers below surface readings.

Chapter 6

Archival Ethics and Iconic Images

How does an image become iconic? Does the status of an image transform into that of an icon as a result of chance, or due to something integral to the image itself? Why do some images circulate more than others? More specifically, in the context of constant media production, how does a photograph like the famous V-J Day in Times Square “acquire exceptional significance”

(Hariman & Lucaites, 2007, p. 124)? Is a photograph’s iconicity related to what it depicts (its content) or how it depicts such content (its form)?

In this chapter, I examine how iconic images can (re)shape the encounters depicted within them through processes of narrativization and naturalization. I examine the ethical implications of taking for granted popularized narratives, especially when iconicity masks and reproduces the violent conditions from which the depicted events emerge and through which they are encouraged. I argue that iconic images, as naturalized signs, can shut down critical readings that do not align with the popularized narrative. I then propose modes of analysis that go beyond popularized narratives through reading intra-actively and engaging senses that register at frequencies below vision.

V-J Day in Times Square and Iconic Narrativization

During the aftermath of World War II in the summer of 1945, photographs of celebratory kisses populated magazines, but one stood out and remains in circulation today: it is Alfred

Eisenstaedt’s photograph for LIFE magazine, V-J Day in Times Square (Hariman & Lucaites,

2007). “V-J Day” stands for Victory over Japan Day, but the work is alternatively called The

Kissing Sailor, or simply, The Kiss. The original caption attached to the photograph when it was first published in LIFE read: “In the middle of New York’s Times Square a white-clad girl clutches her purse and skirt as an uninhibited sailor plants his lips squarely on hers.” This caption

178 suggests the image may not have depicted a consensual or a planned celebratory kiss. However, viewing the photograph in relation to its acquired titles might cause the moment’s story to appear straightforward: a man and a woman were kissing in Times Square surrounded by a gleeful crowd; it was a romantic celebration amidst American heroism.

For most of the photograph’s life, the subjects in V-J Day in Times Square were unknown to Eisenstaedt, LIFE magazine, and viewers. However, narratives about them and what they symbolized still flourished, and most of these narratives involved a sailor and a nurse sharing a kiss in a loving embrace. In response to the photograph’s popularity, LIFE sought to identify the subjects of Eisenstaedt’s photograph by issuing a call in the 1980s, 35 years after the initial publication of the image (Jackson, 2012, p. 130).34 Many people came forward claiming to be the ones depicted, but the faces of the subjects are obscured in the image, which made it difficult to easily confirm whether those who came forward were indeed the people in the photograph. Now, however, while some still dispute it, Greta Friedman and George Mendonsa are considered most likely the subjects of the photograph (Redmond, 2005a; Verria & Galdorisi, 2012).

“For more than 30 years, others claimed to be the ones in the photo,” reported CBS news in 2012. “For just as long, [Mendonsa] has fought to set the record straight. Now he has an ally:

Rhode Island high school history teacher-turned-author Lawrence Verria.” Verria, along with retired U.S. Navy captain George Galdorisi, co-authored The Kissing Sailor: The Mystery Behind the Photo that Ended World War II (2012), a book that identifies Friedman and Mendonsa as the subjects of Eisenstaedt’s photograph based on various research methods including “forensic evidence,” “‘age adjusted’ digital photography,” and “interviews with other people in the photograph—including Mendonsa’s wife of sixty-six years, who is in the picture” (Jackson, 2012,

34 The Daily Mail wrote that although the subjects were “tucked away on page 27 … their black and white image became the magazine’s most reproduced, and more questions were raised about their identities” over time (Sailor and nurse who were pictured, 2012, para 25).

179 p. 131). Patricia T. Redmond also interviewed Friedman and Mendonsa in 2005 for the Veterans

History Project in an effort to support the claim that the two were in fact who the image depicted.

Yet while the book, these interviews, and other works about V-J Day in Times Square espouse a narrative of romantic victory, they present substantial evidence that offers a very different story. What the romantic-victory narratives ignore, and what the book and interviews demonstrate in spite of themselves, is that the encounter depicted in the photograph was between strangers, not lovers. Moreover, these romantic-victory narratives obscure that snapping the photograph was less a spontaneous response to a scene than a calculated response to an assignment: in order to fulfill LIFE’s image requirements, Eisenstaedt sought to capture a symbolic image rather than report actual events taking place. As Joshua Barker, Erik Harms, and

Johan Lindquist (2013) note, “Although Eisenstaedt did write about his experiences on the street that day, he never got the backstories of the figures he caught in his frame” (p. 160). In this chapter, I examine the processes by which the iconic status of images such as V-J Day in Times

Square pacify the information surrounding the events of a photograph and block readings that contradict popularized or dominant narratives. In doing so, I further expand on the ethical disposition required when encountering and analyzing iconic photographs through an ethics of encounter.

Iconic Relationality

Celebrated as iconic, V-J Day in Times Square has been replicated through various media: both as large scale commissions, such as photographic reproductions, sculptures, and postage stamps, and through quotidian engagements or performances—reenactments of the scene with costumes during Halloween and without them, during Valentine’s Day and year round, in

Times Square and in front one of the statue replicas of the scene. In one sense, it can be said that the interplay between two interrelated dimensions of the photograph—its form and content—is what makes V-J Day in Times Square an iconic image. As Hariman and Lucaites (2007) observe, formally, “it is a good photograph,” with its “classical symmetries, sharp contrasts of light and

180 shadow, and powerful vectors of compression and expansion, as in the vibrant movement up the street into the space and light of Times Square” (p. 124). In terms of content, they say that V-J

Day in Times Square is “a symbolically and emotionally resonant image that is widely reproduced, widely recognized, and often appropriated for political, commercial, artistic, or social objectives” (p. 123). As I discuss below, for many viewers, commentators, and scholars, V-J Day in Times Square is iconic because, as Hariman and Lucaites put it, it “puts a face on the impromptu civic festival of that day and on the moment when World War II became history, a backdrop against which the nation would return from the struggle for life and liberty to the pursuit of happiness” (pp. 123–124). Thus, on the one hand, the interplay between the form and content of an image—something inherent to the image itself—might contribute to its transformation into the status of an icon. But on the other hand, an image acquires an iconic status by the force of its mobility (via diverse media) and the relationalities it enables (via diverse engagements and performances).

As Leslie A. Hahner (2013) notes of photographs deemed iconic, it is the claims about a photograph’s iconicity that enable viewers to connect it to other widely-known images, and thus compose a particular understanding of that image (p. 153). Hahner writes, “The exposed circulation of [an] image—the notion that viewers could provide links and compare similar popular photographs—enable(s) viewers to craft claims about the meaning or import of the photograph” (p. 158). As Hariman and Lucaites also note, when focusing on the image itself (i.e. reading for form and content) without paying attention to its different manifestations in a variety of media and/or performances, “it becomes easy, too easy, to read it as merely a depiction of an official narrative of the American people” (p. 124). That is, write Hariman and Lucaites, it seems to observers that V-J Day in Times Square

celebrates not merely the end of the war, but the common people who won it. By standing

in contrast to the images of war that preceded the final victory, the photograph signifies

what both brought about and comes after victory. (p. 124)

181 For Hariman and Lucaites, a more nuanced understanding of iconic images “requires that one place the images in a history of production, circulation, and subsequent appropriation” (p. 124).

Like Hahner, Hariman and Lucaites emphasize the analytic import of image appropriation. By going beyond what the image symbolizes or signifies, one can extrapolate meaning from the ways in which images become subsequently “taken up, altered, or otherwise used persuasively by politicians, protesters, designers, artists, advertisers, journalists, and other people, and as they are displayed on billboards, T-shirts, murals, computer screens, and dozens of other surfaces”

(Hariman & Lucaites, p. 124). Thus, images acquire meaning and gain iconic status by interaction with other images.

This is demonstrated by an example in American studies professor Nicole Fleetwood’s

2015 book, On Racial Icons: Blackness and the Public Imagination. As Fleetwood points out, in reference to the image of Barack Obama,

Black and non-black consumers and cultural producers have worked, visually and

otherwise, to map Obama’s trajectory as predestined by linking him to a genealogy of

black male leaders. President Obama is cropped, edited, digitized, manipulated, and

recirculated as the highly anticipated culmination of a long line of black male leadership

and achievement. (pp. 24–25)

Images also gain iconic status as they enter into historical relation with other images. Some images gain meaning through historical contextualization, which can provide a particular frame through which to apprehend the narrative, subject, or ideas portrayed. As Fleetwood’s book demonstrates, for instance, one of the ways in which the iconicity of Trayvon Martin’s image emerged and was further cemented was through comparisons linking it to the image of Emmett

Till, a young black man brutally killed in 1955, and to the conditions that lead to this event and its photographic configurations. Trayvon Martin was 17 years old when George Zimmerman—a neighborhood watch member in Sanford, Florida—racially profiled and then fatally shot him.

Fleetwood writes:

182 In addition to such highly personalized identification with Martin, another significant

way that many made sense of Martin’s murder was through the framework of historic

recurrence. Comparisons have been made between Trayvon Martin’s murder and image

to that of Emmett Till, whose battered body was captured in a photograph that also

gained enormous public attention. (p. 23)

In Hariman and Lucaites’s terms, these comparisons and interactions are what make up public culture, “the place where people draw on common resources to affirm, contest, negotiate, understand, and legitimate a wide range of social practices and governmental policies” (pp. 124–

125). In Hahner’s terms, these interactions create a space to craft arguments.

Yet while iconic images can enable public discourse, iconicity can also shut down critical readings that challenge the popularized narratives attached to iconic images. Before moving on to my discussion of how the force of iconicity can shut down critical readings, I argue an ethical disposition can help better unpack this force of iconicity by considering not only what makes an image iconic, (or what iconic images are), but also what iconic images can do.

Iconic Images, Coded Images

What is an icon? Philosopher of the American pragmatist school Charles Sanders Peirce

“defined an icon as a ‘sign by virtue of its own quality and [a] sign of whatever else partakes of that quality’” (Mannheim, 2000, p. 107). Cultural theorist Stuart Hall (1999) quotes Peirce—a sign is iconic when “‘it possesses some of the properties of the thing represented’”—and goes on to explain that “iconic signs are therefore coded signs” (Hall, p. 511). He argues that a simple visual sign (e.g., an arrow) may appear “naturally given” (p. 511), but that even seemingly universal signs are not natural, but rather are highly naturalized. Hall writes that signs are naturalized “when there is a fundamental alignment and reciprocity—an achieved equivalence— between the encoding and decoding sides of an exchange of meanings” (p. 511). Moreover, he explains, signs may appear free of the intervention of codes, but even seemingly natural signs are highly coded, as these codes, too, “have been profoundly naturalised” (p. 511). Naturalized codes

183 “produce apparently ‘natural’ recognitions,” which “has the (ideological) effect of concealing the practices of coding which are present” (p. 511). That is, when codes are highly naturalized and the mode of reception corresponds with the mode of delivery (e.g., when perceived meanings align with popularized narratives), it becomes difficult to perceive that they are highly coded.

Highly coded, naturalized signs tend to conceal the coding process.

More so than other signs, iconic signs are especially susceptible to being perceived as natural. Citing Umberto Eco’s (1979) work, Hall writes that iconic images appear natural

“because they reproduce the conditions (that is, the codes) of perception in the viewer” (p. 511).

Such “‘conditions of perception’ are, however, the result of a highly coded, even if virtually unconscious, set of operations—decodings” (p. 511). While conditions of perception are present in visual, verbal, and “any other” kind of sign, Hall writes that iconic signs are

particularly vulnerable to being ‘read’ as natural because visual codes of perception are

very widely distributed and because this type of sign is less arbitrary than a linguistic

sign: the linguistic sign, ‘cow’, possesses none of the properties of the thing represented,

whereas the visual sign appears to possess some of those properties. (pp. 511–512)

However, “the articulation of an arbitrary sign—whether visual or verbal—with the concept of a referent is the product not of nature but of convention, and the conventionalism of discourses requires the intervention, the support, of codes” (Hall, p. 511). Therefore, the decoding process is not uniform among the receivers of naturalized codes. Some viewers accept the “dominant” or

“preferred meanings” encoded in the messages they receive. Others negotiate and accept only some aspects of dominant meanings, while still others oppose them completely and “decode the message in a globally contrary way” (Hall, p. 517). In the latter case, one “detotalises the message in the preferred code in order to retotalise the message within some alternative framework of reference” (Hall, p. 517). In intra-acting with each other, the iconicity of Travon Martin’s and

Emmett Till’s images was (re)shaped. Multiple and evolving meanings were attached to the

184 iconic images of Martin and Till as people encountered them and brought them together through historical contextualization (Fleetwood, 2015).

While not all viewers respond to received codes in the same way, problems arise when

“the functioning of the codes on the decoding side … assume(s) the status of naturalised perceptions” (Hall, p. 511). That is, when the mode of delivery matches the mode of reception, a sign is received as natural. When it is difficult to perceive the coding process, coded signs appear natural. Because iconic images appear naturalized, the popularized narratives they acquire can appear as taken-for-granted facts. This is why, instead of taking for granted the popularized narratives circulating around iconic images, an ethical disposition engages a pedagogy of slowing down by considering the relational processes that imbue iconic images with meaning (Fleetwood,

2015). An ethically-engaged pedagogy enacts modes of analysis that read beyond and against popularized narratives. Later in this chapter, I offer ethico-pedagogical modes of analysis that read outside and against familiar modes of reception and perception. In the next section, I examine how the iconic status of images can mask the violent conditions of their emergence as such.

The Force of Iconicity

For an ethical disposition, the ethico-pedagogical concern around iconicity has less to do with defining what an icon is, and more to do with how icons and iconic images function. Iconic images are highly naturalized, and naturalized codes produce the appearance of naturalness by masking practices of encoding—as if those images are free from the intervention of codes. Thus, naturalized codes may be perceived as taken-for-granted facts. Iconic image do not gain such a status in a unidirectional process whereby a producing entity encodes a dominant narrative or

“preferred meaning,” but rather in a circular process to which those who receive images also contribute (Hall, 1999).35 For example, the production of “slum” icons involves not just the

35 For more about this circular process, see Spratt, Peterson, and Lagos (2005), who write: “Although a ‘preferred or dominant message’ (Baran & Davis, 2003, p. 270) can lie at the heart of the production

185 photographers who create the iconic slum images or the media that circulates the images. Viewers who receive slum images as evidence—and not as subjective framings—of racial alterities also contribute to the production of slum icons. Uli Linke (2014) writes, “When retrieved from across the globe, and transported into Europe, slum iconicities are not merely consumed as cultural exemplars or artifacts of non-European urban worlds but also interpreted as visual evidence of racial alterities” (pp. 1224–1225). European consumers of photography are not just the passive observers of constructed, problematic slum iconicities; they are part of the creation and maintenance of slum iconicities as visual evidence of racial alterities. Further, turning the slum into an icon deflects critical attention from the racially violent practices and discourses that produce and maintain slums: “The manner whereby ‘slums’ are globally commoditized and visually consumed in Europe—as aestheticized artifacts, beautiful figurations, and sensuous spaces—deflects critical attention from race and the concurrent histories of power, poverty, and privilege” (Linke, 2014, p. 1226). Thus, an ethical disposition not only asks what makes an image iconic, it asks how iconicity is able to shut down other readings that might compromise the narratives or preferred meanings attached to such images by media channels, photographers, and viewers. Since an ethics of encounter focuses on relations and their effects, its analysis of iconic photographs takes into account the operations and relations of practices of encoding and decoding.36

process, and even extend into circulation, the distribution-consumption and reproduction phases frequently involve aspects of negotiation by observers of the message. This ‘negotiated meaning’ can filter back into the production process, attaching new meaning to the original ‘dominant message,’ and, in circular fashion, can become a ‘determinate moment’ (Hall, 1980, p. 129)” (pp. 119–2).

36 Decoding, however, it is not simply unmasking. There is no sign that gets encoded with a message to be decoded; codes are effectuations—inherent in codes are these processes. While encoding is a form of reduction, decoding is a form of abstraction. When one encodes something, one is saying “This is how is it”; when one decodes, one is figuring not how it is but how it functions. One does not ask, “What is it?” but “What can it do?” By asking what it can do, decoding—via abstraction—opens up instead of closing. When one abstracts, one is focusing on the complexity of the simple (a single element) rather than on simplifying complexity (as with reduction). See Buchanan (1997) for more on this.

186 In the case of V-J Day in Times Square, as Hariman and Lucaites note, “Many subsequent reproductions of the photo extend [its] cultural ideal across time and social space”

(2007, p. 128). However, for Hariman and Lucaites, “precisely because the image enacts ‘national heterosexuality’ so directly, it can become an effective means for challenging and changing that ideal and, with it, a basic template of citizenship” (p. 128). One such instance of challenging the cultural ideal present in V-J Day in Times Square is “the 1996 New Yorker cover illustration of two men in uniformed embrace,” which, according to Hariman and Lucaites, is “perhaps the most famous appropriation of the kiss” (p. 128). By reproducing “the iconic template in a different context,” and modifying the original composition itself, for Hariman and Lucaites the New Yorker cover interrogates who is “allowed to exercise their civil rights” to serve in the military, which they call “one of the most basic dimensions of citizenship” (pp. 128–129). For Hariman and

Lucaites, “the appropriation is so striking because it directly challenges the very idea of citizenship being aligned with and therefore limited by sexual orientation” (p. 9). While Hariman and Lucaites argue that this New Yorker cover offers a form of critique to a specific cultural ideal, their reading overlooks how the cover itself assimilates to the dominant narrative surrounding V-J

Day in Times Square rather than resisting it. The cover takes for granted the celebratory nature of

V-J Day in Times Square, for instance, and by replacing one couple with another couple, it reproduces rather than destabilizes the image as a romantic narrative of victory and celebration.

In other words, it does little to interrogate the iconicity of V-J Day in Times Square. Following

Hariman and Lucaites’s proposal to examine photographs through their appropriations, reading V-

J Day in Times Square in relation to the New Yorker cover suggests that the former’s iconicity invites appropriations that take for granted its status as iconic—without attending to the conditions leading to its emergence as such. It also suggests that such appropriations often reinforce an image’s iconicity even while attempting to subvert its meaning or symbolism.

187 Intra-active Moments: How Meanings Get Produced and Reproduced

Greta Friedman discussed her experiences of the V-J Day event in an interview with

Patricia T. Redmond (2005a) for the Library of Congress’s Veterans History Project. Before proceeding to ask the first question, Redmond opened the interview by pointing to some of the controversy surrounding the identification of the subjects of Eisenstaedt’s photograph. She noted that most people had likely seen The Kissing Sailor (or V-J Day in Times Square), but that since

Eisenstaedt did not provide the names of his photographic subjects when the image was published in LIFE magazine, “everyone has questioned who these two people were.” Aiming to establish that Friedman was in fact the woman in the photograph—“I think we can tell you today who the lady was”—Redmond invited Friedman to share her story. Recalling the events of that day,

Friedman described the chain of activities that preceded that kiss: having spent the entire morning hearing “rumors that the war is ending” from those who visited the dental office where she worked, Friedman decided to confirm the validity of such claims during her lunch break by making her way to Times Square, not too far from where she worked. There she saw “on the lighted billboard that goes around the building, V-J Day, V-J Day” confirming what she had heard earlier—that the war had ended.37 “And so suddenly,” Friedman continued, “I was grabbed by a sailor, and it wasn’t that much of a kiss, it was more of a jubilant act that he didn’t have to go back.” When asked who the sailor was, Friedman responded, “I did not have a clue because … he didn’t give his name or anything.” When asked what she felt like when he grabbed her and kissed her, Friedman responded: “I felt he was very strong, he was just holding me tight, and I’m not sure … about the kiss because, you know, it was just somebody really celebrating. But it wasn’t a romantic event.”

Further into the interview, Redmond and Friedman discussed the reenactment of the photograph LIFE organized in 1980, in which the magazine commissioned Eisenstaedt once

37 Brooke L. Blower (2015) notes that the “city’s most reliable information” is “the ticker-tape sign at Broadway and Seventh Avenue” (p. 80).

188 again. Describing her response to the call to reenact the kiss, Friedman recalled, “I didn’t want to reenact the kiss. First of all, my—well, no, my husband did not come with me, but [Mendonsa’s] wife was there.” Redmond, aware of the events surrounding The Kissing Sailor (or V-J Day in

Times Square), reminded Friedman that “[Mendonsa’s wife] was there the first time,” to which

Friedman responded, “Well, I didn’t know. Well … it wasn’t my choice to be kissed. The guy just came over and kissed or grabbed.” In an interview with George Mendonsa the following week, Redmond asked about his side of the story. In response, Mendonsa admitted to drunkenly grabbing and kissing a woman in white, a complete stranger, having mistaken her for a nurse who reminded him of the nurses who tended to injured soldiers during battles (Redmond, 2005b).

Redmond used Mendosa’s own retelling of drunkenly mistaking Friedman for a nurse— as if being a nurse would justify a kiss—as a way to construct a narrative that normalizes

Mendonsa’s behavior. In the interview with Redmond, Friedman mentioned that she was a dental assistant (Redmond, 2005a). Redmond, familiar with Mendonsa’s retelling of the story, answered,

“But you did have a white uniform on,” to which Friedman responded, “Well, yes, because we dressed the same way … we dressed like nurses, white stockings, white shoes, white dress, and a cap which we took off.” Elsewhere in the interview, Friedman acknowledged, “I found out later, he was so happy that he did not have to go back to the Pacific where they already had been through the war. And the reason he grabbed someone dressed like a nurse was that he just felt very grateful to nurses who took care of the wounded.” In the same interview, referring to the large number of people who have come forward as the subjects of Eisenstaedt’s photograph,

Redmond commented, “Well, maybe all of these sailors were there and were kissing pretty ladies.” Even the interviewer, who was receiving Friedman’s account firsthand, gestured at this sort of behavior lightly, even endearingly. The iconicity of V-J Day in Times Square as a narrative of romantic victory was naturalized to the extent of romanticizing abuse and war.

The interview series is one of the two popular official accounts of V-J Day in Times

Square—the other is Verria and Galdorisi’s The Kissing Sailor. While it was meant to provide

189 more information and clarification around the events of V-J Day in Times Square, the interviewer gathered data without truly listening to Friedman. What is the purpose of an interview if it dismisses empirical testimony? Is the desire to investigate motivated by a voyeuristic surveillance tendency? The interview thus became not about supplying readers with more information or giving a more detailed account of the encounter; by not listening to Friedman’s own account, the interview restructured the nature of the encounter to fit into a pre-established, dominant narrative.

Suddenly, the event of the image was glorified, made into a romantic, “innocent” encounter, an occasion both subjects enjoyed.

“It Happened Then, Not Now”: The Temporality of Ethics

Conservative radio talk show host and writer Dennis Prager (2016) argues that feminist or “educated” critiques erase the context of Mendonsa’s behavior, and in doing so often misunderstand Mendonsa’s and other such similar behaviors. Prager notes that the event took place at a different time than the time we live in, and quotes Friedman’s son as saying that “‘she did not assign any bad motives to [Mendonsa] in that circumstance, that situation, that time’”

(para. 8). Prager argues that the event was unproblematic due to its context. Prager then goes on to criticize accounts that feel “compelled” to make note of the photograph’s “darker undertones,” arguing that “America is not a better place—nor, for that matter, are American women happier— because we now consider George Mendonsa a sexual criminal and Greta Friedman a survivor of sexual assault” (para. 16). Prager claims that most Americans view the past as a “happier and more innocent place,” and cites those who take pride in getting their photos taken in front of statue replicas: “they are celebrating life, America, and men and women. At college, American kids are taught to fear all three” (para. 17). Prager is not alone in this critique. Jack Marshall

(2016), on his website, charges feminist critiques with ruining the photograph: “What is the matter with people like ‘Leopard’ and Lori [Adelman], that they feel compelled to re-cast in ugliness a beautiful image that perfectly symbolizes that elusive slice out of time when we were all brothers, sisters, citizens and lovers, when all the other petty differences that divide us meant

190 nothing at all?” In addition to their problematic view of consent, what Prager’s and Marshall’s arguments fail to take into account are the racial connotations of V-J Day in Times Square—the photograph’s focus on the individual masks class difference, and its depiction only of white faces indicates that it was the white world that was worth saving during wartime (Hariman & Lucaites,

2007). Moreover, not only do arguments such as Prager’s and Marshall’s conspicuously ignore

America’s racial and racist history, given that neither account even hints at this history, it is clear that the America to which Prager and Marshall refer to is a strictly white one. A romantic longing for a “happier and more innocent place” that only ever existed for white Americans participates in and reifies racial and racist discourses and practices that obscure their own operations. A commitment to this iconicity, then, has strategic dimensions.

In an interview published in The New York Times’s “City Room,” Robert Hariman likewise ignores suggestions that the kiss may have qualified as assault, with the words “times change” (Chan, 2007, para. 14). However, when interrogating the context and occasion of the photograph, rather than taking its iconic status at face value, one can note that Mendonsa’s behavior has always qualified as assault—including in wartime and post-war America (Blower,

2015, p. 80). However, as Brooke L. Blower (2015) argues, the qualification of such behavior as assault at the time depended “on who was doing the kissing and who was being kissed.” After all, if a Black male sailor had kissed a white female nurse, or if a white male sailor had kissed another man, the kissing sailor might have been jailed, convicted of sexual deviance, or even killed,

Blower explains. An ethical disposition does not take for granted the narratives of iconic images, nor dismiss historical and first-person accounts of events in order to maintain a favorable narrative. Ethics is not about making behavioral judgements. An ethics of encounter takes the photograph/archive as an invitation to consider, not judge, the events of the encounter; to consider, not judge, the conditions from which it emerges and to which it gives rise.

Those who argue that the events of the photograph took place at a different time and so cannot be judged by modern standards make a behavioral argument: this group is assessing

191 whether or not Mendonsa’s behavior warrants critique (and ultimately making a judgment that such behavior is permissible then, at that time, in that situation). An ethically-engaged pedagogy instead considers the conditions that allow such behavior at that time and today. As Crates and

Ribbons blogger Leopard (2012b) notes, rather than “demonizing” Mendonsa, we might focus on how the narrative of romance and victory both produces and is produced by news and cultural outlets’ silence on Friedman’s non-consent, even while they publish quotes of hers demonstrating that this kissing behavior was unwanted.38 Instead of judging individual behavior, an ethics of encounter, which centers on relations and their effects, asks: What are the conditions that iconic images and an uncritical investment in iconicity mask or reproduce? What are the conditions that prompt not just media channels, but interviewers, to ignore empirical testimony? What are the conditions that encourage assimilating an image into a popular symbolic lexicon? What are the conditions that pressure abused people to dismiss their own abuse? What are the intra-active processes by which an image of sexual assault becomes reproduced as an iconic image of heroism and romantic victory?

The creation and recreation of the V-J Day in Times Square icon does not happen arbitrarily but is reproduced through processes that align with dominant narratives. That is, while compositionally and symbolically a “strong image,” this is not the only reason it became iconic

(recall that iconic images can mask the process by which they acquire such iconicity). Moreover, by obscuring actual conditions, iconic images can (re)produce narratives that have material effects. Whether within mainstream media or popular discourse, investments in maintaining the iconic images’ dominant-narrative symbolism end up pressuring those who would contest or reject the dominant narrative. Greta Friedman was only one among many women who

38 A number of news and culture outlets including HuffPost, CBS News, The Daily Mail, and Texas State University (see Kissing Sailor Photograph, 2012; Miller, 2012; Sailor and Nurse, 2012; Blaschke, 2015) all reference the book, The Kissing Sailor (Verria & Galdorisi, 2012). Yet in these and other similar accounts, as Leopard notes, Mendonsa’s “actions are romanticized and glorified; it is almost as if [Friedman] had never spoken” (Leopard, 2012a).

192 experienced unwanted advancement. In fact, Blower explains that part of the reason it took so long to identify the famous couple was because so many sailors confessed to grabbing women that day in Times Square. One of these women was Edith Shain, who only admitted her suspicion that she might have been the nurse in white in 1979 because she’d felt “morally compromised” by the kiss she’d received (Blower, p. 84). As Blower notes, those who vocally protested receiving this kind of attention at the time were called “poor sports,” and Shain “only came to terms with her experience that day by subsequently refashioning it into a romantic, welcome event—‘a good kiss,’ she embellished, ‘like a dance step, the way he laid me over in his arms’” (Blower, p. 84).

Friedman, too, was pressured to recast the event as positive, even as LIFE had to coax her into kissing Mendonsa again for the 1980 photo shoot. As Leopard (2012b) notes, while Friedman

“does not seem traumatised by the kiss, and describes the fame that resulted from the photo in a positive manner,” it is important to take into account that “even in today’s society, there is a lot of pressure on women to smile and get along, to ‘let boys be boys,’ to accept unwanted sexual contact like groping or kissing, and not to make a big deal out of it” (para. 9). As Leopard reminds readers, even if she remembered the kiss in a positive light, Friedman had repeatedly explained that the kiss was sudden and that Mendonsa grabbed her before she knew what was happening—it cannot be understood as a consensual kiss. Further, Friedman’s remarks about

Mendonsa’s strength and grip, Leopard notes, did not indicate she had enjoyed it.

It is not only Verria and Galdorisi’s (2012) and other recent accounts that normalize

Mendonsa’s kind of behavior, reporters of the day hurriedly “normalized these incidents, weaving details of assaults in with the rest of their coverage of the merriment, making no effort to distinguish between voluntary kissers expressing their own joy and appreciation and others who had been caught against their will” (Blower, pp. 84–85). For example, reporting on an outraged

New Yorker with lipstick smeared across her face, who complained that “they don’t ask a girl’s permission. … They just grab,” a New York Times writer quickly added that “the crowds on the whole, however, were good-natured.” Blower highlights the implication that while the crowds

193 were good-natured, the woman who had been kissed was not. Media channels habitually prioritized reporting property damage that day rather than human injury—the direct result of patriarchal social formations, as sailors and marines needed, according to LIFE, to “‘let off steam’” (Blower, p. 85).

But this approach to reporting and dismissing sexual assault does not take place in vacuum. It is in extension of, and emboldened by, a patriarchal judicial system that excuses such behaviors by romanticizing them via the iconic imagery of patriotic heroism and romantic victory. Blower explains that many allegations of sexual assault, including gang rape, took place during these so-called “peace riots.” Yet “the grand jury tasked with investigating the disorder put the whole affair to rest by concluding that ‘when large numbers of young men realize that they are freed from war they are prone to celebrate overzealously’” (Blower, p. 85). Wendy

Christensen (2012) writes that the meaning of the photograph changes once the context is disclosed: “What was once read as the depiction of spontaneous romance at the end of WWII can now be read as one of spontaneous sexual assault” (para. 7). Christensen cites Cynthia Enloe’s

Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives (2000) and its argument that militarization uses constructions of gender that render women “both victims who need protection and objects to be sexually oppressed” (para. 9). And this means that the sailor in the photograph was simply conforming to wartime masculinity. As an iconic image, V-J Day in

Times Square contributes to the strategic gendering of war, which masks the extent to which women, who were excluded from many military positions, were in fact, like men, involved with or affected by wars. However, for American viewers who identify with the romantic narrative of the people that V-J Day in Times Square claims to depict, it has been difficult let go of romantic visions of the photograph and to accept the real experiences of women like Friedman. This,

Blower explains, is because they imagine the image depicting 1940s small-town life in the United

States rather than activity in big port cities like New York or in militarized regions elsewhere in the world. Viewers do not want to dispense with constructed narratives, nor do they “want to

194 think that the wartime experiences of women in the United States had anything to do with the plight of others overseas” (Blower, p. 86). They want to understand service members as treating women, especially white women, with respect, and keep warzones far from civilian life:

“Homefront mythologies underpin a perhaps comforting but misleading mapping of the war’s landscape, dividing it too cleanly into a civilian safe haven, and a separate, overseas, militarized, and masculine war front,” explains Blower (p. 86). Such “spatial constructs” reflect a larger narrative constructed around the idea that men were involved in war, and women were not

(Blower, p. 86).

However, when accounting for what happened during these peace riots as part of a

“transnational, wartime urban network,” it becomes clear that women were, indeed, in danger during wartime, “even when occupied merely by ‘friendly’ forces” (Blower, p. 87). The strategic gendering of war renders it part of the world of men; however, “once the landscape of war is reenvisioned as a complex geography dependent on the presence rather than absence of women, the far reach of combat-related violence becomes more readily apparent” (Blower, p. 87). For example, women and girls at home and abroad faced rising levels of violence directly tied to the war, yet this was covered up by officials to maintain national morale. These officials promoted the idea that the problem instead lay with “female immorality and infidelity” (Blower, p. 87).

Thus, women have indeed been impacted by war, contrary to the story that some video games or photographs such as V-J Day in Times Square seem to tell. As Blower reminds readers,

Since the 1940s civilian casualties have increasingly outpaced military combat victims,

reaching a staggering 90 percent of total casualties by 1990. … In modern warfare,

women and girls have become more likely to be harmed or killed than men in uniform.

(p. 87)

Viewing Eisenstaedt’s photograph from one angle—as a homecoming—makes it appear a symbol of liberation, joy, and American victory. However, from another angle—a more international

195 perspective—it is a reminder that war involves women as much as men in military violence

(Blower).

There are some modes of photographic analysis that may be read against and beyond popularized narratives, and that do not take for granted the ideologies encoded in the messages received. The next section considers some of these analytical modes for encountering popularized narratives and iconic images.

Reading Intra-Actively: Seriality and Juxtaposition

Tina Campt theorizes that listening to an image can be “a practice of looking beyond what we see and attuning our senses to the other affective frequencies through which photographs register,” or what she calls quiet frequencies (2017, p. 9). Listening to quiet frequencies is a way of resisting the meanings imbued in photographs and photographic archives. Campt (2017), in her book Listening to Images, reads colonial and state archives otherwise through a set of interpretive practices that engage modalities other than vision. Such reading practices are particularly needed for cases in which images acquire historical meanings that serve narratives reinforcing social and racial divisions and gendered violent practices. The narratives that render the kiss in V-J Day in

Times Square iconic suggest that the kiss is consensual. V-J Day in Times Square is rendered iconic and not a depiction of sexual assault (because it did not qualify as that then; because

Friedman did not perceive it as such; because patriotism is to be rewarded; etc.). But close study of, and attention to, the body language and bodily tension of those depicted may complicate this official narrative. Those invested in the popularized narratives will attempt to assimilate contradictory signs into the dominant narrative by any means, as Verria and Galdorisi (2012) do.

Thinking about photographs intra-actively means understanding that meanings imbued in photographs have a relation to those who imbue them. Verria and Galdorisi have a personal attachment and a stake in maintaining this narrative and excusing Mendonsa’s behavior, and, by

196 extension, similar predatory behavior.39 Writing about the events preceding the kiss, Verria and

Galdorisi set up Mendosa’s behavior in a way that would excuse his subsequent sudden and nonconsensual kiss. They describe a young sailor on the street who drunkenly remembered the horror of war and the angelic nurses who had helped him and his fellow service members. In their retelling, he approached a woman dressed in nursing whites because she reminded him of these nurses’ selfless, nurturing presence during war. He kissed her in a haze of memory.

Verria and Galdorisi then move on to describe the moments of physical contact between the subjects in that encounter. After a few “halted steps,” Mendonsa “overtook” Friedman’s

“slender frame.” He

pulled her inward toward his lean and muscular body. Her initial attempt to physically

separate her person from the intruder proved a futile exertion against the dark-uniformed

man’s strong hold. With her right arm pinned between their two bodies, she instinctively

brought her left arm and clenched fist upward in defense. The effort was unnecessary. He

never intended to hurt her. (para. 30)

Verria and Galdorisi are clearly aware of the forceful nature of the encounter: they describe the

“halted steps” of Mendonsa, the “pulling inward” of Friedman’s body, the “futile exertion” of

Friedman’s “attempts to physically separate” from “the intruder,” and his “strong hold.” Yet

Verria and Galdorisi aestheticize the encounter. Therefore, they excuse predatory behavior while maintaining a celebration of (an image of) sexual assault. The manner in which they describe

Friedman and Mendonsa’s bodies—that is, their use of terms such “slender frame” and “muscular body,” which evoke normative conceptions of gendered beauty—can be understood as attempts to beautify, and therefore pacify, the encounter. Moreover, stating that Friedman’s effort to escape Mendonsa’s grasp in defense “was unnecessary,” that Mendonsa “never intended to hurt

39 The Kissing Sailor is a book that presents itself as an official historical document, and it is clearly motivated by painting Mendonsa in a positive light. This makes sense if one recalls that, as I mention above, Verria is an acquaintance of Mendosa, and Galdorisi is a retired navy captain.

197 her,” assumes that Mendonsa’s intentions justify his behavior. This communicates a dangerous notion: that only particular (yet unnamed) forms of physical harm, and not others like the kiss, ought to be resisted.

In an equally problematic section of their recreation, Verria and Galdorisi state that “the encounter, brief and impromptu, transpired beyond the participants’ governance. Even

[Mendonsa], the initiator, commanded little more resolve than a floating twig in a rushing river of fate. He just had to kiss her. He didn’t know why.” It is crystal clear, based on Friedman’s statements, that the encounter transpired beyond only one participant’s governance—Friedman’s.

The assertion that even the initiator “commanded little more resolve than a floating twig in a rushing river of fate” suggests that for the authors, Mendonsa’s inebriated state renders him as unwitting a participant as Friedman was. Not only is it inaccurate to equate the nature or degree of Friedman and Mendosa’s involvement in the encounter, it is equally inaccurate to suggest that intoxication lowers one’s ability to distinguish between welcomed and unwelcomed sexual advances. For instance, researchers studying sexual aggression found that the intoxication level of people initiating sexual encounters was not significantly related to their level of invasiveness or persistence. However, their “targets’” intoxication level was (Graham et al., 2014). Graham et al. conclude that the findings “suggest that acts of sexual aggression are intentional rather than attributable to the effects of alcohol on the initiator (e.g., alcohol making him less aware of cues from the target that his actions are unwanted)” (p. 1422). In spite of findings in the behavior sciences, then, iconic images and an investment in iconicity enable viewers to excuse or dismiss the uncomfortable bodily tension they encounter in images like this one.

Not unlike Verria and Galdorisi, even accounts that are partly critical of the encounter find ways to gloss over the discomfort. They do so, for instance, by “imagining that although the sailor caught the young woman off guard, she eventually relaxed and enjoyed the kiss” (Blower, p. 80). Other critical viewers, who might not claim that Friedman enjoyed the kiss, may still dismiss the larger operations from which such behavior derives and in which it is habitually

198 excused. For example, Alexander Nemerov (2012) does observe the violence that can be gleaned from paying attention to bodily tension. He notes that the sailor’s “right hand clenches the woman’s waist and his left hand curls into a near fist as he takes his pleasure, locking the woman’s head into place” (p. 11). However, as Blower argues, while Nemerov “understands that the ‘sailor’s act is violent as he steals his unsolicited kiss,’” he “depersonalizes the image, lifting it out of the realm of the everyday and engaging with it instead as an allegory for the atomic age”

(p. 80). For Nemerov, the unsolicited kiss reflects the general mayhem of war, and stands in as a warning that the arrival of peace can come with dangers of its own (p. 73).

What, then, may further assist in reading bodily tension in photographs? Tina Campt’s

(2017) “seriality” is an ethico-pedagogical mode of attuning to bodily tension as part of the analytical process of reading photographs against and beyond popularized narratives. Seriality enables viewers to read images with and against the series of images with which they appear, and against photographs of the same genre or those depicting similar scenes. Earlier in my discussion,

I note that iconic images like those of Trayvon Martin and Barack Obama acquire meaning in an iterative, relational process of interacting with other (iconic) images (Fleetwood, 2015). For an ethical disposition, serializing photographs is a mode of analysis that can be a means by which to attend to the quiet frequencies of photographs, a means of “looking beyond what we see” (Campt,

2017). Rather than analyzing V-J Day in Times Square as a self-contained photograph with a stable narrative, Blower analyzes it in relation to other photographs depicting kisses taken around the same time. Like the pedagogy of juxtaposition that art educators Charles Garoian and Yvonne

Gaudelius (2008) theorize, by juxtaposing V-J Day in Times Square with other similar and dissimilar photographs that feature couples from around the same time, including earlier photographs taken by Eisenstaedt himself, Blower affirms the photograph’s violent inflection. In some of the photographs she juxtaposed, “Men’s hands are not curled into tight fists but rest flat- palmed on their partners’ backs. The women are not stiff but at ease, angling their heads forward and kicking their heels or hiking their knees into the air” (pp. 82–83). Blower also juxtaposed

199 photographs showing “women leaning back defensively (and in at least one case being forcibly dipped to the ground) as well as with arms lodged between themselves and their pursuers” (pp.

83–84). Reading these photographs against each other suggests that V-J Day in Times Square is at odds with a narrative of consensual embrace. Juxtaposing the image with consensual embraces suggests that it is not inevitable that one celebrate victory in a predatory manner. Juxtaposing it with images of unsolicited kisses suggests iconicity operates as a mode of controlling dominant narratives that maintain and reproduce the conditions that encourage and allow gendered violence, sexual assault, and predatory behavior under the guise of patriotic celebration.

Serializing and juxtaposing can be analytical and pedagogical activities.

Hariman and Lucaites (2007) engage this method with mixed effects. While they were able to notice some specifics of the encounter between the subjects of Eisenstadt’s photograph, they were not able to recognize the violence only apparent through a recognition of dominant narratives. Hariman and Lucaites were seemingly unaware of the photograph’s origin story or what the subjects said about it later in interviews40 when they noticed a difference between this image and others in the same publication. In contrast to the other images in LIFE’s “Victory

Celebrations” layout, which depict more unrestrained “lascivious or transgressive acts,” Hariman and Lucaites write that “only the ‘Times Square Kiss,’ the last photograph in the series and the only full-page photograph in the layout, resists the narrative and its articulation, depicting a more contained return to social order” (pp. 125–126). In not reflecting the “unrestrained sexuality and mob violence” that is present in the other images of kissers, Hariman and Lucaites argue, the figures in V-J Day in Times Square “place the tenuous balance between liberty and order at risk”

40 In a 2012 blog post on their website, Hariman and Lucaites discuss feminist critiques of media reporting on the events surrounding V-J Day in Times Square, citing Leopard’s (2012a) blog post. They mention their previous publications on the subject, including the 2007 article cited here. Hariman and Lucaites have updated their analysis of the photograph since the 2007 blog post. They write: “The real challenge here then is not so much to critique the blind sexism of an earlier moment in our history, however much it might be mischaracterized as a golden past, but to question why we continue to refuse to see what might now be before our eyes. Put differently, the question is not what does this photograph tell us about our past, but rather what does our refusal to see the photograph in the context of Greta Zimmer Friedman’s memory of that day tell us about our present” (Lucaites, 2012, para. 5).

200 (p. 125). “This fusion of public and private life,” Hariman and Lucaites continue, “is reflected further in their placement and gestures.” Hariman and Lucaites notice the awkwardness and intensity of the embrace depicted in VJ-Day in Times Square, and the inconsistency between the way the subjects hold each other and how lovers hold each other. They also grasp at “obvious passion” without “intimacy.” They read this gesture as public restraint of private, passionate acts rather than as a forced embrace: The figures in V-J Day in Times Square “enact, without any explicit sense of irony, both the sexuality that is a primary obsession of private life and the decorum that is the necessary discipline of public life” (p. 125). Hariman and Lucaites analyze V-

J Day in Times Square against other images to better understand the events of the encounter depicted. By juxtaposing the image with others of the same theme, Hariman and Lucaites locate details that reading the image on its own might not have yielded. Yet by still reading V-J Day in

Times Square within its dominant framing, as a celebration of victory, instead of against it, the kiss becomes merely a public expression of private passion, not a forced kiss.

Ethically-engaged pedagogical approaches do not practice seriality and juxtaposition as aesthetic exercises that further reproduce dominant narratives by aestheticizing them. Ethically- engaged pedagogies resist dominant narratives by enacting seriality and juxtaposition as critical modes of analysis rather than as ready-made templates to be applied. This is commensurate with the approach to ethics I propose: ethics not as prescribed codes or external rules to be applied, but rather an ongoing, daily practice; the extension of action beyond the moment (see Chapter 1).

Seriality and juxtaposition can be understood as pedagogical practices of close reading, of slowing down and lingering with the encounter—of reading beyond assigned meanings, dominant narratives, and the status quo. To avoid enacting juxtaposition as merely an aesthetic exercise, the critical experiments of seriality and juxtaposition can be supported by a practice of listening to images that requires expanding an image’s sensorial register by attuning to the bodily and muscular tension in photographs, a frequency that reverberates at variable levels of perception and audibility (Campt, 2017).

201 Attuning to the Quiet Frequencies of Photographs

When encountering photographs and photographic archives, an ethics of encounter asks:

Which narratives are suppressed, and which are given central importance? What are the tensions between constructed narratives and body language? What is the material organization of photographs? What are the processes of selection, editing, and sequencing, and how do these processes correspond to, contradict, or resist dominant narratives? What can the sequence of photographs disclose that a single photograph cannot? Is the selection of a single image out of a sequence a process of editing down or a means by which to support a particular narrative?

Reading into the body language within the Times Square image in a way that downplays the invasiveness and persistence of Mendonsa’s actions, Verria and Galdorisi (2012) assume that

Friedman willingly accedes to such actions. They write: “As [Mendonsa] continued to lean forward, she lowered her right arm and gave over to her pursuer” (p. 67). However, the image that became popularized and circulated as V-J Day in Times Square, was, in fact, one selected from four different frames of the encounter. An ethically-engaged pedagogy reads beyond the single chosen frame; it asks, what do the other frames in the contact sheet, the images that “are left behind or not chosen,” signal (Campt, 2017, p. 28)? Can reading the unchosen images against the one selected complicate the dominant or popularized narrative?

In the first of Eisenstaedt’s frames, Friedman “clenches her hands into fists, her right pinned to her chest clutching her purse, her left trying to push his shoulder away with the back of her palm” (Blower, p. 80). In the second and third photographs, Friedman “lowers her left arm.”

However, analyzing the second and third frames together, Blower notices “that [Friedman] actually did something that women often did, not when they enjoyed a man’s attention, but when they felt vulnerable and exposed: she was pulling down her skirt” (p. 80). In the fourth frame,

Blower notes, “her fist returns to its defensive position” (p. 80). When viewed through an iconic lens—one that romanticizes and renders naturalized in order to mask its encoded messages—it can be easy to miss the tensions. These tensions are regions of images which are excluded from

202 analysis through an iterative process of narrativization. These regions that “we do not ‘see’ … require listening instead—for their affects register at a frequency that is felt rather than heard”

(Campt, p. 31). Viewers who did a double take when encountering V-J Day in Times Square understood the difference between simply looking at images and listening to them and the quiet frequencies that register below vision. These viewers expanded the “sensorial register of the image” in order to “perceive” its quiet frequencies (Campt, p. 41). Although “viewers who find it unsettling to learn that [Friedman] was grabbed against her will [sic] approach the photograph with new eyes” (Blower, p. 80), they will also tell you something in them felt off about the photograph even before they received this new information. The photograph registered affectively even before it could be understood as a measurable indication of sexual assault. Journalist Sarah

Zhang (2012) writes,

What’s most unsettling are the clues in the photo itself. The body language is off: his

clenched fist, her body swept off balance. … She’s clutching at herself rather than

embracing her kisser. The sailor is uninhibited because he’s drunk. But these details were

lost in the happy, romantic narrative surrounding the photograph. (para. 5)

As Campt (2017) astutely asserts, the practice of listening to images “is not just about hearing, but an attunement to different levels of photographic audibility, many of which register at lower frequencies through their ability to move us” (pp. 41–42). Thus, the practice of listening to images is not merely concerned with the audible—with sound and hearing—but involves an attentiveness and attunement to that which resides below the surface of dominant narratives, the quiet frequencies that may be easily missed when one uncritically encounters or reads images through the frame of iconicity.

Listening to images also requires more senses than sight. Campt asserts, “Attuning oneself to such frequencies and affects is more than simply looking and more than visual scrutiny.

To look or to watch is to apprehend at only one sensory level” (p. 42). This practice requires one to sense “affect and impact,” using an “ensemble of seeing, feeling, being affected, contacted, and

203 moved beyond the distance of sight and observer” (Campt, p. 42). According to Campt, listening to images involves attending to bodily and muscular tension—to the “frequency and vibration of sonic waves that reverberate at variable levels of perception and audibility”—in a quotidian practice of refusal (p. 32). She writes that tuning in to lower frequencies “means being attuned to the connections between what we see and how it resonates” (p. 33). In other words, the practice of listening to images is a practice of refusing dominant narratives and imposed frames of understanding by attending the quiet regions and quiet frequencies of images. enacting a practice of listening to images by attuning to an image’s affect and impact, Lori Adelman (2012) wrote in online magazine Feministing, with reference to V-J Day in Times Square,

A closer look at the image in question shows corroborating details that become stomach-

turning when properly viewed: the smirks on the faces of the sailors in the background;

the firm grasp around the physically smaller woman in his arms such that she could not

escape if she tried; the woman’s clenched fist and limp body. (para. 5)

In the case of this photo, attending to “mundane details” is a method of not accepting what appears—“what we see”—as the true meaning of an image (Campt, p. 33). These low frequencies, these details, allow an ethically-engaged pedagogy to get beyond the dominant narrative and see past cemented layers of iconicity.

Conclusion

In this and the preceding chapter, I proposed some ethically-engaged modes of analysis for reading beyond dominant narratives and for moving away from enacting surveillance mechanisms. In Chapter 5, I argued that cameras can leave behind a material trail—photographs.

But sometimes this trail is only what I call the incidental by-product of practicing photography. In this sense, it is a trail that was not meant to be found. I proposed an ethics of encounter that takes into account archival ethics and the ethics of encountering photographs and photographic archives. But cameras not only leave behind a photographic trail, they leave behind a data trail, too. In the next chapter, I discuss the ethical implications of encountering surveillance

204 infrastructures and suggest ways to think about the agentic capacities of metadata, tagging, geo- location, and other mechanisms that provide means of tracking. In this chapter (Chapter 6), I discussed how iconic images shape the encounters they depict through processes of narrativization and naturalization. In the next chapter, I propose an ethics of encounter that takes for granted neither the narratives assigned to obscure the functioning and impact of surveillance technology, nor the way that surveillance infrastructure processes are normalized through narratives and metaphors of technological invisibility and transparency.

Chapter 7

Surveillance and Counter-Practices of Resistance Within/Through Street Photography Pedagogy

What is the relationship between surveillance and street photography? How might street photography pedagogy critically examine the ethical implications of that relationship? In this chapter, I extend my relational concern with ethics—which began by decentering the photograph, attending to light, the camera, and the archive—to consider the afterlives of surveillance images and processes. Such a layered approach to street photography ethics is part of my commitment to emphasize the interrelation between photographic practices and image circulation without reifying either.

In this chapter, I examine artistic practices of resisting surveillance as a heuristic for street photography pedagogy and a means by which to emphasize the relationship between surveillance and street photography. In Chapter 2, I discussed how some street photography scholars hold the view that the ethical role of the street photographer is subsumed by the general state of widespread surveillance (Howarth & McLaren, 2010). Such a view, however, does not consider the relationship between street photography—which includes the full range of possible photographic practices in the street (see Chapter 3)—and state and corporate forms of surveillance. I argue that the prevalence of surveillance, instead of diminishing the ethical role of the street photographer, can be a basis from which to encourage critical practices of resistance rather than acquiescence to the status quo. Street photography pedagogy thus can focus on the possibility of critical intervention and resistance by emphasizing that ethics is ongoing and that engagements with technology have ethical implications.

206 Encountering Surveillance Infrastructures

I use the term “surveillance infrastructures” to emphasize the manifold material- discursive forces that make surveillance possible. The term references Lisa Parks and Nicole

Starosielski’s (2015) notion of “media infrastructures,” which “encompass hardware and software, spectacular installations and imperceptible processes, synthetic objects and human personnel, rural and urban environments” (pp. 5–6). When I refer to surveillance infrastructures, I mean this to include people, systems, data, metadata, algorithms, construction materials, labor force, data centers, cameras, mobile phones, internet, global positioning systems, artificial intelligence, undersea cables, and satellite networks, “design schemes, regulatory policies, collective imaginaries, and repetitive use” (Parks & Starosielski, p. 5), technology users, policy- makers, border control procedures, biometrics, data-collecting technology and the people who operate it and enforce it, and more. In effect, surveillance infrastructures are all the things that make surveillance work.

When it comes to technology development, deployment, and use, a popular tendency is to suggest that the nonhuman entities involved—the algorithms, biometrics, metadata, and so on— either have so little agentic capacity as to be inconsequential or have an agentic capacity so vast as to replace and erase human involvement (Browne, 2015; Noble, 2018; Benjamin, 2019).

Popularized and dominant framings of technology also tend to obscure technology’s material impacts on human bodies and the environment (Holt & Vonderau, 2015; Parks & Starosielski,

2015). These framings include narratives of technological objectivity and neutrality, technological efficiency and accuracy, and technological transparency and invisibility.

Technological Objectivity and Neutrality

Whether digital or otherwise, technologies are neither objective nor neutral (Winner,

1980; Flusser, 2000; Barad, 2007). Whether embedded there consciously or not, technologies carry the social, cultural, and political orientations and ethical dispositions of those who design and implement them. The size of a chair is a decision about what body type is deemed fit to invite

207 or disinvite. Bridges that direct and limit movement and access for some and not others reflect particular socio-cultural and political interests (Winner, 1980). The layout of a building is a decision about who is allowed access, often to the exclusion of those who are differently abled.

Biometric technologies reflect the kinds of datasets input, and biometric technology is often operated by an algorithm, a mathematical problem-solving mechanism. Algorithms are designed to make meaning out of the data. The term algorithm is derived from the name of 9th-century

Persian-Muslim mathematician Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi, and is a “set of instructions, rules, and calculations designed to solve problems” (Benjamin, 2019, p. 6).

Algorithms and algorithmic problem-solving predate digitization, but their mathematical basis allows for the appearance of objectivity, neutrality, and precision. Simone Browne (2015) argues that there is

a notion that [biometric and algorithmically driven] technologies are infallible and

objective and have a mathematical precision without error or bias on the part of the

computer programmers who calibrate the search parameters of these machines or on the

part of those who read these templates to make decisions. (p. 115)

In popular culture, entire film plotlines revolve around solving unsolvable problems—usually in order to catch an elusive enemy—through use of algorithmic technology. But narratives that purport technological objectivity are misleading, as they obscure a constitutive dimension of algorithmic technology—namely, that it requires judgments and design by human beings who are themselves not objective. It is not merely how problems are solved that requires human judgements: “even just deciding what problem needs solving requires a host of judgments”

(Benjamin, p. 6). As Safiya Noble (2018) reminds readers, while algorithms tend to be presented as “benign, neutral, or objective, they are anything but” (p. 1). What processes do narratives of technological objectivity and neutrality reproduce and obscure? Who or what purpose does a faith in technological objectivity and neutrality serve?

208 Surveillance has relied on narratives of technological objectivity and neutrality to mask its social ordering and control mechanisms in early projects of colonialism, imperialist expansion, and racial slavery. As Browne (2015) argues, “much of how biometrics are described in recent

R&D [research and development] derives from the racial thinking and assumptions around gender that were used to falsify evolutionary trajectories and rationalize the violence of transatlantic slavery, colonialism, and imperialism” (p. 118). These early forms of racialized surveillance have not disappeared; now they take new forms. Narratives of technological objectivity and neutrality mask such reformulations by claiming that use of technologically advanced mechanisms correct or avoid human biases (Benjamin, 2019). But technologies do not spring out like weeds in an untended field. Humans design and program technologies, thus human bias transfers or becomes embedded in the technology, not erased by the technology. Understanding “that mathematical formulations to drive automated decisions are made by human beings,” argues Noble, is “part of the challenge of understanding algorithmic oppression” (p. 1). The process of using narratives of technological objectivity and neutrality to mask the preservation of the same old violent surveillance mechanisms is what Ruha Benjamin (2019) calls “the New Jim Code,” or the

“employment of new technologies that reflect and reproduce existing inequities but that are promoted and perceived as more objective or progressive than the discriminatory systems of a previous era” (p. 3). In a passage from her poem, “AI, Ain’t I A Woman?” artist and self- described poet of code Joy Buolamwini (2018) points out that contemporary surveillance techniques are nothing new, they merely take different form:

Old burns, new urns collecting data chronicling our past,

Often forgetting to deal with race, gender, and class. (0:59)

The old burns that mark the continuation of the history of imperialism, colonialism, and racial slavery, now take new forms—new urns—new means to the same old techniques of racialized, gendered, and classed surveillance. The relationship between old burns and new urns can also be understood through Browne’s (2015) historicizing of biometric technologies, where old burns are

209 the branding practices from which contemporary biometric technologies (new urns) are derived and drawn (see Chapter 3).

When technology developers do not take into account the racialized history of surveillance or when they choose to build on it, they reproduce and reinforce the same violent social ordering and control techniques. As Benjamin argues, “tech designers are erecting a digital caste system, structured by existing racial inequities,” in which “tech advances are sold as morally superior because they purport to rise above human bias, even though they could not exist without data produced through histories of exclusion and discrimination” (p. 5). In what follows,

I discuss Buolamwini’s work as a heuristic for street photography pedagogy. Buolamwini resists taking for granted technology as it exists, and she intervenes in the construction of technology through artistic means. By examining the development, deployment, and differential effects of current artificial intelligence (AI) training and biometric technology, Buolamwini addresses the gaps between popularized narratives about technology and the real effects it (differentially) produces. As such, she engages what Browne calls “critical biometric consciousness” (Browne, p.

116). Buolamwini, through both her independent projects and as part of the Algorithmic Justice

League, enacts ethical engagements as the extension of action beyond the moment of encounter with technology.

Joy Buolamwini and the Algorithmic Justice League

Facial recognition is a contemporary form of biometric technology. Biometric technology scans body parts and renders (or attempts to render) them as digitized code or bits of data. The application of biometric technology “is in the verification, identification, and automation practices that enable the body to function as evidence” (Browne, 2015, p. 109). Biometric technology functions in the context of a chosen dataset and requires the use of algorithms, which

“are the computational means through which the body, or more specifically parts, pieces, and, increasingly, performances of the body are mathematically coded as data, making for unique

210 templates for computers to then sort by relying on a searchable database” (p. 109). In other words, algorithms are integral to the way that biometric technology processes data.

What kinds of effects are produced if an algorithm is biased and a dataset limited? At the airport, in a public restroom, or in front of a webcam, what happens if biometric technology does not recognize a person, or if the algorithm flags a piece of data it just gathered as irregular? At the airport, one may be taken in for additional questioning, in the bathroom, one may struggle to wash one’s hands, in front of a computer, one may struggle to activate the webcam. In all these instances, the technology itself is not faulty as it functions for others. If the technology is not defective, why does it work in some instances and not others? This inability to detect certain groups of people is not innocuous. Biometric technologies work via algorithms and these algorithms are designed by humans. A dataset of images is chosen for training the biometric device, and an algorithm is taught what to do with each image. What happens when the images in this dataset are predominantly of white people, though, and the algorithm is designed to detect and incorporate the images most frequently repeated and exclude all others (those Buolamwini calls the “undersampled majority”)? Biometric technology with an algorithm trained on images of white people will not recognize, or will misrecognize, people who do not fit the frame of white prototypicality (Browne, 2015).

For example, Buolamwini (2018) encountered an unresponsive biometric technology while attempting to build a face-swapping program that used computer vision software. The software often did not recognize Buolamwini’s face until she put on a white mask. She describes what she encountered as the “coded gaze—a reflection of the male gaze and the white gaze in terms of what the priorities and the preferences of those who have power choose to focus on, who is visible and who is rendered invisible” (47:11).

Buolamwini came up with multiple projects as a response to the software’s differential

(mal)functioning. Her 2016 short documentary film, “The Coded Gaze: Unmasking Algorithmic

Bias,” humorously and pithily guides the viewer through the notion of the coded gaze. In the film,

211 Buolamwini codes in a white mask and then narrates the implications of coming into contact with the coded gaze and how viewers can address it through the practice of incoding. Buolamwini’s narration begins with the initial moments of frustration a user experiences upon dealing with unresponsive facial recognition software, then details the processes by which biased coding propagates and reproduces racialized exclusionary practices. Finally, it ends by suggesting a reparative means by which to implement more inclusive code—incoding. Incoding is a mindset,

Buolamwini proposes, that asks, “Who is missing?” Buolamwini continues, “Who codes matters—incoding is a process that explicitly checks the impact of bias during the design, development, and deployment of coded systems” (1:48). At the end of the documentary,

Buolamwini alerts viewers, “How we code matters” (2:07).

By addressing moments of biometric failure, Buolamwini’s work engages what Simone

Browne calls a “critical biometric consciousness,” which acknowledges the historical connection between contemporary biometric technology and early techniques of racialized surveillance. A critical biometric consciousness, Browne asserts, “must contend with the ways that branding, particularly within racial slavery, was instituted as a means of population management that rendered whiteness prototypical through its making, marking, and marketing of blackness as visible and as commodity” (p. 118). Buolamwini’s artistic practice examines how old forms of racialized surveillance are present and embedded in biometric technology today. A critical biometric consciousness also entails “informed public debate around these technologies and their application, and accountability by the state and private sector” (Browne, p. 116). In the next section, I discuss how Buolamwini’s work with the Algorithmic Justice League engages a critical biometric consciousness through public engagement and accountability practices for biometric technology development and deployment.

Ethics as the Extension of Action Beyond the Moment

In 2020, police were depicted pervasively on social media and the evening news standing between Black liberation protesters and armed far-right militias and white supremacists. Armed

212 by the state, the police have been historically mobilized to suppress insurgency, protests, and other forms of civil disobedience; in other words, that which challenges the status quo. This is why, in 2020, they faced protesters and turned their backs on white supremacists, the group they would protect. This group was protected for clear reasons. Anti-COVID-19-lockdown protests do not challenge notions of American exceptionalism and individualism, and thus are deemed permissible. Far-right- and white supremacist-led protests do not challenge the continuation of the prison-industrial complex (which uses the slave-labor of disproportionately Black, Brown, and

Indigenous prisoners) like Black liberation protests do. What goes against the grain is met with suppression through various tools: imprisonment, surveillance, or covert assassination. Thus, the issue of facial recognition technology and its use by police and military forces is a matter of livelihood, life, and death. Historically, image databases accessible to the police have been largely composed of government-collected images, such as mug shots and driver’s license photographs. However, police increasingly rely on non-governmental databases (Lyon, 2002).

When algorithms of facial recognition technology are racially biased, they are more likely to misidentify Black people and other people of color. This intensifies already disproportionately enacted surveillance practices. As Joy Buolamwini, Aaina Agarwal, Nicole Hughes, and Sasha

Costanza-Chock argue,

since many of these [facial recognition] systems have demonstrated racial bias with lower

performance on darker skin, the burden of these harms will once again fall

disproportionately on Black people, further compounding the problem of racist policing

practices and a deeply flawed and harmful criminal justice system. (Buolamwini, 2020a,

para. 5)

Buolamwini co-founded the Algorithmic Justice League, which aims to develop and implement accountability processes during the design, development, and deployment of coded technology. Buolamwini, Agarwal, Hughes, and Costanza-Chock argue that due to the systematic weaponization of police power against Black people, “it is more imperative than ever that we

213 ensure that law enforcement cannot deploy face surveillance technology to suppress protests or infringe on civil rights and liberties (Buolamwini, 2020a, para. 14). Their efforts have worked, at least to some extent. As a result of Buolamwini and the Algorithmic Justice League’s efforts to hold private, non-governmental agencies accountable, IBM announced it would “stop providing general purpose facial recognition and analysis technology” to the police (Buolamwini, 2020b, para. 2).

In Chapter 3, I argued that an individualistic approach to ethics may not consider how uploaded images of protesters can have fatal consequences for those already disproportionately under surveillance. Although Buolamwini’s initial encounter with biometric failure took place in a university lab, her intra-action with the technology takes into account how such ostensibly innovative technologies carry the historical biases of their developers into everyday authoritarian forms of population management. Ethics is ongoing, and for Buolamwini ethical engagement is not limited to the moment of encounter with and use of technology, but rather extends to how such technology may be shaped differently for future encounters.

In addition to studying AI’s impact on society, Buolamwini and the Algorithmic Justice

League’s practices examine and emphasize the direct links between the AI production process and the resulting effects on future iterations of technology development and deployment. As such, their approach takes into account the extended temporality of ethics, in which the design and the development and deployment processes all have ethical implications. Such a disposition approaches technology not as fixed or stable, and one’s relation to it cannot be understood as fully predetermined or prescribed.

Surveillant Assemblages and Data Doubles

Surveillance depends not only on immediate visibility, as in the centralized, unidirectional Panoptic tower (Foucault, 1975). It also depends on data capture for future uses and on the consolidation of disparate systems and data sets to increase surveillance capabilities

(Haggerty & Ericson, 2000, p. 610). The tendency in contemporary forms of surveillance to

214 merge increasing numbers of systems and data sets is what Kevin Haggerty and Richard Ericson

(2000) call a surveillant assemblage. Whether it is from the surplus of information generated through daily transaction and interactions (Haggerty & Ericson, pp. 615–616), or from biometric information collected via facial recognition surveillance cameras, what surveillant assemblages desire is to create data doubles, digitized dimensions of a body, by collecting and combining one’s digital trail. This data double functions to serve social ordering and control purposes or to create user profiles for targeted advertising. Wearing a face mask to avoid surveillance cameras in this context protects one not only from immediate recognition but also from future identification via the cross-referencing of recorded images with data sets from state sources (e.g., the post office; utility providers; mugshot, passport, and driver’s license databases; or state-provided databases) and nonstate sources (e.g., social media websites or private data bases such as

Thomson Reuters’ CLEAR and Clearview).

In following section, I discuss the work of Jing-cai Liu (2017), which considers that contemporary forms surveillance function as assemblages that treat body parts as biometric pieces of information to be extracted and used to create data doubles. While Buolamwini examines what goes on inside facial recognition technology and the (corporate) practices and policies that shape it, Jing-cai Liu provides a means by which to resist surveillance on the ground: facial recognition cameras can be confused by feeding them publicly available images to record and store.

Jing-cai Liu’s Wearable Face Projector

The Wearable Face Projector is a concept design created by artist/designer Jing-cai Liu.

The Wearable Face Projector does more than conceal the face—it confuses the surveillance process by feeding surveillance cameras multiple faces that have been projected in quick succession on the wearer’s face (Figure 6). Jing-cai Liu’s work critiques the rising implementation of facial recognition surveillance for AI training purposes and targeted advertising (e.g., as one waits for the bus to arrive). Ethico-pedagogically, Jing-cai Liu’s project

215 is a productive form of engagement in that it critiques widespread surveillance by offering modes of resistance to it.

Figure 6

Jing-cai Liu’s Wearable Face Projector (2017)

Note. Images courtesy of Jing-cai Liu.

Speculative fiction can be a means of resistance to the status quo and a way to imagine better worlds or futures. It can also be a means by which to make sense of the world or critique its contemporary formations by imagining what might result if its current state remains unchanged.

Ethico-pedagogically, speculative fiction can resist and (re)imagine the differentially harmful material conditions that accompany surveillance technology. Jing-cai Liu’s project speculates through narrative fiction a mode of resistance rather than acquiescence to enforced facial recognition surveillance. Of course, such a protective device may not be equally available or accessible to all people. But Jing-cai Liu’s exercise of imagination is less a practical device than a

216 suggestion that viewers question the reality in which this form of disguise is necessary to avoiding surveillance. It can also encourage creative practices of resistance that work outside binaries of permission versus prohibition as a productive, reparative engagement that does not stop with critique. The ethical disposition of such a project does not take for granted the state of things, nor does an ethics of encounter take for granted that an encountered technology cannot be addressed.

In Chapter 1, I discussed Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s photographic method, which separates the artistic from the ethical. DiCorcia assumes an individualistic mode of ethics that does not account for relations and their effects. By contrast, in both Joy Buolamwini’s and Jing-cai Liu’s work, there is no separation between the artistic and ethical. For an ethical disposition, one’s engagement with technology matters, and therefore one considers the effects of one’s use of technology.

Narratives of Technological Efficiency and Accuracy in Drone Warfare

In the United States, facial recognition algorithms are increasingly aiding the police and military in making decisions that have ethical consequences, such as who gets to live and who gets killed. Facial recognition software, as a biometric technology, is involved in drone warfare, for instance. In Chapter 3, Light and the Photographic Encounter, I discussed how journalistic reporters like Jacob Riis, guided by market interests, may feel compelled to produce images that reify and reproduce racially motivated state narratives and agendas. Historically and today, media has contributed to popularizing narratives that legitimize state violence and military intervention

(Greenwald, 2020). Moreover, private media channels reflect the interest and orientations of those who own them and rarely reflect the interests of the public. Mainstream media plays a role in popularizing state narratives by reproducing images that demonize the Other and legitimize imperialist expansion. Aided by the mainstream media, the U.S. government produces and maintains narratives designed to garner public support for military intervention and the use of AI facial recognition for remote killing in drone warfare (Murphy, 2019). The notion of a credible

217 enemy is one example of a narrative designed to garner support through fearmongering: “‘The state has to guarantee the on-going, long term presence of a credible enemy, because only a credible enemy justifies the massive outlay of public funds’ for arms productions and securitization” (Franklin, 1999, p. 74, as cited in Browne, p. 115). Through strategies like deploying the idea of the credible enemy, popularized narratives work by masking the actual goal of waging and perpetuating wars: imperialist expansion and control over capital.

Narratives of technological efficiency and accuracy purport to eliminate or significantly decrease human error. However, this narrative is a strategic means of masking the fact that humans remain involved in this process. In fact, drone warfare does not yield fewer deaths or more “humane” deaths (Chamayou, 2015). As Grégoire Chamayou (2015) argues in A Theory of the Drone, the state’s real interest in drone warfare lies in drones’ capacity to shift the conditions of close combat. Using drones, targeted killings may be enacted remotely. When soldiers are replaced with drone technology—when they are no longer required to engage in combat on the ground or be sent abroad—it becomes all too easy to start and continue military intervention.

What narratives of technological efficiency and accuracy obscure, Chamayou argues, is that the ethical basis from which technological efficiency is judged is itself violent. In other words, what is considered technologically efficient does not preclude possible errors, such as facial recognition misidentification in remote killings. Moreover, Chamayou argues,

The state relies on the mobilization of bodies, without which it can no longer operate as it

wishes. In other words, if soldiers refuse to fight, who will do the state’s bidding? The

danger of automated weaponry is not that they might deviate from the program designed

by humans, but quite the reverse: it is that they never disobey. (p. 217)

In other words, a drone will not recognize that its algorithm is inaccurate, nor will it make a protest if it finds a mission unethical.

An ethical disposition does not take for granted narratives of technological efficiency and accuracy. Instead, it approaches technology as intra-active processes that require multiple forces

218 and entities—including technology users. In the next section, I discuss how processes of technological invisibility and transparency embolden narratives of technological efficiency and accuracy.

Technological Efficiency, Accuracy, Invisibility, and Transparency

One means by which narratives of technological efficiency and accuracy are cemented is through the way user interface designs can make the technology seem to disappear. The more efficient and accurate a technology is, the more it becomes invisible or transparent—as though efficiency and accuracy remove its material presence and impact. In a recent example of this, the

2017 introduction of the iPhone X included an advertisement boasting: “Augmented reality, now a reality.” This suggests that the device itself dissolves in the photographic experience. By disappearing the technology, by way of metaphors and processes of technological invisibility and transparency, narratives of technological efficiency and accuracy structure experience and modes of perception and understanding of drone warfare. In what follows, I examine artist Josh Begley’s

Metadata+ phone application as an example of artistic intervention into the mechanisms by which technology attempts not only to tailor and control the content it delivers, but also to structure user experience and modes of perception and understanding.

Josh Begley’s Metadata+

The geographical distance between everyday civilian technology users in the United

States and those who experience the effects of drone surveillance and targeted drone killings in

Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia is maintained by mainstream media. Media reports of drone deaths and casualties often offer scant information, employ obscure language, use a limited set of terms, and lack a sense of narrative (Begley, 2017, para. 11). Artist Josh Begley writes,

“Beyond the number of people who were reported killed, the province in which it took place, and the anonymous official who is certain these folks were ‘militants,’ there’s not much there”

(Meyer, 2014, para. 19). Metadata+ is an iPhone (iOS) application that tracks, maps, catalogs,

219 and reports drone strikes and drone killings by the United States.41 Begley developed Metadata+ as both a historical archive of U.S. drone strikes and a way to “represent information about people you’ll never know—which is effectively metadata gleaned from English-language news reports— in a way that is intuitive and chewable but also unsettling” (Meyer, para. 10). Begley writes, “The name ‘Metadata’ has a double meaning: the app both contains metadata about English-language news reports, and it refers to the basis on which most drone strikes are carried out. (As Gen.

Michael Hayden famously said, ‘we kill people based on metadata.’)” (para. 12).

The application design resembles iMessages, Apple’s text messaging interface (Figure 7).

Users receive a text message notifications whenever a drone strike is reported—in real-time.

Within the application, users can toggle between the text and a map that pinpoints strike locations across the Middle East and Somalia. The decision to design the application to look like Apple’s iMessages was to project a sense of familiarity for iPhone users. For Begley, “borrowing the visual vernacular of Apple’s expertly built interface opens up the potential for a different kind of seeing” (Meyer, 2014, para. 11).42 In the initial stages of the project, a core question for Begley

“was about interruption: Would anyone actually want these alerts? Do we want to be as connected to our foreign policy as we are to our smartphones?” (Meyer, para. 9). Writing about

Begley’s project, Robinson Meyer (2014) notes that Metadata+ “tries to transplant the anxiety of those who live below drones to the everyday experience of those very distant from them” (para.

7). Its function is to undo the geographical removal of U.S. cell phone users and those targeted by drone strikes outside the United States.

But Metadata+ does more than merely expose, bring awareness to, or familiarize users with the reality and extent of drone strikes otherwise obscured by scarce mainstream media

41 Metadata+ became available for Android in 2017.

42 Olia Lialina (2018) notes, “To say that design of user interfaces influences our daily life is a commonplace and an understatement. User interfaces influence people’s understanding of processes, form relations with the companies that provide services. Interfaces define roles computer users get to play in computer culture” (para. 3).

220 reporting and narratives of technological efficiency and accuracy. The app also disrupts cell phone technology’s mechanisms for maintaining the status quo, producing knowledge, and making its effects invisible. As Anjali Nath (2016) argues,

Metadata+ uses the very technologies that produce the world as a place of transnational

digital neoliberal consumption, to illuminate the destruction of entire life-worlds, the

production of other spaces and people as constantly under threat, and the persistence of

sonic disruption and surveillance. (p. 327)

While everyday technology such as the iPhone is designed to mask its relation to drone warfare,

Metadata+ disrupts this obfuscation by rearranging the technology’s familiar modes of delivery.

Figure 7

Metadata+ App by Josh Begley

Note. Graphic courtesy of Josh Begley.

221 Artist and educator Olia Lialina (2018) argues the shift in user interface design toward device invisibility or transparency is not just about letting the technology do all the work so as to enhance convenience for users or increase their creativity.43 Instead, moves toward device invisibility or transparency is, she argues, a means by which to structure user experience as much as possible to be scripted by the technology. As such, the experience is even more programed than Vilém Flusser’s apparatus (see Chapter 4). According to contemporary user interface standards, technology is designed in ways that limit experimentation. There is a decreasing number of gaps that may allow creative lines of flight, because the existence of gaps is considered a design weakness.44 The swift axe that fell on Metadata+ is also telling. Apple rejected

Metadata+ in 2015 (Moinzadeh, 2017) because it made perceptible how the iPhone structures users’ experiences and frames of understanding.45 Nath (2016) puts it succinctly when she argues that Apple’s decision to remove the application was not because of its controversial content, but because it highlighted the usually hidden workings of iPhone technology. Nath writes,

Despite “content” being the rhetorical focus in iTunes’ action … the information in

Begley’s Metadata+ was drawn from public sources, with similar content published in

other news apps available through iTunes (The Guardian, New York Times, Al Jazeera,

etc.). Apple’s decision again underscores that Metadata+’s subversiveness lies in its

intervention into the user’s temporal landscape, distanciated from simultaneous wartime

spaces, and in its oblique critique of the way communication technologies screen out

certain lives. In other words, iTunes’ September 2015 censorship was less about

Metadata+’s “content”’ and more about the app’s visible rendering of a violent normalcy

that iPhones and other consumer devices produce. (p. 328)

43 Olia Lialina (2018) notes that “mainstream practices [in interface design circles are] based on the postulate that the best interface is intuitive, transparent, or actually no interface” (para. 7).

44 There are users who always try to play outside the script (Lialina, 2018).

45 Two years later, as of 2017, Apple accepted Metadata+, and the application is now available for both iOS and Android (Begley, 2017).

222 Technological invisibility and transparency play out materially when it comes to surveillance infrastructures. In the next section, I discuss how metaphors and processes of technological invisibility and transparency are used to deflect attention away from surveillance infrastructures and their harmful impacts on people and the environment.

Infrastructural Thinking: An Ethical Disposition and Mode of Resistance

Increasingly digitized contemporary forms of surveillance require human labor and have a material, environmental impact. Technology and media infrastructures generally already

“normalize behavior (such that they become relatively invisible, unnoticed, or internalized)”

(Parks & Starosielski, 2015, pp. 15–16). Yet metaphors of technological invisibility and transparency are also employed to strategically mask the human and environmental cost of surveillance infrastructures. The metaphor of a “cloud” for online storage suggests that when data is uploaded, it merely awaits retrieval from somewhere in the sky. The cloud metaphor does not suggest a data center—which is where data actually goes—and diverts attention from the environmental impacts that accompany remote data storage infrastructures (Holt & Vonderau,

2015). In the next section, I discuss infrastructural thinking as an ethical disposition that takes into account the environmental impacts of networked connectivity and the (inter)connectedness of surveillance infrastructures with everyday technological transactions and interactions.

According to Parks and Starosielski (2015), infrastructural thinking involves considering multiple factors: (1) the “industrial, physical, and organizational interconnections of media infrastructures with other systems”; (2) “the labor, maintenance, and repair required to build and sustain them”; and (3) “the natural resources that media infrastructures require and the environmental impacts they produce” (p. 7). Infrastructural thinking, then, means considering how some technological systems are connected to others, and where the ethical implications of such connections appear. For example, the internet was originally part of a military project called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. DARPA relied on funding from the U.S. Pentagon and AT&T’s privately-owned corporate infrastructure (Waldrop, 2015). This

223 original infrastructural network has implications today for how authoritarian forms of surveillance are carried out and enabled. Infrastructural thinking also involves considering the surveillance capacities of technologies originally designed for public or commercial use. As an ethical disposition, infrastructural thinking requires examining a technology’s multiuse capacity beyond what a company advertises (Cox, 2020). Most mobile phone owners are, to varying degrees, aware that mobile phones double as surveillance devices. The all-too-familiar “accept terms and conditions” phrase required to access most applications and websites is a contemporary

“token of trust” (Lyon, 2002)46 in a given technology, not unlike membership and identification cards, passports and driver’s licenses, and so on. In effect, one gives up—or “trades off”—one’s data in exchange for access. Because of the increasing value that can be derived from copious amounts of raw data for AI training and machine learning, tokens of trust are increasingly supplemented or replaced by data-generating technologies.

When a company like Amazon supplements and replaces humans with machines for everyday tasks such that its technology becomes an intermediary, algorithmic gatekeeping—in which only those who are recognized by the algorithm can have access to services—becomes the norm. In 2018, Amazon introduced the product Ring under the guise of innovation and convenience.47 Ring is a doorbell that doubles as a home surveillance camera and is meant to deter and protect from package theft. It can be used in conjunction with the product Neighbors, which enables data-sharing with the police and with one’s entire neighborhood (Ali, 2019, para.

3). While Amazon presents these technologies as innovations in home security, digital artist, writer, and educator Hiba Ali (2019) argues that they “are actually technological updates to the

46 When face-to-face relations composed dominant forms of communication, tokens of trust between strangers (e.g., an institution and its employees) included the passport or national identification papers. By the twentieth century, as electronic forms of communication increasingly replaced face-to-face interactions and decreased the need for co-presence, other forms of identification, that is, other tokens of trust, were sought to compensate for the disappearing body. Tokens of trust are not simply methods of identity verification, but also tools of regulation and keeping track (Lyon, p. 2012).

47 Ring Inc., formerly Doorbot, is the home security company that first introduced the Ring video doorbell in 2013. Amazon acquired the company and its product in 2018.

224 old model of classism and the racist police state” (para. 3). Ali writes that Ring turns safety into a commodity, and that “in this market of purchased safety, class intersects with race to reproduce a gated White ‘secure’ suburbia that is patrolled by the police” (para. 3). Moreover, replacing humans with machines for everyday tasks provides additional opportunities for data collection and mining. Amazon’s practice is what Neil Stern, retail consultant and a senior partner at

McMillanDoolittle, describes as “data experiment(s)” (Stone & Day, 2019, para. 4). Whether this technology is a convenience store or an Amazon retailer should not matter, as they are “not the big idea,” says Stern (Stone & Day, 2019, para. 4). What matters is data creation, capture, and manipulation. Haggerty and Ericson (2000) argue that much of the expansion of surveillance practices “is driven by the financial imperative to find new markets for surveillance technologies which were originally designed for military purposes” (p. 615). But projects like Ring are not merely seeking out new markets. Amazon wants more than to generate profit from everything it can. It is engaged in a process of creating modes of experience and transaction that enable increased forms of authoritarian and surveillance capitalism; a process of structuring modes of experience that mask the surveillance mechanisms they enact, as well as the human and environmental cost—all under the guise of convenience and innovation. In the next section, I discuss the work of Hiba Ali, which investigates the oppressive infrastructural conditions at

Amazon, conditions Amazon attempts to obscure or deny.

Hiba Ali’s Abra

Artist Hiba Ali experienced firsthand the exploitative labor conditions at Amazon while working in one of the company’s fulfillment centers. In Ali’s 2018 performance, To Be A Box, the artist embodies an Amazon box being interviewed.48 The interview becomes a way of tracing the production process and historical formation of the seemingly innocuous but ubiquitous Amazon

48 Ali’s To Be A Box references the infamous slave narrative of Henry “Box” Brown, who escaped slavery by mailing himself in a wooden box from Virginia to Philadelphia, which at the time was a free state (Brown, 2008).

225 box.49 After performing To Be A Box, Ali started work at an Amazon fulfillment center in Austin,

Texas, to earn money between graduate programs. At the job, Ali was “acting as the unseen and unconsidered labor behind the blithely pressed ‘Buy Now With 1 Click’ buttons that have leveled entire industries” (Zeiba, 2018, para. 4). Ali writes that Amazon’s “Buy Now With 1 Click”— which expedites the purchase process by eliminating the buyer’s need to pay via shopping cart— is “extractive of people’s labor, like sucking the life force out of someone and spitting them out”

(Zeiba, para. 4). Ali notes that the facility they had worked at in Austin “was an open-air facility where employees worked in sweltering temperatures.” The artist added that given Amazon’s systematic suppression of union organization attempts, a recent installation of an air-conditioner was likely the result of persistent efforts. Ali wonders, “Who had to die, suffer, riot, or protest in order to finally make this happen?” (n.d., para. 7). They responded to their experience at the

Amazon fulfillment center with Abra, a video installation also released in 2018. The title Abra,

Ali notes, comes from “Abracadabra,” which was Bezos’s original inspiration for the name of his company (n.d., para. 3).

Amazon relies on myriad strategies to maintain an aura of a benevolence, which is one of the “company’s ingratiating attempts to be relatable” (Zeiba, para. 7) while maintaining oppressive and exploitative practices. Peccy, Amazon’s orange, smiling, “customer service- obsessed” (Ali, n.d., para. 3) mascot, can be understood as an effort to maintain a friendly appearance, but it presents a “duplicitous image,” for “while Peccy smiles, Amazon factory workers endure arduous work conditions and their unexplained deaths occur” (Ali, n.d., para. 4).

Ali explains that the public usually encounters Peccy on Amazon’s boxes and logos.

49 Drew Zeiba (2018) describes the piece amusingly: “Ali-as-box relishes in the consumer’s obsession with her contents and speaks with sadistic glee of the state of the workers that physically manipulate her/it: ‘At the warehouses, people push me around and have to beat the clock … if they don’t … bwa, bwaaaa, fired.’ From the box’s perspective, human bodies are tools. They are tracked and regulated—reportedly prevented from even going to the bathroom or taking a seat—not unlike the packages they send out” (para. 2).

226 The video portion of Abra develops in two scenes. In this analysis, I focus on the second scene, which depicts a conversation between Ali and Peccy. When the scene begins, Ali’s face appears in a close up, while bubbles float around. Ali blows in the direction of the floating bubbles before the activity is interrupted by the arrival of Peccy. Peccy takes the shape of a

“goofy orange blob,” maintaining the Amazon box’s unrelenting smile throughout the interview

(Zeiba, 2018). In the video, Ali hunches on the ground and laboriously rotates a set of identical, nondescript metal prongs. Meanwhile, Peccy floats nearby, suspended mid-air, like a hovering drone. In a mechanical, forcibly-yet-eagerly-gleeful voice, Peccy begins to ask questions. The misalignment between Peccy’s upbeat, gleeful smile, its scripted tone of voice, and its hovering presence suggests a power dynamic in which Peccy is in a position to surveil and exert control on workers (who are embodied by Ali). One can feel the misalignment between what Peccy looks like (i.e., its friendly smile) and what it does (i.e., defer accountability and obscure oppressive, exploitative practices) as soon as the exchange between Peccy and Ali begins. Peccy asks, “Hello, how are you doing? I wanted to see how productive you have been” (3:02). Ali responds by expressing fear of retaliation if the question was answered honestly, continuing that “while my friends and I worked for you, our productivity was not a measure of our intelligence” (3:07).

After stating, “Everybody needs to work, some more than others,” Peccy asks, “How much do you love blowing bubbles and bathroom breaks” (3:16)? Ali responds, “My labor will always be invisible like bubbles. I like being paid well and being able to take care of myself” (3:27). Peccy, with a sarcastic undertone, but still maintaining its characteristic monotonous, robotic mode of speech, poses the question, “What is a living wage? Who is even living” (3:37)? Ali lets out a sigh and responds, “You put a price on our head. We are never good enough. We don’t even own our labor” (3:40). Peccy replies, “We get the cheapest person to do the job. It’s not about seeing the whole chain or even the whole person. Selling facial recognition to police and the government is something that helps us see you better” (3:50). Ali rebuts passionately, “People, Black, Brown, immigrants, refugees, and Muslims—we don’t want our faces hacked, or patrolled. We don’t

227 want your control” (4:05). Without addressing Ali’s statements, Peccy says, “Please fill out a survey of your experience with us. How can we better serve you” (4:16)?

Ali writes, “As a worker, someone who is gendered and racialized, you, simply, cannot file for wrongdoing when the act of filing it is … wrong itself” (n.d., para. 9). In the course of the two-minute interview, Ali summarizes Amazon’s exploitative relationship to its labor force, a part of its infrastructure. Ali’s investigative-artistic practice presents information in a format different from news channels that only report generic and recycled bits of information. As such,

Abra resists habituation to narratives that fail to contradict Amazon’s actual oppressive practices.

Ali notes that while Amazon has expanded such that one is no longer able to avoid using Amazon in some cases, “need” is a relative term. Amazon benefits from creating the illusion that it offers what consumers need. The state and corporate chase after AI facial recognition training is motivated by a desire to increase the ability by which to structure user experience; thus, it is beneficial for them to generate profit by manufacturing the terms of ‘need’ to create data- generating ports disguised as necessary everyday needs. However, in addition to the illusion of need, Amazon engages in multiple strategies that render its boycott increasingly more difficult.

Amazon increases its consumer market hegemony by buying out competitive businesses, or driving them out of business, which allows it to offer products at lower price points. But more than that, products bought via other online retailers are increasingly shipped from Amazon warehouses. An ethically-engaged pedagogy recognizes the ethical significance of boycotting oppressive corporations, but it also recognizes its limitations. An ethically-engaged pedagogy is thus also invested in creating alternative spaces and modalities outside and against oppressive surveillance infrastructures (Ethical Alternatives, 2020).

Infrastructures involve not just pipes, wires, and warehouses, but the humans who build, install, operate, and maintain them. By narrating their warehouse worker experience while in conversation with Peccy—a nonhuman agentic capacity, a logo whose symbolism acquires increasing power—Ali connects relations and effects through an artistic practice of infrastructural

228 thinking (Parks & Starosielski, 2015). Ali’s practice affirms that the effects of Amazon’s oppressive modes of relating do not disappear even when the company keeps them out of view, denies them, or structures modes of perception where they hide in plain sight.

In the exchange in Abra, Ali digests what is missing from mainstream media news circulation processes and articulates it in a format that is accessible, informative, humorous, and poetic—a format that “register(s) at lower frequencies through [its] ability to move us” (Campt,

2017, pp. 41–42). On repeat viewings, the closing scene of Alba becomes more satisfying. When

Peccy mechanically asks the final question, “How can we better serve you?” Ali begins to chant,

“No surveillance business. No police business. No oppression business” (4:22). As Ali chants,

Peccy begins to dissolve, gradually collapsing onto itself until it disappears completely.

Conclusion

Street photography, when understood as exceeding the bounds of the artistic genre of photography, involves images, data, and technology—dimensions central to surveillance formation and implementation. As such, street photography can be a space from which to understand the relationship between quotidian practices involving technology use and enforced forms of surveillance. Street photography can be a space from which to resist narratives and mechanisms surveillance technology uses to obscure its impacts and maintain oppressive practices. The proposal that street photography pedagogy foreground issues of surveillance does not suggest that most people are unaware of the increasing incursion of surveillance mechanisms into everyday practices. What it suggests, rather, is another matter of concern—that when surveillance mechanisms are presented as inevitable and par for the course, they create an environment in which one is encouraged to accept (even if grudgingly) and expect surveillance, in which one is encouraged to acquiesce or adopt a defeatist attitude rather than question or resist surveillance mechanisms (for instance, the fatalistic position taken by Howarth and McLaren

(2010) discussed in Chapter 2).

229 In Chapter 3, Light and the Photographic Encounter, I argued that an ethics of encounter is concerned with the ethical implications of an entity’s capacities, not just its properties. If one only considers what surveillance is (i.e., its properties), then it might appear to a large extent different from street photography. If one asks the additional question of what surveillance does

(i.e., its capacities), one might find overlap between surveillance and street photography practices.

Street photographers can, for instance, enact surveillance mechanisms. In Chapter 3, I discussed the practices of Jacob Riis, who enacts the mechanisms of lantern light surveillance by literally marking the Other as out of place through flash photography and lantern slides. Riis also collaborated with the police. Riis deputized himself to carry out the work of the state by surveilling already oppressed groups more than a century after the days of lantern laws (which were established in 1713).

In Chapter 4, Camera Relationality, I discussed the ethical implications the materiality of the camera has on the photographic encounter. Large cameras can alert people to their presence.

If one knows one is being photographed, one may be able to respond to the photographer. If a camera is hidden or if it is mounted on a moving vehicle (i.e. Google Street View), however, it may be more challenging for one to respond. An ethical disposition is concerned with the effects of one’s response or non-response on the one hand, and, on the other, with whether one lets another person respond or not (i.e., response-ability). An ethical disposition is hospitable to the other’s response.

Surveillance may not “look” like street photography, but they can work in equivalent ways. As Chamayou puts it, “If one avoids being misled by some external attribute, the right form of comparison involves not a similarity of form but equivalence of functions” (2015, p. 141).

There are many other ways besides those listed above that street photographers can enact surveillance mechanisms, and that street photography pedagogy can examine moments of overlap with surveillance to emphasize the ethical role of the street photographer.

230 In this chapter, I proposed an ethics of encounter as a dispositional mode of ethics for encountering surveillance infrastructures. But throughout this dissertation more broadly, I argued for an ethics of encounter for street photography as a dispositional mode of ethics that takes into account relations and their effects. In Chapter 1, An Expanded Approach to Street Photography

Ethics, I argued that since to exist is to exist in relation, and relations extend beyond humans, an ethical disposition is necessarily relational and nonhuman-centered. An encounter with another human or nonhuman entity, which produces effects, can neither be pre-determined nor inconsequential, but the effects produced are to some uncertain degree contingent on an entity’s disposition and modes of relating (e.g., its hospitality to the other’s response). If one’s disposition and modes of relating to some uncertain degree affect encounters with others, then not only can modes of relating be fashioned and refashioned to varying effect, but the extent to which street photography pedagogy emphasizes the dispositional dimension of ethics and ethical ways of relating can impact the ways in which photography is practiced. That is, it is possible to train one’s disposition towards productive, ethical forms of engagement and being in relation, and street photography pedagogy can encourage such modes of engagement.

231 Conclusion

Toward Relational Pedagogies

In this dissertation I have introduced two organizing questions. First, what are the ethical implications of understanding street photography as a technical practice, one that is bounded to the moment of taking a picture? Second, what are the ethical implications of understanding street photography as an aesthetic practice concerned with the production and interpretation of images?

Answering these two questions required setting aside an influential model of ethics that has dominated our understanding of street photography—a legalistic interpretation of consent. By addressing the provincial aspects of consent as an inadequate tool to grasp ethical questions in street photography, I was able to clear space to introduce relational practices as a more adequate lens, capable of perceiving the complexity of encounters that exceed the photographic moment. It is not only street photography scholars’ and practitioners’ sense of ethics that is insufficient (i.e., representationalist, legalistic, defeatist models of ethics), but also, the focus on technical and formal-aesthetic dimensions of street photography deflects ethical engagement. That is, the focus on product (i.e., image, technique, formal-aesthetic dimensions) and the individual at the heart of consent, litigation, property and privacy rights, deflects attention from the underlying— humanistic, colonialist, racist, capitalistic—frameworks from which individualistic notions of ethics, with their attendant environmentally destructive and racially violent modes of engaging and relating, emerge and are encouraged.

I developed an ethics of encounter as a curricular and practice-based intervention. An ethics of encounter can be understood as a nonhuman-centered theoretical framework, a critical mode of analysis, a relational mode of engagement, and an ethical disposition for encountering human and nonhuman others. This practice-based approach attends to conceptions about ethics and street photography that may be easy to take for granted as common sense given how human- centered and product-oriented approaches to ethics and street photography foreclose the space to

232 understand them otherwise (see Chapter 2). Such attention to and drawing out of taken-for- granted notions about ethics, street photography, surveillance, and how they relate to one another, requires pedagogical approaches of slowing down, taking time to linger with the encounter. This dissertation was likewise structured in a way that built this pedagogical model of an ethics of encounter through the cases I examined, creating the time and the tools to think street photographic practices anew. The cases I examined in each chapter can be understood as threads to the same arguments about ethics and pedagogy, each addressing an additional layer or dimension that needed attending to—a scaling up that began with light, cameras, photographs and photographic archives, and extended to surveillance infrastructures—in this way also emphasizing the interrelations between and across these dimensions. By enacting this threaded analysis, I developed my arguments about street photography and ethics as they manifested in different stages of street photographic production, circulation, and reception. For example, I argued that an ethical disposition considers light—a nonhuman agentic capacity—in photographic practice and analysis, since light has the agential potential to engender, guide, inspire, influence, deter, constrain, or shift the course of an encounter. What is at stake in including nonhuman agentic capacity in the analysis?

Any human or non-human activity that produces effects has ethical dimensions. An ethical disposition takes into account the agential potential of nonhuman entities to influence not only the content produced but also the encounter. In her 2015 book Dark Matters: On the

Surveillance of Blackness, Simone Browne updates theories of surveillance through a historical material-discursive analysis that considers nonhuman entities such as branding irons, lantern lights, and archives of chattel slavery without overdetermining their agentic capacities. By considering the material effects of light—Browne traces surveillance’s racializing antecedents and demonstrates how illumination becomes a form of identifying certain bodies and not others as out of place, thus complicating the notion of surveillance as race-, gender-, or class-neutral.

Browne enacts the pedagogy of slowing down that I have developed in this dissertation, which

233 traces, rather than presumes, relations and their effects. By taking into account agentic capacities of flash light, discursive conditions, and by tracing rather than presuming relations and their effects, it was possible to read Jacob Riis’s photographic practices beyond the lens of his intentions, as merely social reform documents. Instead, deputized by the state, Riis enacted the mechanisms of lantern light surveillance by literally marking the Other as out of place through flash photography and lantern slides.

For an ethically-engaged pedagogy, Jacob Riis’s reform photography cannot be analyzed without paying attention and attending to its role as a project and practice that extends colonialist techniques of population management and control through the production of racializing pictorial taxonomies. As Saidiya Hartman demonstrates in her 2019 book Wayward Lives, Beautiful

Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval, reform photographs were intended to be viewed and received through framings that already script those depicted as Other and out of place. Whether through the use of captions that attempt to overdetermine the frame of an image’s reception, or the repetitive photographic depiction of the same objects and scenes already implied to embody the materially, intellectually, and culturally impoverished—reform photographers extended the work of the state and reform photographs contributed to the continued projects of racialized surveillance, oppression, and exploitation. Hartman’s historical-speculative, material- discursive, nonhuman-centered, multisensory, embodied mode of analysis emphasizes the inseparable relation between history and present re-formations of past—enacting ethics as the extension of action beyond the moment. Hartman’s analytical approach not only rejects, but also enacts a practice of reading otherwise and against, colonialist knowledge production practices, binaristic fragmentation and linear conceptions of time.

By excavating that which is habitually excluded from educational and life curricula, and by lingering with the encounter in order to recover that which is intentionally left out of colonial historical narration, narration through the circulation of constructed dominant narratives and imposed frames of reception, Hartman models a pedagogy of slowing down as an ethical project

234 of resisting oppressive practices. By deemphasizing analyses centered on vision as a prioritized way of knowing in the Enlightenment sense, Hartman demonstrates what can be learned—what is pedagogically valuable and ethically significant—about approaching photographs and photographic archives as agentic entities that invite modes of engagement and analytic modalities that exceed vision and the visual. By lingering with reform images, by listening to them, by letting them speak through a careful consideration of how they register affectively and somatically—Hartman models a nonhuman-centered approach that does not fixate on the object but rather considers it in a holistic, multilayered ethico-pedagogical mode of analysis that reads beyond and against dominant narratives and frameworks. By asking pedagogical questions that foreground effects over final product, and that complexify the simple rather than simplifying the complex, an ethics of encounter goes beyond dominant narratives and assigned meanings, foregrounds the overlap between street photographic and surveillance practices, and considers the iterative processes by which meanings get produced and reproduced. This approach to ethics attends to the specificity of the encounter as a nonessentialist and non-reductionist pedagogy of slowing down and tracing relations and their effects as a mode of relating that is both hospitable and response-able (see Chapter 3).

Just like light, cameras can create the impetus to photograph; they can also guide movement, orienting and reorienting the body and engaging senses and sensory modalities beyond vision. I argued that photography—via camera—is not centered on visual artifacts, but rather enables distinctive modes of being in relation that can have pedagogical value in themselves (see Chapter 4). But if one approached found images from a product-motivated, audience-centered, and ocular-centric view of photography (Leos, 1980; Hirsh, 2008, Hairman &

Lucaites, 2016), one may assimilate non-product motivated practices into more familiar archetypes and narratives frames, as in the cases of Vivian Maier and Horace Engle (see Chapter

5). I argued that an agentic capacity of cameras and recording devices is the physical, material, tangible trail—not just indexical trace—they leave behind. Upon encountering found images,

235 does one’s attraction to photographs legitimate further circulating them? To legitimize their circulation, a common approach to reading found images is to assimilate them into familiar frames of reference, in other words, “canonical masters”—which involves a dismissal of a photographer’s disposition if it happens to fall outside capitalistic understandings of photography that prioritize product over process. By foreclosing the space to consider photographic practices otherwise, such processes of assimilation limit creative possibilities by reproducing scripted narratives about what photography should look like rather than what it can do. Rather than understanding photography as merely a production of records that should be circulated and traded, when encountering photographs and photographic archives, an ethical disposition allows that photography can be a multisensory, relational process.

Likewise, when encountering iconic images, the ethical and pedagogical concern for an ethical disposition has less to do with defining what an icon is, and more with how icons and iconic images function. As Nicole Fleetwood demonstrates in her 2015 book On Racial Icons:

Blackness and the Public Imagination, iconic images gain such a status through iterative, relational processes that imbue them with meaning. Iconic images, through their capacity to conceal the coding processes that imbue them with meaning (Hall, 1999), can shut down critical readings that resist popularized narratives. I discussed how the iconicity of Alfred Eisenstaedt’s

V-J Day in Times Square for LIFE magazine deflected critical readings, where, by being popularized as iconic, an image of sexual assault became reproduced as a symbol of heroism and romantic victory (see Chapter 6). Reading iconic images requires pedagogical modes of analysis that go beyond assigned, popularized narratives, particularly when those narratives reinforce harmful practices. I discussed ethico-pedagogical modes of photographic analysis that read against and beyond popularized narratives, and that do not take for granted the ideologies encoded in the messages received. As theorized by Tina Campt (2017), listening to images is a practice of resisting the meanings imbued in photographs and photographic archives by attuning to their quiet frequencies. These quiet frequencies are the regions within images that are easy to

236 miss, or dismiss, in conventional interpretive practices, but that are nonetheless ethico- pedagogically consequential. Muscular tension, mundane details, subtle acts of refusal—all register at quiet frequencies that require expanding the image’s sensorial register in order to perceive them. Campt points out, attending to “mundane details” is a method of not accepting what appears—“what we see”—as the true meaning of an image (p. 33). The practice of listening to images is not merely concerned with the audible—with sound and hearing—but involves an attentiveness and attunement to that which resides below the surface of dominant narratives, the quiet frequencies that may be easily missed when one uncritically encounters or reads images through their frame of iconicity.

The ethically-informed pedagogical modes of engagement offered in this dissertation become helpful means by which to resist oppressive surveillance practices through and within art.

Rather than merely exposing the hidden ideologies that drive oppressive, racialized surveillance technologies—artists Joy Buolamwini, Josh Begley, and Hiba Ali consider the very mechanisms by which everyday technology becomes further disconnected from its relation to authoritarian surveillance capitalism through processes of normalization and naturalization (see Chapter 7). In this way, these artists both consider and resist what Ruha Benjamin (2019) calls “the New Jim

Code,” the “employment of new technologies that reflect and reproduce existing inequities but that are promoted and perceived as more objective or progressive than the discriminatory systems of a previous era” (p. 3). As such, street photography pedagogy can underscore the possibility for critical intervention and resistance by emphasizing that ethics is ongoing and that how one engages with technology has ethical implications. Crucially, the process of decentering the photograph from what matters for photographic meaning and practice; then attending to the camera, and the circulation of photographs as its byproducts, and how these connect to the afterlives of surveillances images—is part of my commitment to consider photographic practices and image circulation without reifying either.

237 This approach enables multiple queries to occupy the same landscape, capturing intersecting dynamics beyond the limits of the image frame: photography and surveillance emerge in conjunction to projects of imperialist expansion, colonialism, and racial slavery—as means by which to extend and expand the tools and techniques of population management and control according to socio-politically constructed categories of race, gender, class, and ability.

Ethically-engaged street photography pedagogy likewise necessitates interdisciplinary approaches that go beyond canonical historical contextualization and a focus on technical and formal- aesthetic dimensions as practices that deflect critical engagement; that question and decenter

Western canon de facto as art-foundational by considering its colonialist-imperialist-capitalist roots and orientations; that dislodge the hierarchization of vision and the ocular as prioritized modes of knowing inherited from Enlightenment humanism and Cartesian binarism; and that uncouple the experiential dimensions of photography from its capitalistic, product-motivated dimensions that center on accumulation and exchange.

Ethically-engaged street photography pedagogy considers photography’s historical relationship to colonialization and post-colonization (Campt, 2017; Hartman, 2019). Ethically- engaged street photography pedagogy considers the historical and intimate relationship between surveillance and racial slavery (Browne, 2015). Ethically-engaged street photography pedagogy considers the historical emergence of surveillance technologies as tool of racial segregation, management, and control (Roberts, 2011; Browne, 2015; Benjamin, 2019). I have developed the offered expanded framework for understanding street photography ethics and pedagogy by building on the critical interventions of Black feminist theorists, whose remedial analyses demonstrate the historical and intimate relationship between photography, surveillance, and projects of racial oppression and exploitation.

In addition to offering correctives to taken-for-granted lineages of photographic and surveillance practices, the Black feminist theorists mentioned here provide updated, alternative frameworks not only for reading photographs and photographic archives otherwise and beyond

238 dominant narratives. But also, as productive, ethically-informed modes of relating and engaging that are hospitable to the other, that are reparative —modes of relating and engaging that are urgently needed to resist and suppress racial oppression and exploitation; the expansion, normalization, and naturalization of genocidal practices and apartheid colonialist regimes; capitalist, neoliberalist expansionist horizons and environmental destruction; and fascistic rigidity that demands operating within prescribed templates that refuse experimentation and ultimately— resistance.

The Black feminist theorists I draw upon share a refusal to consider photography and surveillance according to linear temporal chronologies where history is separated from its presence in and effects on the present, where past is regarded in a mutually-exclusive binary relation to the present—enacting ethics as the extension of action beyond the moment. By refusing to separate the present from the historically-scripted narratives mobilized to erase the inerasable racializing origins and orientations of photographic and surveillance practices, and by going beyond uncovering the ideological roots of these practices, Black feminist theorists at once disclose and challenge the very structuring processes that produce asymmetric vulnerability to policing and surveillance. These interventions by Black feminist theorists can be understood as part of a long genealogy engaging the always already urgent project of resisting the historical- present state of racial surveillance capitalism through critically examining and updating the very narratives and mechanisms wielded and centered to legitimize and normalize racially violent and environmentally destructive practices.

Black feminist theorists demonstrate that attending to nonhuman agentic capacity and decentering the human as the primary point of analysis do not disregard the human or devaluate human interest, but, seemingly paradoxically, assist in explicating the conditions that produce the human’s life chances and choices. While recent nonhuman-centered approaches offer helpful methodological and analytical tools; nonhuman-centered approaches to ethics are incomplete and insufficient if they do not consciously and cautiously account for the racializing modes of

239 scripting—or the continual attempts to script—the life chances and choices of those who reside outside the frame of white prototypicality. To engage critically, a nonhuman-centered, ethically- engaged street photography pedagogy necessarily draws upon Black feminist theorizations of photography and surveillance as inherently tied to projects of racialized population management, control, and exploitation. Any consideration of photography, surveillance, and their pedagogical implications has to equally consider the development and popularization of these colonially- inherited practices as means by which to legitimize and normalize racial violence and exploitation. Moreover, postcolonial and anti-racist thought questioned humanist and

Enlightenment conceptions of the human that relegate those who are not male or white to the status of inhuman, subhuman, or nonhuman long before the more recent emergence of feminist engagements with materiality and poststructuralist engagements with processes of materialization in relation to power and subjectivity formation.

I propose engaging Black feminist theorizing as means by which to construct more just worlds through critiquing, deconstructing, and reimaging the present by reconceptualizing its normalized, dominant modes of existence that have never been viable.

Implications for Ethically-Engaged Pedagogies

In this dissertation, I have examined the ethico-pedagogical significance of attending to the relation between ways of responding and their effects. I argued that an ethically-engaged pedagogy attends to how modes of relating produce effects of ethical consequence. I also argued that an ethical disposition requires ongoing self-refashioning as a means by which to be better in relation to human and nonhuman others. I close this dissertation by considering a set of questions that emphasize the relationship between pedagogical practices and ethical consequences. The questions I offer next emerge from this dissertation both as continuations of what has been presented as well as possible points of departure into new lines of inquiry. These questions do not seek answers, they desire instead to be asked repeatedly and refashioned creatively. These

240 questions are also invitations to think ethico-pedagogically together toward building more just worlds.

Ethics resides in the domain of the everyday, yet rule-based models obscure the everyday, ongoing dimension of ethics. How can ethically-engaged pedagogies accommodate and encourage an everyday, practice-oriented mode of ethics that exceeds the bounds of the classroom and academic institutions? How can ethically-engaged pedagogies move away from vocational training and toward collective forms of resisting oppressive practices and the status quo?

Since to exist is to exist in relation to human and nonhuman others, then ethics is necessarily relational. Yet consent-based models neglect the relational dimensions of ethics. How can ethically-engaged pedagogies emphasize the significance of attending to modes of relating and their effects through praxis? How can ethically-engaged pedagogies do away with destructive individualism and binaristic thinking by emphasizing the inseparability of the ethical and the personal, artistic, and political?

Tina Campt (2020) theorizes “adjacency” as “The reparative work of transforming proximity into accountability; the labor of positioning oneself in relation to another in ways that revalue and redress complex histories of dispossession” (6:00). How can Campt’s notion of adjacency assist ethically-engaged pedagogies to enact productive and reparative modes of being in relation? How can ethically-engaged pedagogies conceptualize modes of relating otherwise— outside and against individualistic, self-serving, and harmful modes of relating?

How can ethically-engaged pedagogies do away with the fatalistic attitude that suggests the ethical role of the street photographer diminishes with a general state of widespread surveillance? How can ethically-engaged pedagogies emphasize the relational dimensions of protest photography by incorporating and building upon Simone Browne’s (2015) notion of a critical biometric consciousness? How can ethically-engaged pedagogies emphasize ethical engagement as the extension of action beyond the moment by developing and enacting infrastructural thinking (Parks & Starosielski, 2015)? How can ethically-engaged pedagogies, in

241 addition to resisting surveillance infrastructures, refuse surveillance conscription by encouraging collective modes of creating spaces and modalities otherwise—outside and against dominant oppressive structures?

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VITA

May Alkharafi ([email protected])

Education

2020 Ph.D., Art Education, The Pennsylvania State University 2013 M.F.A., Imaging Arts, Rochester Institute of Technology 2010 B.F.A., Graphic Design, Kuwait University

Professional Appointments

2014 Workshop Designer and Facilitator Graduate Art Education Association Week The Pennsylvania State University

2012 Course Instructor Introduction to Photography for Non-Photography Majors College of Imaging Arts & Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology

2011 Course Instructor Introduction to Photography for Non-Photography Majors College of Imaging Arts & Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology

2011 Teaching Assistant Photo as Fine Art College of Imaging Arts & Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology

Conferences

Alkharafi, M. (2018). Ethics of Street Photography Beyond Consent: A Theoretical Investigation. Graduate Research in Art Education Conference, New York, NY.

Alkharafi, M. (2016). Boundaries of Intrusion: Google Street View and Indirect Practices of Surveillance. The Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies 23rd Annual International Graduate Conference, Rochester, NY.