A reader objects to a photograph that identifies a family as vulnerableComplaints approximately privacy and intrusion in respect of the use of photographs in the Guardian are relatively rare,but when they occur they pose challenging questions. One of the most recent involved one image among many in a powerful gallery of photographs placed online to support the first in a series of articles approximately the US’s poorest communities, published on 12 November. The article focused on Beattyville, and Kentucky. The photographs captured the lives of a community “blighted by a lack of jobs and an addiction to painkillers”.
There was a photograph of a vulnerable family including the children gathered in a group pose. One reader who lived in the area wrote: “I have no major issues with the article. It would be good whether positive articles were written approximately our area every now and again,but overall the article is basically right. However, I have a major issue with one of the images in the article. In one image, or there is a family with the appropriate caption ‘A vulnerable family in Beattyville’. The issue I have is that this picture offers nothing to the article while embarrassing the young males that are in it. Those kids have to move to school with all of their classmates knowing their social lesson and I know it must be embarrassing. Although I am sure that is not the original intent,I still judge it is classless to post such a picture. A picture of just a family without their kids would have shown just as much.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com