But as to the other question. I wonder, would be as concerned as exploiting a non-homeless person that you took a picture of out on the street? Like, if you saw a businessman coming out from lunch and something about the scene caught your eye (he was dressed in an interesting way, had particular look, or just that the scene of these people coming from lunch was somehow compelling) would you be worried about exploiting him (or her)?

It seems as if the exploitation question only arises with the homeless (but paparazzi seem like an obvious other place for exploitation). This makes me at least partially skeptical of the concern. Its a kind of paternalistic fear; the homeless man, besides being homeless (or because he is homeless) is also one who is incapable of either defending or deciding for himself about having his picture taken. Or alternately, the fear is that homelessness, like pornography but unlike photos of non-homeless people, is the kind of thing that people look at which treats the person like an object. But I have trouble imagining someone objectifying homelessness. In fact, it seems as if the very point of that subject matter is to subjectify (is that a word?) homelessness: its not a thing, its something that happens to real, live people with hopes and dreams, wants and desires.

Certainly though I agree with Jas N. If one is taking a picture of homeless people in order to make a name for yourself then you are exploiting them (regardless of how much good your project does them in the long run), which is an obviously deontological position. But you would be exploiting the non-homeless if you did that as well. That is, I am not seeing anything specific to taking pictures of the homeless which would lead to necessary exploitation.

I think the same could even be said of some artists, if they take photos with the intention of exploiting someone’s circumstance or condition or looks or whatever to profit from it…either by actual sales of prints or by notariety or whatever intangible gain…then that is exploiting the subject. But the same photos taken to show the condition or illustrate teh circumstance or even to portray the look without regard to profit, monetary or otherwise, then I think is still art and should be treated as such.

The real problem with art is that sometimes it is hard to judge the actual intent of the artist. Just because the photo depicts a certain subject, does not always imply the true motivation of the photographer. If you know that you do what you do for motives that you are okay with, then I say any subject is fair game.

I would wager that the “rules for grad student photographers” was more of a reaction to the fact that it is for grad students. I imagine that the grad photo series would be littered with photos of homeless people in an attempt to find an easy way to portray emotional weight and interesting subjects, with little or even no thought given to the actual subjects and nothing learned by the student in the process.

Sorry, this turned into a thesis.