Photographs are powerful tools that enlighten, inform and educate. Most of the time photographers take care to make sure their subjects give informed consent. It’s not always simple, as some recent Star photographs have shown.
A March 10 Life piece on young, homeless mothers examined the circumstances that lead to a woman having the awesome responsibility of a new baby but no place to live. The photo showed seven youngsters from a Toronto shelter. It was an engaging but shocking shot, largely because it showed normal, happy-looking babies who were also homeless.
The Star generally does not depict children in a manner that would reflect poorly on them or that might hold them up to ridicule or teasing at school. Exceptions must be reviewed by the managing editor. In this case, the mothers agreed to have their children photographed and none was identified.
But one mother was upset at the tone of the story. She had not been interviewed, but shelter staff had told her the piece was about homeless women with children. What upset her most was the lead paragraph saying: “Nobody loves them.”
“I love my children very much,” she wrote, adding she was a student now temporarily homeless due to a stiff rent hike. She felt she did not fit the profile in the story. But the lead paragraph did not refer to shelter children lacking love. It described how homeless young women, often cut off from their family, may subconsciously seek love by having a baby. Still, the mother said the piece gave the wrong impression.
A March 17 Life story described Ontario students’ annual March break trek to the Florida sunshine. It detailed the partying and experimental escapades with the opposite sex that such a trip away from parental supervision can engender. But it also stated the majority of the students emphasized drinking and partying were not the main activities.
Two Mississauga students were shown dancing on the pool deck. One, Roksana Zapala, shown holding a bottle of mineral water, was upset by this story’s tone. “I’m not like those people they talked about,” she said. “It is bad for my reputation.” Zapala said she agreed to have her picture taken, but had only a general knowledge that it was for a newspaper story on spring break.
On March 31, The Star ran a special section on the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. A story about bikers’ Harleys showed a gas tank with a spectacular air-brushed painting of a demon from a recent motorcycle show. The owner of the bike called to complain the shot implied he was a Hells Angel, when he is not. He said he knew a Toronto Star photographer was at the show, but he never gave permission for the shot. Had he known the context, he would have refused.
There may have been a weak link in the communications chain with these subjects, said photo director Hans Deryk. When such sensitive shots are taken, it is up to everyone in the chain of command; writers, photographers, designers and editors, to make sure they are used in context, he said.
Life editor Lesley Ciarula-Taylor said the paper makes every effort to let subjects know why they are being photographed. But in these cases “it is important to keep in mind that a story and a picture are forever linked in readers’ minds.”
It is interesting that the people who were upset about these photographs were not interviewed or quoted in the accompanying stories. This should send up a red flag through the chain of command to look more closely at the context of the story and photograph when combined.
