Be More Like Gordon Parks
Street photography often involves capturing candid moments of people in public spaces, which raises important ethical questions about appropriation. Some argue that photographing people without their consent can be an act of appropriation, mainly when the subjects come from marginalized communities or when the images are used commercially or artistically without their involvement.
At the same time, street photography has long been valued as a documentary and artistic expression, capturing unfiltered everyday life, culture, and human interactions.
However, the issue is more complex ethically. Without great thought, photographs can unintentionally lack cultural sensitivities and personal dignity. Subjects may be objectified when there is a lack of interaction and/or context.
Street photography can empower marginalized groups in several ways, much like Gordon Parks, who used his camera as a tool for social justice. He stated, "I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapon against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty.” Parks didn’t just capture poverty and racism—he told stories that revealed his subjects' dignity, resilience, and humanity. His approach offers lessons for how to avoid exploitation and amplify voices through photography.
Street photographers should be more mindful in creating ways to empower marginalized groups, such as:
1. Telling Stories, Not Just Taking Photos: Instead of capturing random, disconnected images, photographers should create full narratives that reflect people’s agency and complexity, not just their struggles. Parks’ series on Flávio da Silva, a young boy in a Rio de Janeiro favela, showed hardship and hope, sparking global awareness and direct aid.
2. Building Relationships & Trust: Photographers should engage marginalized groups to help shape the narrative about them.
3. Avoiding the “Exoticism” Trap: Photographers can avoid this trap by providing a broad context to their stories. All people are more than just their struggles and victories. When you create photographs that only focus on the difficulties of different marginalized groups without a narrative, you turn them into objects of curiosity rather than participants in their own stories.
4. Giving Back & Sharing Agency: Photographers can create professional-quality projects of interest by collaborating with unhoused communities instead of just extracting images from them and offering revenue earned through created projects to a community program related to the subjects.
5. Challenging Mainstream Narratives: For example, the perception of the unhoused is incorrect in many ways. They are often viewed as a blight or problem in communities. They are not a problem but a symptom of more significant socioeconomic issues, which create their conditions, such as housing affordability, affordable health care, failure in education, and drug policies. Spending millions on housing the homeless and other marginalized groups is futile without addressing the causes that marginalize them. We should wage war on poverty, not poor people, the unhoused, or those that have been marginalized. Ethical street photography can counter this by highlighting strength, resiliency, beauty, humor, and normalcy, not just hardship.
Street photographers have power. If used thoughtfully, it can challenge oppression, preserve history, and elevate voices—but without care, it can easily fall into exploitation. I recognize that I sometimes unintentionally exploited the unhoused in the past by focusing only on images without stories. Ironically, I hear the most amazing stories of resilience working as a case manager in a housing program for the unhoused. Clients are making amazing journeys, moving from living on the streets in tents in extreme poverty, often with significant drug addiction, to fighting for sober living and returning to housing and employment.
An honest analysis of my intent in photographing the unhoused reveals that I was naive, uneducated, and somewhat lazy. Using photographic talent, it is easy to create powerful images of marginalized groups. However, good photos are not enough. They need narrative and context, which I never developed. I have shelved my collection of unhoused photographs until I can add an appropriate narrative to support my images and offer a better understanding of unhoused culture. Simply put, I need to be more like Gordon Parks.
