Intended Intimacy, Unintended Consequences – Part 1
In one of my Master’s in Multimedia Journalism graduate classes at the University of Miami’s School of Communication, we have recently been discussing the relationship between a documentary photographer and his/her subjects – Is the proper, ethical relationship strictly professional, or can an ethical photographer/subject relationship include or evolve into something that is a more nebulous amalgamation of the professional and the personal – a friendship based on a professional relationship – as a result of the necessarily intimate and confessional nature of the interaction?
In no way do I claim any greater insight on this long standing and complex discussion than the next guy or gal with a camera strung around his/her neck, but having worked as a professional photographer for 25 years and during that time photographed “people in their environments” literally throughout “North America and the entire world,” (that’s 50 countries and 38 states thus far) I have the experience of countless photographer/subject relationships to draw upon as I consider the issue.
One of these relationships came to mind during class last week, and I would like to share it here, along with two edits of the one-minute film that was born of that relationship.
