Abusive Photography: Two examples

Double Tagged. Barcelona, 2014

The above image reflects abusive graffiti, and it is everywhere. Just today, I came across two bizarre examples of what I would call “abusive photography”.

The first involves iPads attached to the top of large tortoises–in an art museum, no less! You would think the curator would have better judgment…but then, it was low-rent Aspen, if that explains anything. The idea was that the turtles would wander around their enclosure making videos and still images as they move. Art? Maybe. Debatable, for sure…and why do this at the expense of another creature’s dignity? (Yeah, I think the tortoises deserve their dignity.)

You can read the details in this Denver Post article, Tortoises with iPads spur protest at new Aspen Art Museum.

The other example of abuse involves the homeless. I have never felt like they ought to be photographed unless it might be as part of a specific project with a particular objective, or there might be some other very important overriding factor/situation. They are too easy and cliché a target for the beginning street photographer, thus too easy to objectify…too easy to take advantage of…and given their situation, that doesn’t seem like a morally nice thing to do.

The second case?

Well, it seems that some people, in their honkin’ hubris, have decided to combine pictures of the homeless or the inebriated with yet another one of those 21st century photographic icons–the selfie. So, the final product is an embarassing (nauseating?) contrast between the unfortunate situation of the homeless victim and the smiling face(s) of the narcissistic photographer(s). This quote pretty well nails it: [They] “take the logic of the selfie to a morally vacuous extreme”. (Oh, and the pictures themselves, as images, are just plain bad.)

You can read the details of this second example of abusive photography as well as see some example images in this article from The Atlantic, Selfies with homeless people. If you still haven’t regurgitated your McMuffin after that, you can go directly to the actual Tumblr site for more “inspiration”.