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 ..................................................................