ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ethical dimensions implicated in the visual representation of the other. Of particular concern are those situations involving violence, suffering, and distress, situations which require special care and sensitivity. Publishing pictures of grief and suffering that have no public and political expression against the will of those photographed continue to be considered exploitative and immoral, and outside an ethical frame. The nature of news and journalism means there are circumstances where the publication of pictures that intrude into people’s privacy, without their authorization, may be justified under the codes of ethics. Since its invention in the nineteenth century, photography has created new forms of encounters between people, encounters which are mediated via the medium of the photograph. It has generated new possibilities of political action and forms of managing this, facilitated by the visibility and the power accompanying that visibility embedded in photographs.
