[Leica] How would you respond?

[Kyle Cassidy On The LUG]

From the "Most outrageous letter to a photographer from a museum ever?" files.

Documentary photographer Chris Arnade (http://www.businessinsider.com/chris-arnade-photos-of-bronx-addicts-2013-12) found out today that one of his photographs is being included (without his consent) in the exhibit ““Altered Images: 150 Years of Posed and Manipulated Documentary Photography” at the Bronx Documentary Center. They let him know by sending him this email which I’m pretty sure is quite possibly the most outrageous unsolicited letter ever sent to an artist from a museum (this all Via Chris Arnade’s tumblr, arnade.tumblr.com) -- how would you react?



Chris

Apologies for the late email, we are putting together a show on short notice and just finalizing the lineup.

On Saturday we will open up our Altered Images exhibition, which examines posed, faked or manipulated documentary photography. A number of people had suggested we include your work of substance abusers and sex workers.  We have reviewed your work.  You qualify on a number of levels and will be included.

You admit to paying your subjects, which violates one of the most closely held tenets of documentary photography. Paying to photograph any person, particularly one dependent upon drugs, and even driving them to buy drugs, as you say you have done, is a clear breach of ethics and standards.

I see that you say claim, in interviews, an exemption from journalistic and documentary standards by saying you are not a journalist.  Yet you publish your photos in the Guardian, one of the world’s most prestigious media outlets.  Ethical guidelines apply.

A key guideline of the National Press Photographers Assn reads: “Treat all subjects with respect and dignity. Give special consideration to vulnerable subjects.”

Your photos of sex workers, some addicted to drugs, some with mental health issues and/or severely emotionally abused, exposing their breasts or bent naked over a bed, are a breach of this standard.  The fact that you also publish these photos on Flickr, to be gawked at by thousands, raises further ethical issues too numerous to address here.

Briefly, people who are paid by you, under the influence of drugs or mentally impaired (and in many cases have little understanding of The Guardian or Flickr), clearly do not have the ability to give informed consent to their photos being used as you have done.

We will include a caption under your photo outlining these ethical breaches.  If you so choose, you can send us up to two paragraphs in response and we will give it equal weight next to our caption.

I’m ccing our lawyer, Don Dunn, in case you have any legal issues you choose to raise.


Sent from my iPhone plz excuse the typoss keyb0ard is reaLly small.