Photography Culture

Street Photographers Taking Pictures of Homeless People is Exploitation

Chris Gampat
No Comments
06/03/2019
4 Mins read
The Blind Can See the Pain Chris Gampat Leica M7 50mm F1.4 Summilux Review (4 of 15)

Last Updated on 10/01/2020 by Chris Gampat

Street photographers who photograph homeless people aren’t doing those people any good in today’s world.

I’ve spoken before about photographing and doing street photography with intent. And I think that when street photographers take photos of homeless people that they’re not doing these people any good. Photographing scenes where these homeless people are the primary focus and surrounded by others more financially fortunate is also not such a great thing to do. While many years ago, this could have told stories when put into the pages of credible publications, today’s world doesn’t lend itself well to this type of photographic intent. Indeed, the world has changed and actions speak louder than words. What often ends up happening is that these photographers self publish by adding images to Instagram or other platforms. These images are then passed by in a feed, double tapped, and moved onto another photo or served an ad. The result is that a person viewing the photos doesn’t want to go help a homeless person in the way that politicians and people used to do.

Many of these street photographers photographing homeless folks state that they’re trying to tell “their stories.” Said stories are often those of hardships. In many ways, this is exploitation. Just to touch the tip of the iceberg, the homeless aren’t in a position to be able to know any better necessarily. Paying them also goes against a number of journalistic ethics. This is also why photojournalism and street photography aren’t the same. When you’re working on telling a specific story, the work becomes documentary or photojournalism in nature. Street photography is otherwise more of an art of random moments that are eye catching. The labels are so important due to, again, intent. Much of content delivered online is voyeurism. Let’s show you an example. There is a big rally going on for women’s rights and you go to photograph it:

  • Why are you photographing it?
  • You get fun out of photographing it, but why not try to help the cause since it’s probably something you support?
  • Do you have an outlet you could license the images to?
  • How is what you’re doing any different than what everyone else is doing?
  • What’s your intent here? Are you going to a rally to talk to people rather than, you know, supporting the cause?
  • Are journalistic ethics keeping you away from supporting their cause?
  • What will your images being posted online do for the cause?
  • Who are the people in your images?
  • Are there habits repeated in the subjects photographed?
  • Will anyone care about the images you make one week from now? What about two weeks from now?
  • How will you keep those images in front of other people as time goes on?
  • How are you most importantly going to fight peoples’ attention when so many cute puppies and kitties are on the web?

The last question is truthfully a serious one.

So let’s bring this back about to homeless people and let’s think about a number of questions photographers should ask themselves when photographing homeless people.

  • Were you assigned to do this for a job?
  • What’s your intent with this image that you’re about to make?
  • What are you going to do to keep the cause in front of someone?
  • What are you doing to ensure that these people end up in a better place?
  • Do you donate to homeless shelters?
  • Do you volunteer your time?
  • When you’re done with a meal at a restaurant and have leftovers, do you find homeless people and give the food to them?
  • Do you plan on adding this image to a part of your portfolio that people should know you by?
  • Why is your image important?
Kodak 400 BW CN

If you can’t answer any of these questions with good intentions, I firmly believe that it is time to put the camera down. One of the biggest problems with so many new people taking up cameras recently is a lack of understanding of ethics and intentions. While I think that it is wonderful that there are so many photographers out there, many of them don’t understand their identities and also don’t know how to go about approaching different situations. Many also don’t think anything about the people that they’re photographing. Want proof of this? Go to a convention like Comic Con and you’ll see just how creepy it is. It’s sickening.

Editor’s Note: These images in this story were made by me when I was first really starting out. Back then, I didn’t know any better. And so this piece is being written from a standpoint of learning through mistakes with INTENT of you becoming better.

assignment documentary exploit intent Photography photojournalism platforms street photographers street photography voyeur
Shares
Written by

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.