Looking Back : Ethics and Aesthetics of Non-Professional Photography

• This chapter explores, from several historical and cultural perspectives, the changing relationship between professional journalism and its amateur alternatives, i.e. images from private cameras.  Drawing on historical examples and various journalistic genres, I examine how the border between professional and non-professional photography in the press has been continually challenged and redrawn, and discuss the ethical dilemmas that arise in this uneasy borderland. Journalism’s ambivalence over using pictures from outside its professional domain has a long history, which I trace here, focusing particularly on the aesthetic and documentary character and appeal of the private photograph, and what happens when this appeal coincides with the interests of news.  I look at some of the routines and strategies that journalism has used to pull in these “outsider” images, explaining or “taming” them to fit within the news frame.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Kommunikationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Communication Studies (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

photography

family photographs

tabloid press

ethics

Aesthetics

estetik

journalistik

Journalism

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kap (ämneskategori)