Vihaan Talya Vikas, a remarkable 10-year-old from Bengaluru, has made headlines by clinching the top prize in his category at the renowned Wildlife Photographer of the Year (WPY) competition, held in the heart of London. This prestigious competition, organized by the Natural History Museum, is often referred to as the ‘Oscars of Photography’ and serves as a global platform for showcasing the world’s most exceptional wildlife photography.
Vihaan’s winning photograph captures a spider in an intriguing position with a sculpture of Lord Krishna, nestled on the outskirts of his city. The image is not only striking but also thought-provoking. It wonderfully captures the spider, seemingly entranced by the divine notes of Krishna’s flute. This captivating image stood out among the 50,000 entries from 95 countries, ultimately earning Vihaan the coveted award in the under-10 category.
Vihaan’s winning entry will become part of the prestigious WPY59 collection and be prominently featured in the upcoming Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition at the Natural History Museum. This exhibition will embark on a global tour, visiting 25 venues across four continents, with the primary aim of raising awareness about the critical need for wildlife conservation.

As mentioned on the Natural History Museum website, Dhritiman Mukherjee, Wildlife and Conservation Photographer and Competition Judge, commented that “this image conveys so many interesting things to me. What I like most is the thought process behind it and the composition of the image. It talks about coexistence very nicely. The inclusion of a historic sculpture adds a different dimension to the concept. Then here we are, seeing a spider – a smaller and less attended life form. So, for me, this one served the purpose of art, concept, conservation and science very nicely.”

According to sources, Vihaan’s journey for this award began during a visit to a temple near Bangalore, where he chanced upon an ornamental tree trunk spider in the midst of trapping its prey. This awe-inspiring moment unfolded against a wall adorned with a sculpture of Lord Krishna, evoking a sense of connection between nature and spirituality.

Further, “Ten-year-old Vihaan started photography three years ago. He likes to use both macro and telephoto lenses in his work. Vihaan enjoys going on safari as well as capturing images of spiders and insects at the nearby parks in Bengaluru. Alongside photography, he’s also interested in studying astronomy”, Natural History Museum website wrote.

About the competition

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year is an annual global wildlife photography competition held at the Natural History Museum in London, England. This event features an exhibition showcasing the winning and commended photographs, which subsequently embarks on a worldwide tour.
The competition allows photographers to submit a maximum of 25 images each year. These submissions can span a spectrum of subjects, from close-up animal portraits to captivating landscapes, groundbreaking photojournalism to innovative photographic techniques.
Since 2003, the competition has introduced a grand prize awarded to a single image selected from the winning entries across various categories. In both the adult and young photographer divisions, the grand prize goes to the photographer producing the most exceptional image. The young photographer, aged 17 and under, achieving this honor is bestowed with the title “The Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year,” while the photographer over 17 years of age, creating the best image, earns the prestigious title of “The Wildlife Photographer of the Year.”

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I would love to hear how you got started with photography and what your experience has been like.

I was the friend that always had the camera growing up, and really, just didn’t think anything about it. Whether it was a disposable, a point-and-shoot, or a film camera, that’s where it all started. I took a class in high school, and I took a photography elective in college, but that was as far as I went when it came to learning photography. I went to a school for finance in New York and started my adult career life in that industry. Then, the recession hit, and that’s when I really noticed how I desired to use my time.

I was in Harlem and had this camera, and I kept getting a lot of nudges from people like, “Oh, what happened to your photography?” I took that as a little clue to remember that it was something that I enjoyed. But I had a film camera, and without a job, I didn’t want to spend a ton of money having to buy film. Eventually, I got two cameras, one from my boyfriend at the time, and another from my parents for Christmas. So, I decided to take the more advanced camera, and return the other one, and just started to reteach myself photography—mainly by taking street photography and portraits of friends.

I would take free classes wherever. Then, I got a few internships, which were good for learning different processes. But I was very nervous—going from finance to photography—and especially how it happened being laid off. It felt like I just had no other option, so I was insecure about doing so well and making money. I didn’t know many other women photographers, or Black photographers who were doing well and weren’t starving artists. Not seeing that and not having those expanders didn’t help with my confidence. I never really thought about it as a profession. It was just like a dream.

Eventually, I moved back to Maryland with my family, and my brother convinced me to enter into an emerging artist call for Artscape in Baltimore. I only had a few days to apply, and I prayed and said to myself, “If I get this, then I’ll take myself seriously.” I was chosen as the photographer, which gave me the opportunity to print and sell my work and get a mentorship. So, that’s what took me down the road of being a professional photographer.

Erin Douglas, Black Burner Project

It’s crazy that something as unfortunate and annoying as getting laid off is what propelled you into doing photography more consistently. That’s very cool and inspiring. I recently got laid off, too, and I live in Harlem as well, so I know the feeling. Was that period like when you’d recently been laid off while living in New York, and were spending your free time rediscovering your love for photography?

I learned to love being more of the fly— well, the butterfly, I used to say—on the wall. I wasn’t rushing, so I started seeing things that I wouldn’t normally see, down the same streets that I had walked a million times. I noticed the details of the things people wore, and how they all went together. And I remember just being like, “Man, there’s so many moments happening at the same time, that are worthy of capturing, and nobody is noticing except for me, and a few other people who may be people watching, or doing the same thing as me.” That was a cool time, but it didn’t feel cool. It just felt a little bit overwhelming, a little unnerving. But I felt really inspired by what I was seeing, so I was combatting those two feelings.

New York is full of so much magic, but not a lot of people have the luxury of time to experience it. It’s cool that you had the ability to slow down, and really take in everything that was going on. That’s the cool thing about photography. It forces you to slow down, and really consider the beauty around you. How did you eventually gain the confidence that you have now, the ability to walk somewhere, and take photos?

It took a long time. I still get nervous sometimes, depending on what space I’m walking into, but I think it’s all mainly internal. I probably get more nervous around directing people. I think travel had a lot to do with that, specifically when I started to travel solo because I had to be intentional about creating the experience that I wanted. [When you travel alone], you create the energy, so I had to realize, “Oh, in order for me to meet new people, I had to either approach them or create an inviting energy.” Traveling really helped me learn how to approach people, start conversations with them, and ask if I can document the moment. I think that had a huge impact on my confidence.

Erin Douglas, Black Burner Project

How did you eventually get involved with Burning Man?

That was several years later. I have a friend who is still in New York, and she started going to Burning Man, which I hadn’t heard about prior. And she would always say I should go, but she didn’t really give much detail about it. I knew very little and wasn’t interested enough to research it, or anything. But eventually, she gifted me a ticket for my birthday.

I was excited to go, but I was also nervous, because just the little bit that I knew, I was just like, “Am I going to really vibe with it?” And I knew there was probably not going to be that many Black or brown people, and I’d never camped before. So it was just a ton of different things. Even as a solo traveler who’d been around the world, I was nervous. So, that was my entry into Burning Man.

At the festival, there’s a lot going on, but it’s still intimate, and very caring out there. The first year I went, I brought my camera, but I was nervous about taking photos. I didn’t want to invade people’s personal space and experiences. It took me a few days before I took out my camera and started taking photos. The sunrise is a really magical moment out there. The first time I saw it, I forgot my camera, and my phone died, but I recognized I was supposed to just be very present in that, and experience it for myself, which then, allowed me to realize how magical it was. The next few days, I started taking photos of people watching the sunrise. Afterward, I’d approach them and tell them that I had taken a photo, and give them a little piece of paper with my info. I figured that they were going to lose it, but pretty much every person contacted me later.

Ok, wow.

That was really cool and made me more comfortable going up to people at Burning Man. And then when I posted the photos on my Instagram, I think, because I was a woman of color, people saw that I was there, and I was someone that they could ask questions, and say, “What is that? What is this place?” Or, “I wanted to go but didn’t have never seen any proof that [Black people] were really out there. So I didn’t think we were invited. I didn’t think we were welcome.” That’s what led to me think about the idea of going back a second year, with the intention of focusing on documenting people of color.

Something that really stands out to me about your story and your evolution from when you were in high school to now is just how much you continually put yourself out there, embrace the unknown and the uncertainty, just for the love of photography, and because of your curiosity. What that experience was like the second time around?

It was amazing because I really felt myself stepping into my purpose. I had such great responses to people who I stopped to photograph, which led me to come up with the idea for the group photo, which was a really magical experience as well. So yeah, it was great in a lot of different ways, both personally, and in terms of the experience itself and evolving as a person, an artist, a photographer.

And have you gone since then?

So, I went back in 2019. That was a third year going and my second year doing the Black Burner project, and it basically blew up that year, because I did a lot of work in the in-between: being a resource, posting information, and putting a lot of time and effort towards creating a community, that Burning Man wasn’t creating in terms of inclusion for people of color and just recognizing the importance of seeing yourself, and how something so simple can make an impact. If you’re not being affected by it, you’re not thinking that way. And that was having a huge impact on people’s decision to go, or not. The visuals and the stories that were out there weren’t really depicting what Burning Man was really about. We were small in numbers, but we still were there. Nobody was really focused on making sure they were including that, so that is what my work is focused on.

When Sarah Waiswa returned to Kenya in 2010 after nearly a decade abroad, she was struck by how much had changed for women. More women were expressing their views and talking about their experiences. A number were redefining what an “African identity” meant to them.

The narrow expectations of women across society were being questioned.

After so many years in the United States, Ugandan-born Waiswa says she took up photography as a way to reconnect with this changed continent. She had always loved photographs, pouring through family albums for hours, intrigued by changes in her family, their style and times. She was working in the corporate world, but as her pictures gained interest, what started as a hobby morphed into a career.

“The internet democratised photography – it made it easier for people to self-publish and this helped shift the narrative, because people are able to tell stories about themselves and their communities,” says Waiswa.

Using visual contrasts for social commentary is a feature of her work. In her photo series on albinism, she uses dreamlike images to illustrate the persecution and exclusion people face, while her photographs of ballet in Kibera shows dancers from the Nairobi slum practising an art commonly associated with privilege and wealth.

She brings this technique to a new exhibition she has curated for the Goethe Institute in Nairobi.

Modern east African women are juxtaposed with images from colonial times, to document change over the past few decades. The exhibition also features visual works by 12 female photographers from Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Rwanda.

Using portraiture and documentary photojournalism, the images depict African womanhood through themes of identity, empowerment and fragility, and the modern versus traditional.

The photos highlight how viewpoints affect storytelling. Old images taken by white, mainly male photographers offer a glimpse into the prevailing colonial attitudes and stereotypes of women at the time. Archival photos, for instance, include images of topless women in loincloths.

“It’s as if they were being photographed to be categorised, to be catalogued,” says Waiswa. “The images were used for ethnic and anthropological studies, to maintain racial hierarchies and justify the colonial presence by painting the idea that Africans were primitive and helpless.”

Some images show women in training centres, acquiring skills that aligned with colonial goals of “modernising” and “civilising” locals, while later photos show accomplishments, such as Agatha Mboje, the first Kenyan woman to get a university degree, in the 1950s, and Lydia Anukowa, the first Kenyan woman to train as an air hostess, in 1962.

The recent works aim to centre and depict women’s agency and identity, and their ongoing struggles.

Kenyan photographer Thandiwe Muriu uses hairstyles and colourful fabrics that make women simultaneously blend into and stand out of the image to highlight womanhood and culture.

Photographer Fadumo Mohamoud Ali shows women in moments of ease and abandon in their everyday lives – rare images in prevailing media coverage of Somalia.

Kenyan photographer Mumbi Muturi illustrates the weight of her grief as she mourned her mother with soft and vulnerable imagery that challenges common, linear equivalences of black womanhood with relentless strength.

Works by the Tanzanian photographer Neema Ngelime pay visual tribute to women’s paid and unpaid labour, while Ugandan non-binary artist DeLovie Kwagala uses documentary photography to show the transgender experience through family relationships.

The exhibition, titled Sisi ni Hao – which in Swahili means both “we are them” and “we are here” – gives a collective nod to women’s shared history. “If you can’t see [those images], you can’t engage with that history,” says Waiswa.

Colonial images of Africans have been relegated to the archives due to a sense that they are either unrelatable or inaccessible, says Waiswa. However, the impact of photographic history on public perceptions still need to be reckoned with.

Racial hierarchies are still evident in coverage of Africa, she says. Media outlets still display dead black or brown bodies during coverage of war or terrorism, but rarely white ones, for instance, a subject of criticism in recent years.

“Things have changed … but you’re fighting against a system that began in an oppressive and violent way and changing that takes time,” she says.

When she took up a camera in 2015, there were few or no centralised databases for African female photographers. In 2021, Waiswa created African Women in Photography to publish and exhibit their work, provide them with a space to engage and collaborate, and to connect with training and funding opportunities.

Waiswa would like to eventually open a resource centre.

“When other people have told your stories for so long and represented you in a certain way, it’s even more important for us to give our own perspectives – a more nuanced view of what women’s lives and experiences are like on the continent,” she says. “We need to reclaim the narrative.”

Sisi ni Hao runs until 10 November at Goethe-Institut, Nairobi

Specialty

The preeminent Victorian portrait photographer Julia Margaret Cameron wrote that, when photographing important subjects, ‘my whole soul has endeavoured to do its duty towards them in recording the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer [subject].’ Consider this portrait of Cameron’s niece, Julia Jackson (many of Cameron’s most interesting portraits were of women). It is a powerful and distinctive image. Suppose you were asked to explain what makes it such. Having just read what Cameron said she was trying to achieve with her portraits, you might be tempted to say something along the lines of: ‘it captures the essence of the person being photographed.’ This is, in any case, the sort of thing one tends to hear said of good portrait photographs. Of course, a few qualifications might also be added, to head off criticisms: ‘I mean, it likely captures, at a particular moment, something significant of the essence of the person being photographed.’ Perhaps it will immediately be admitted that it is difficult to know whether or not this photograph does really capture something significant of Jackson’s essence, given that no one now alive knows what she was like.

What should we make of the tendency to describe portrait photographs as capturing something of the essence of a person, at a certain moment? I would suggest that despite this great photographer’s endorsement of something like this thought, we should be wary of it. It can be misleading as a standard for describing good portraits, and it can be stultifying when it is treated as an ideal to be aimed at by portraitists. There are many different ways that portraits, or photographs of people more generally, can be aesthetically appealing and valuable, and the tendency to gravitate towards this ideal should generally be resisted, tempting as it may be. It should be resisted on both artistic and philosophical grounds. Let’s start by unpacking the qualified claim itself.

To begin with one of the qualifications, there is the idea of capturing a person at a moment in time. In fact, early photographs, such as the one of Jackson above, typically had long exposure times. Sitters would need to put significant effort into staying very still, and even small movements could leave traces in the final photograph. Cameron actually thought of the softness produced in her portraits by movement blur, as well as by imprecise focusing, as a positive feature of them. Even after it becomes possible to use much faster shutter speeds, it remains the case to this day that light events are still recorded by cameras during a period of time, rather than at a moment in time.

When we consider that it’s now common to take photographs at a shutter speed of one-100th of a second or faster, it’s easy to think of this as being more like taking a photograph at an exact moment in time, but the movement blur that can appear in photographs taken even at speeds as high as one-100th of a second puts the lie to this thought. Recordings of movement in photographs do not straightforwardly correspond to anything in normal human vision, and the possibility of using a long exposure time is still often treated as a creative option, with very different outcomes depending on whether we are talking about a ‘long’ exposure of one-fourth of a second – as in this photograph I took recently of pedestrians in Boston, as I waved my camera just so – or leaving the shutter open for seconds or minutes (the latter is common when it comes to landscape photography, where choppy water may appear smooth, for instance).

The creative use of shutter speeds is related to a second problem with the common thought that we are analysing. Photographs ‘capture’ scenes only in a highly attenuated sense. We do not see the world in the way we see scenes in photographs. Skilled photographers exercise a significant degree of control over the content and production of photographs in a large number of ways, both before the shutter closes and afterwards. In a great many cases, especially when particular prints are even just informally ‘certified’ by the photographer, it is best to follow Ansel Adams’s thought that photographers make photographs, rather than merely take them.

So much for a naive way of thinking about what it means to ‘capture’ a scene or a person. We are still left with the idea that people have an essence that images can depict in a truthful fashion (this is sometimes thought of as an ideal with respect to portrait paintings, and not just portrait photographs, it might be noted). Do people have individual essences, and are they such that significant aspects of them might be revealed in depictions of their physical countenances? As a philosophy professor, I’m tempted to start picking apart the idea of an essence of this kind, but that would (sadly) be beside the point in the present context.

It’s uncontroversial to say that individual people have particular physiological and psychological characteristics that they and others find significant, and it isn’t problematic to say that photographs can in some ways contain features that line up with some such features. This may be all that people have in mind when they think of photographs as capturing the essence of people. You may have a friend who is typically a happy and relaxed person, with a distinctive smile, and you take a photograph of her at a moment when she is looking happy and relaxed in a particular way that she tends to. Of course, it isn’t guaranteed that she will look happy and relaxed in the photograph (the muscles in our faces are constantly moving, so you may get unlucky using a fast shutter speed and be surprised to find that she appears to be worried), but if she does you might say you have captured something of her generally happy and relaxed nature. When successful in this way, photographs that present us with a typical pose for a particular person may, for people who know them at least, come to function as a synecdoche for their character. Portraitists who follow this approach need to know a fair amount about their subjects’ characters. But what about when we know very little about the subjects of a photograph?

Consider two street photographs of people that I know are ‘candid’ or unposed because I happen to have taken/made them. The banner image at the top of this page shows a man appearing to suddenly come to a halt (close to an easy-to-miss reflection of the photographer, as it happens), in a manner that suggests he has temporarily forgotten what activity he was in the midst of doing, or what he is meant to do next. Interpreting the image immediately above, one might think it is of a tired man with his legs up (a sock just showing on one side) in the midst of thinking about something, while his loved one rests on his back. Knowing they are candid, one might wonder whether the descriptions I just provided of these photographs line up with the reality before the camera at the time. In the second case, I suspect (but do not know) the description I just provided is accurate in this sense, but in the first case I have no idea whether or not it is, even though I took the photograph. It’s quite possible that this man was doing something completely unrelated to my interpretation. As for the essence or character of these subjects, and whether the poses in question are typical or untypical of them, we remain in the dark.

Does it really matter, when appreciating photographs as artworks, whether or not we know that an interpretation of people in the photograph that we favour lines up with reality (on the basis of an independent source of evidence)? In a great many cases, it does not. Street photography, which one might take to include candid street portraits, is one whole genre where it usually doesn’t matter. One might go further and say that part of what we enjoy when viewing many photographs, in this genre but also others, is that we are aware that our interpretation of the photograph we are looking at is one that we can only ever say may line up with reality. Ignorance of this specific kind can be aesthetically enjoyable. This type of tantalising ignorance will be lacking in our experience of a purely AI-generated image that we know to be such, even if it presents to us a scene featuring people in a way that means we might easily confuse it with a photograph. Consideration of such digital images, whose creation didn’t depend on particular light events in the right way, can help us understand what is distinctive of photographs, even on a fairly permissive ‘new theory of photography’ that would classify some hard-to-categorise images, such as Gerhard Richter’s ‘Betty’ (1988), as photographs.

A different way in which literal truthfulness is sometimes clearly not a dominant concern comes to the fore when we consider photographs that purposefully present to us a fictional narrative, albeit a much more fragmentary and indeterminate narrative than a typical fictional movie or novel would. Fictional narrative structures can also be made less fragmentary than they otherwise would be when photographs exist as part of a curated series, and this is one of a number of reasons why it can be an error to focus too much on attempting to appreciate or analyse single photographs in isolation from the series they were made to fit into. Various projects of Cindy Sherman, Duane Michals, Alec Soth and Zanele Muholi – to name just a few important contemporary photographers who have focused on creating narrative portraits in a series – all bear this out. It is also important not to forget that the purposeful use of fictional narrative elements in photographs has a long history: many of Cameron’s photographs, for instance, were staged to represent mythical or biblical scenes. Despite this element of continuity with tradition, the best of Sherman’s self-portraits are novel and strike us as richer in subtle, often ambivalent, narrative details.

The problem as I see it isn’t that photographs don’t have veridical features (features isomorphic to features of the world in front of the lens when the photograph was taken), to a lesser or greater extent. It would be a mistake to deny that they do, or indeed that part of what is involved in appreciating photographs involves knowing this. Rather, the problem is that there is a tendency to overvalue or even fetishise veridicality when we move from contexts where the evidential status of photographs rightly matters to us more than anything else – the courtroom, the newspaper and the historical archive – to contexts where the aesthetic features of photographs are what we are being asked to consider most significant. When photographs are art, whether of the amateur or professional kind, there are a range of aesthetic standards that it may or may not be appropriate to apply in any specific case (genre classifications, as well as more specific information about particular artistic projects, help us), and many of these are not concerned with presenting the world to the viewer in a veridical fashion.

Some readers will no doubt think they would never have been tempted to use anything like that phrase I started with to describe good portrait photographs – they might avoid speaking of capturing the essence of people. I’m not claiming that only people who do use that sort of phrase make the mistake I have in mind. It’s perhaps more common among critics to complain of certain artistic photographs of people that they simply don’t look like the person who was photographed. Richard Avedon and Diane Arbus, for instance, have attracted this kind of criticism. The philosopher and art critic Arthur Danto complains, in a much-read paper on photography titled ‘The Naked Truth’ (1998), that Avedon’s photograph of Isaiah Berlin taken in 1993 (not one of Avedon’s better photographs, one might independently think) doesn’t look like Isaiah Berlin himself, due to the specific techniques that Avedon adopted for taking portrait photographs. We are told that Avedon is guilty of deception because of the ‘natural authority’ people now and in a hundred years hence will attach to photographs, thinking ‘photographs never lie’. This is very odd, given that Danto himself makes much of the fact that photographs can be non-veridical in a number of respects.

Instead of accusing artistic photographers of deception, why not call for better education when it comes to understanding that artistic photographs are often going to be non-veridical in important respects? And, regardless of whether such education is available to people, why should we hold any art (or, indeed, a whole artform) hostage to public misconceptions? These are not questions Danto considers in his essay. We don’t think it’s a valid aesthetic criticism of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings, for instance, that even well-educated people were inclined to misunderstand what he was doing around the time he painted them, and it seems irrelevant that many may still do so; rather than suggest that Van Gogh should have instead employed different techniques, we might say that people should instead do a better job of trying to understand and appreciate his paintings. As for Avedon’s photography, a fairer assessment of it would need to include more and better examples.

Danto’s talk of how in a hundred years hence we will still think of photographs with the same misconceptions as we did in the 1990s (when his article was published) appears quite incautious now that we worry a good deal about the political use of deep fakes and wonder how we might be able to tell the difference between photographs and AI-generated images. For all the issues that we now rightly worry about, we might hope that a silver lining of living in the age of AI-generated images and various digital computing effects on smartphones (eg, filters, fake bokeh and the automatic combining of multiple exposures) may be a significant and widespread diminishing of naivety when it comes to taking photographs at face value.

No portrait photographer has attracted misconceptions and divided critics as much as Arbus (and many find her work more interesting than Avedon’s). I obviously cannot hope to do justice here to either her work or the historical debate concerning its nature and value. Suffice to say, I agree with those admirers (among them the philosopher David Davies) who contend that, far from objectifying her subjects or aiming to have us view them as freakish or pitiful, Arbus produced a highly distinctive body of work that attests to the humanity of her subjects. Arbus’s empathetic approach is concerned with how human beings present themselves to others – their projections, rather than their essence – yet is stylistically all her own. If portrait photography simply invited us to look at people, there would be little room for recognising the distinctive stylistic virtues of Arbus’s work.

The documentary aspect of photography is even more to the fore in Nan Goldin’s work, yet here too we see a particular ethical and artistic vision at work (one that is quite different from Arbus’s), as is made clear in Laura Poitras’s wonderful documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022). Early in her career, Goldin would invite her friends and acquaintances to events in New York where she would present slideshows of photographs that she had taken of them, attuning herself to their feedback, and even allowing them to destroy photographs of themselves that they did not like. It appears she viewed her work at that time as providing a space in which her photographic subjects, often queer, could experiment with ways of representing themselves to each other, and to an often-hostile world; combatting hatred and bigoted stereotyping from mainstream America, and building solidarity. This early policy of allowing others to influence the curation of her photographs can be contrasted with her later more than justifiable decision to publish photographs of herself as a victim of partner abuse, and of her abuser, against his wishes.

The focus on co-creation between subject and photographer that one sometimes finds in Goldin’s work makes for an attractive way of approaching the making of photographs of people. She doesn’t mention Goldin, but in her essay ‘Respecting Photographic Subjects’ (2019), the philosopher Macalester Bell, influenced by Danto, claims: ‘Ideally, an artist who respects his subjects, qua artistic subjects, will collaborate with them in creating the final image.’ I think that this is too strong. We might instead take the collaborative ideal that Danto and Bell valorise, attractive and productive as it is to some photographers, to be just one among a number of legitimate artistic ideals with respect to making great photographs of people.

One might be tempted to suggest Goldin’s work provides an example of how our selves can be constructed in a narrative fashion through portraits, but the philosopher Cynthia Freeland argues convincingly in Portraits and Persons (2010) that this is more than any series of portraits can ever hope to provide. Still, we need not deny that some of the portrait photographs produced by Goldin (or by Dawoud Bey, to mention a different example) succeed in promoting empowering representations of particular marginalised people and their communities.

When it comes to moral judgments of photographic artworks or the artists that produce them, there are many types of concerns we might have. It’s far from clear that collaboration between photographers and subjects is crucial. I cannot here discuss many of the moral issues that arise with respect to photography, but one particularly relevant issue has to do with our individual preferences that other people represent us in various ways and not others. Danto suggests that a photograph of a person ought to respect their own self-conception and will otherwise count as morally disrespectful. I agree with Bell that Danto’s idea can’t be right (although I also disagree with Bell’s own variation on it). Of course, we all wish to have ourselves represented to the world in some ways and not others, but the moral issues here are rather complex.

For a start, our own representations of ourselves are often inaccurate, and either overly positive or overly negative. Being offered interpretations of ourselves by others can help us better understand who we are, and help us be more modest about our powers and rights to shape how others view us, as individuals (following Bell, I am here referring to individual characteristics, such as messy hair or lopsided grins, rather than characteristics that are selected or highlighted to reinforce stereotypes).

I certainly do not wish to deny that it’s possible for photographs to be morally disrespectful. Clearly they can be, and sometimes are. But I think the problem with morally disrespectful photos is not usually best explained by pointing out that they fail to align with individual self-conceptions, and the creation of fictional narratives or art that is not veridical in this respect is not ipso facto disrespectful. I can’t here hope to provide a full account of what can make photographs disrespectful, but let me end by gesturing at a couple of things I take to be crucial in many cases. First, photographs can provide or reinforce harmful stereotypes with respect to particular groups of people that are oppressed or considered foreign or ‘other’ to an audience. Second, photographs can be dehumanising even independently of how they might rely on or reinforce stereotypes. Photographs of people who are suffering or are dead can be of this kind, no matter what social categories the photographic subjects belong to, although not all photographs that feature suffering or death are dehumanising.

One way to understand what is involved with dehumanising photographs is to adopt a Kantian view according to which what is essential to our humanity, and what is denied in cases of dehumanisation, is our rational agency – our capacity to autonomously and intelligently set goals for ourselves as individuals and pursue them in a rational fashion. Danto’s suggestion that respect involves having control over how one’s self-conception is represented by others can be thought of as one version of this view.

An alternative perspective, which I favour, would have us focus instead on a multitude of significant, rich features that human lives typically possess, from the enjoyment of simple pleasures and the avoidance of pain, to activities that involve learning about aspects of the world or practical achievements, to engagement in loving relationships (both familial and romantic), to participation in a variety of cultural rituals, including engagement with art (either ‘low’ or ‘high’). One significant aspect of our humanity is our rational agency, of course, but it may be a mistake to make this alone the centrepiece of ethics. Dehumanisation can take many forms, depending on what aspects of a person’s humanity are being denied or obscured. The idea that a paucity of stories can be dehumanising, given people’s many aspects, is proposed and defended by the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her TED talk ‘The Danger of a Single Story’ (2009).

If we return to the idea we started with, that photographs of people might capture their essence, we can now add that a key reason this idea is so problematic is because no individual can be captured in a single story, whether it is provided by a photograph or in some other way. In many cases, the fact that people cannot be easily or adequately captured in stories does not undermine the artistic value of particular photographs, but we should endeavour to keep in mind this fact concerning stories and not succumb to a very human tendency to forget it.

Where words fall short, art rises. 

Words often form the foundation for necessary change-making: letters to representatives, petitions, slogans, calls to action. But sometimes, we need more than words to express our hunger for change — that’s when we turn to art, music, movement, and other creative mediums to call for unity and amplify one powerful message to leaders and decision-makers everywhere that can’t be ignored.

That’s where Global Citizen’s Young Artists Collective program comes in. Designed to be a showcase of artworks that coincide with Global Citizen-hosted events, the program calls upon young artists to showcase their abilities, while also using their talents to emphasize the need for urgent change. Each presentation is based on a specific theme; a question that the artists can answer by way of their art.

Earlier in 2023 for instance, coinciding with the Global Citizen NOW summit, young artists in the New York tri-state area were invited to submit their interpretations of the correlation between climate change and extreme poverty. 

At this year’s Global Citizen Festival in New York City’s Central Park, a new topic was chosen, and new artists were called on to use their skills to illustrate a cause. 

These are the 12 artists who took the theme: “Equity & Its Effects on Today’s World”, and showed the world just what that looks like to them, through art. 

Tara Bryan

A young visual artist whose work for this topic was inspired by her grandmother’s living room, Tara Bryan took us into her lens to show a sense of familiarity through formal and conceptual portraiture.

“This project celebrates contemporary Black women who have been actively combating inequity in their related fields,” she said of the black and white photographs. “The culmination of the series is a reimagined self portrait of Gordon Parks’ American Gothic. American Gothic has remained a symbol of the strength and resilience of Black women.”

She added: “I wanted this series to demonstrate the importance of community, starting with those who came before me, and ending with myself.”

Ali Motamedi

Ali Motamedi focuses  across three professional disciplines: art, engineering, and education — and he uses his understanding and skills in all three areas to inform  his photography. 

He called the collection “They Are Watching Us,” an ominous yet provoking  title that conveys the depth of his pieces. He explained that his project for the Young Artists Collective works to unveil “the pervasive influence of advertising and commercialization on our lives.”

“Through striking imagery, it exposes the unequal impact of consumerism, cultural representation, privacy intrusion, and community dynamics,” he told us. “This series provides a vivid lens to examine how these factors shape and disrupt equity in our modern world.” 

Sophia Strange

The gender pay gap is the main focus of the work that Sophia Strange provided for the Young Artists Collective. Her pieces  focus on the statistic, provided by the World Economic Forum, that it’ll still take 131 years to close the disparity between men and women’s earnings. 

“This work includes and involves women of all professions, backgrounds, and walks of life,” they told us. “The number ‘131’ is present in each photo to communicate the fact that regardless of the individual woman’s life, the gender wage gap is always there — perhaps not in the foreground, but present nevertheless; a testament to the persistence of this inequity and our ever-present need to make positive change.” 

Deni Espinoza

Deni Espinoza uses their camera lens to capture the truths and lived experiences of marginalized communities. The images give a balanced look at resilience when faced with inequity, and moments of serenity and joy despite adversity. 

“The photos I’ve selected have deep meaning to me as they capture how I experience the current state of the world,” Espinoza explained. “I have watched women’s legal rights decline, income inequality skyrocket, education be censored, and much more in the 23 years of my existence. Through activism and hardship, there is resilience and rejoicing. Each photo represents an issue that I am passionate about or a sentimental moment that brought me joy.” 

Stevia Ndoe

“My momma sowed the seeds to my perennial garden,” is the name of multidisciplinary artist and photographer Stevia Ndoe’s submission, and it explores the significance of generational access and mobility. 

“Equity to me is having the resources, knowledge, emotional and physical capacity that can be passed onto the next generation so that they can dream expansively and understand their beauty, importance, and infinite abundance,” they told us. 

They continued: “The series represents portraits of the women in my life who have given me the tools — whether through information, love and care, or encouragement — and giving them their flowers, as well as self-portraits that portray my journey to adulthood.” 

Leo Sano

Leo Sano’s response to the topic of equity reminds the viewer to open their eyes, look up, and bear witness to the realities of the world around us — and understand that an answer to it exists among us. 

“These photos are not trying to create an idea of equity but rather demonstrate where the concept is at present,” said Sano. “Maybe it is between two family members riding a bike, or graffiti encircling construction sites. Questions of fairness, impartialness, and equity always come into view.” 

“If we can all pay a little more attention to the world around us, I trust that we will get closer to a place with liberty and justice for all,” he said.

Blanche Lin

“Living in an Asian American household, I believe that sons have it easier than daughters,” said Statistics and Quantitative Modeling student Blanche Lin of her submission. “It’s harder to please the older generation if you are a girl.” 

Sharing more detail on her work, she noted: “In one picture, you can see a boy, my little brother, walking on a path with flowers and butterflies, but in another picture, a girl, my little sister, is seen walking a darker and woodier path, both leading to the light.” 

Through these images, she worked to shed light on localized gender disparities within households, and how they contribute to the lives and futures of young people. She hopes that her work will encourage viewers to recognize and challenge these disparities. 

Carlos Suazo

Carlos Suazo used this prompt as an opportunity to investigate the depths of equity and inequality in Cuba, a country that continuously strives for social justice and independence for all, but amid a restricted civic space. 

“The images I took paint Cuba in a romantic but also critical lens,” said Suazo. “I saw the landscape and it seemed almost post-apocalyptic and the infrastructure was literally falling apart but at the same time I knew this was at the cost of the nations’ independence.”

Suazo took away from the experience that while there is a determination and hunger to uphold freedom and independence in the country, there remains massive inequalities that weigh on its people. 

Juliana Serna Mesa

Juliana Serna Mesa took to the heart of Harlem to capture the role that working foreign-national women and women of color play in upholding the community.  

“Through this series of photography shoots, my aim is to shine a spotlight on the remarkable diversity of women laborers, many of whom hail from immigrant backgrounds and Latino and African descendant communities,” she said. “These women are the unsung heroes of our society, contributing tirelessly to the street industry while often facing unique challenges.” 

Mesa explained that through the images she captured, she hopes to “break down stereotypes and promote a future where every woman, regardless of her background, is recognized, respected, and given the opportunities she deserves.” 

She added: “This series is a celebration of their daily stories, their triumphs, their neighborhood, and their unyielding dedication to a brighter, more equitable future for all.” 

Gabrielle Laguerre

“The images show income inequality and its effects on housing and the overall quality of life in this Gypsy enclave living in Perpignan,” said Gabrielle Laguerre of her photographs. 

The collection is called “Gypsy Streets of Perpignan,” and it highlights the juxtaposition of a city rich in history and culture and the inequitable lives of the marginalized individuals who live there. 

“You can also see in these images how marginalized communities often bear the brunt of environmental conditions, so it is also a question of environmental justice,” she said. “When poverty and racial and ethnic equity affect segments of a city’s population, as well as disparities in services to those communities, viewers can gain a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by disadvantaged people and the importance of striving for a more equitable world.” 

Jared Rosales 

Jared Rosales’ work pulls focus from two women in the Bronx in New York City, who created beauty where there was once nothing. 

“These two women are best friends that found an empty space in the Bronx to create a garden where it was needed for the community,” she explained. 

Centering her pieces on these women serves as a reminder to support grassroots movements and community-based initiatives that are working to better the world in any way they can. 

She said: “They are hardworking and eloquent folks that help around the co-op community to encourage children and teenagers to go beyond society’s barriers by using their garden as a place to learn and work.”

Kahohn Jackson

“The primary focus of my project is to [normalize the discussion on] menstruation, even though in today’s society it makes a lot of people uncomfortable,” visual arts student Kahohn Jackson told us. 

His work spotlights the inaccessibility of menstrual hygiene products for those who need them most, including as a result of tampon tax, and encourages an openness in discussing periods and menstrual health in order to deal with period poverty and gender inequality. 

“Many issues that surround periods like endometriosis, fibroids, ovarian cysts, and heavy menstrual bleeding need to be openly discussed,” he said. “Furthermore, we must address and change major gender-based taxes like the pink tax and the tampon tax.” 

Is the Ricoh GR III the perfect compact camera for street and travel photography? Based on my time with the camera this year, I’d say yes. Having made the switch from the Fujifilm X100V to the Ricoh GR III I took the camera on a 3 week trip to Japan. It quickly became my most used camera – shooting with it was an absolute joy. 

In this article, I’ll review the GR III, I’ll tell you why I think this is the best everyday carry for street and travel photographers, and I’ll show you plenty of photos from my Japan trip. 

Ricoh GR III Specifications 

The GR III came out in early 2019, so it’s over 4 years old now. Let’s start off by looking at the GR III specs: 

• 18.3mm F2.8-F16 lens (approximately 28mm in full frame terms).
• 6 elements in 4 groups, including 3 aspherical lens elements.
• CMOS image sensor, approximately 24.24 megapixels.
• 3 axis sensor shift shake reduction.
• Like Ricoh’s legendary film cameras, it has Snap Focus.
• Build in ND filter.
• Built in image control simulations. 
• 3 inch TFT color LCD. 
• No viewfinder. 
• It has a hotshoe, but no inbuilt flash. 
• Weighs 9oz (257g) including battery and SD card. 

The specifications hold up fairly well, however there are a few things on photographer’s wish lists for this line. People are quick to point out the GR III has no GPS, no viewfinder, and is not weather resistant. Although these are all valid concerns, cameras cannot be all things to all photographers – something is invariably compromised along the way. 

Design and build quality 

Although I’m a big fan of the Diary Edition colors and inclusions, I must say the GR III is not as attractive as many other Ricoh cameras. On a purely aesthetic level, I much prefer the look of both the GR film cameras and the original GR Digital line from 2005. 

Overall, the build quality of the camera is very good. Having used my GR III for the past 8 months there are no issues to report, other than slight discoloration to the canvas case. 

Dust Issue 

The main issue I’ve heard about with the build of the GR III is dust. At first I thought this was an odd thing to hear about – one advantage of fixed lens cameras is that you shouldn’t have to worry about dust getting on the sensor – but apparently it does. 

Depending on who you listen to, this is either the camera’s greatest flaw or it’s non-existent. So far this issue has not affected me. 

Camera Turning On Accidentally 

My biggest annoyance with the design of the camera is the ease with which it can be accidentally turned on. Several times I’ve gone to reach for the camera in my pocket and found it warm to the touch. 

Upon taking it out of the case, the camera was turned on and the battery was almost drained. To counteract this, I have been checking the camera more often to make sure this issue is minimized.

Diary Edition Finger Strap 

When I first unboxed the GR III, I looked at the finger strap and thought it was utterly ridiculous. I thought it was actually a wrist strap and my first inclination was not to ditch it and attach a strap from another camera. 

I have to say though, I was wrong. The finger strap is perfect for this camera. Using the strap while holding on to the camera’s grip works very well. 

Shooting With the GR III

The GR III is fun to shoot with and easy to use. Most of the functions you need while shooting are easy to find, you can customize the dials and buttons on the camera for the features you use the most. 

On my camera I’ve made sure that I can easily change aperture, dial in exposure compensation, go into macro mode, switch ISO settings, and switch JPG simulations. Quite often I operate the camera with one hand. 

The camera is quick to start up so if you see something you want to capture it’s easy to whip it out of your pocket, turn it on and snap away. 

Battery and Memory Card

The battery performance is good, without being great. However the battery is tiny – so it’s easy to carry spares. 

The GR III has a single SD card slot – so I suggest a 128GB or bigger card if you wish to capture both JPGs and RAW files. 

Image Stabilization 

The 3 axis sensor shake shift reduction makes this camera super versatile – you can capture sharp images in low light conditions or when taking images handheld with slow shutter speeds. 

LCD Screen

Generally the screen works really well to compose images. It’s certainly a more discrete way of taking images, especially given the camera’s size. 

The only issue for me is in really bright conditions it can be hard to see, though there are custom brightness options in the camera menu to ease this. 

Autofocus and Auto Exposure 

Autofocus is fantastic in good lighting conditions – I don’t think I’ve had any shots miss focus. In dark conditions the camera can struggle a bit – it does emit a green beam to try and achieve focus in these conditions. It works well, but it does alert people to the fact you’re taking a photo. 

The GR III has Ricoh’s Snap Focus mode – a feature that has been around since the film days. Snap Focus is the ability to set your focus distance in-camera. While a lot of street photographers rave about this feature, I haven’t quite nailed it yet, but hope to practice more with it soon. 

Auto exposure is generally very good with the camera in aperture priority mode. I generally err on the side of caution with my exposures, I tend to underexpose rather than overexpose. You can of course shoot with a histogram on screen if you wish to avoid overexposure. 

No Flash 

Not having a flash suits me just fine, the only time I missed it was when I was taking family shots at night in a bar or restaurant.  There’s a hot shoe on the camera so of course you can use a compatible flash. 

Connectivity 

Connectivity is good with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Transferring images to your smartphone is a breeze and can be done in 30 seconds or less. 

Customizing the Camera 

Good range of customization options in the camera, this includes being able to program the U1, U2, U3 modes on the dial (which I haven’t as I just use Aperture priority mode) and also the ability to customize the inbuilt image control simulations as well as 2 custom slots for your own recipes. 

Image Quality 

The images this camera is capable of producing are just gorgeous. The lens is sharp with excellent contrast and color rendition.

Sometimes I long for a slighter longer lens, especially when taking portraits, but there is another camera – the Ricoh GR IIIx with an equivalent 40mm field of view for that. 

JPG Simulations 

Although you don’t have the famous roll call of films like Fujifilm, don’t underestimate the Ricoh JPG simulations. I really like the Ricoh colors, here’s the options you have in-camera: 

• Standard
• Vivid
• Monotone
• Soft Monotone
• Hard Monotone
• High-Contrast B&W
• Negative Film
• Positive Film
• Bleach Bypass
• Retro
• HDR Tone
• Cross Processing
• Custom 1 
• Custom 2.

Positive is just beautiful it’s the one I use the most. At night time or in low light conditions, positive film sometimes looks like it has too strong a colour cast and too saturated,  so Negative Film is a better choice in those conditions.  

I actually like Negative Film, but straight out of the box, it makes reds orange which I’m not too keen on. I have tweaked it to be a little more saturated though, so I will see how that goes. 

Is This the Perfect Everyday Carry For Street and Travel Photographers?  

Here’s my criteria for the perfect everyday carry: 

• Light and compact – your everyday carry should be so light and compact that taking it with you everywhere is a no brainer. 
• Effortless – by that I mean you have to be able to turn the camera on and take a photo quickly without even thinking about it. 
• Excellent image quality. 
• The ability to easily transfer images to your smartphone. 
• Great JPGs straight out of camera.  

The Ricoh GR III excels in all of the criteria above. Detractors might suggest that it has no flash or is not weather resistant, but no camera can be everything to everyone. 

What I Liked

There’s a lot to like about the GR III, here are the top things I love about it:

• Size and weight
• Image quality
• JPG colors
• Smartphone connectivity
• Diary Edition kit inclusions.   

What Could Be Improved

I love the GR III because of its size and weight, so I don’t want to suggest it needs a lot of other features that would make it bigger or heavier or more expensive.

Listening to others who’ve had this camera a lot longer than me, the main thing that needs to be improved is the dust issue. If Ricoh can sort this out, the camera will be even better. Any new or extra features would be a bonus on top of that. 

Conclusion 

The Ricoh GR III Diary Edition camera has become my everyday carry. It has a perfect mix of portability, image quality, and features. 

The GR III is ideally suited for street photographers, travel photographers, and those wanting a compact everyday carry. 

Being over four years old now, many wonder if and when Ricoh will bring out a successor to this camera and what features and specifications it will have. Let’s hope the next iteration in this line is even better. 

Continuing is mission of platforming and promoting the medium of photography and the multifaceted challenges and boundaries of the medium, Paris Photo returns for its 26th edition November 9–12, 2023. Held at the Grand Palais Éphémère, Paris Photo will welcome 191 exhibitors—with 36% new galleries compared to 2022—from 25 countries, featuring more than 800 artists collectively. Situated at the intersection of nearly two centuries of historical photography and cutting edge, emerging practices, Paris Photo has established itself as a cornerstone of both discourse around and innovation in the medium.

Roope Rainisto, Auto Dream No. 3 (2023). Courtesy of Louise Alexander Gallery.

Speaking of the forthcoming edition, Paris Photo Artistic Director Anna Planas said in an interview, “This year the show’s program offers even more diversity in photography practices. Digital art has been present in Paris Photo for several years, but we are seeing use of technical tools accelerating and the emergence of a new artistic scene that is increasingly productive. It was important to identify it and create a sector dedicated to photography in the digital age, curated by a specialist.

Passing through eras, with a hard core of historic galleries, Paris Photo offers a very broad spectrum of the history of the medium and leaves plenty of room for discovery. Thanks to the works shown by the galleries, there is a multitude of paths to follow: visitors can focus on the great names in photography, from Man Ray to Grete Stern, Diane Arbus to Nan Goldin, and discover unknown series, such as Tom Wilkins’ impressive polaroid archive (Christian Berst), or see or rediscover corpus such as Melissa Schuck’s work (Miyako Yoshinaga and Galerie La Patinoire Royale | Valerie Bach).”

Man Ray, Woman with long hair (1930, printed ca. 1960). Courtesy of Bruce Silverstein Gallery.

Alongside the returning fair sections and programming, Paris Photo will launch a new Digital Sector, devoted to photograph of the digital age. Curated by digital art specialist Nina Roehrs, the sector will be comprised of nine contemporary art galleries and platforms who are leaders in the field, and showcase artists that employ the elements of contemporary digital technology into their work.

Aledsandra Art, Self Portrait (2023). Courtesy of The Collection.

Roehrs said of the Digital Sector, “The presentations explore and critically reflect the relationship between contemporary culture, digitalization, and art in a range of media—A.I., algorithms, applications, AR, blockchain and NFTs, games et. Al—and practices—coding, collages, photography, sculpture, et. al.

Digitalization is steadily increasing, but is not in itself a new phenomenon, rather it has developed over many decades on the basis of technological progress. And so, art and artists have also been dealing with the content related and material issues for several decades. In this sense, early positions of generative photography can be seen as well as works from the current AI context.”

RaMell Ross, iHome (2012). Courtesy of Pace.

The forthcoming edition will also see the unveiling of the 5th annual Elles x Paris Photo collaboration, which will feature a selection of artists who center their own lived experience in their work. The approach aims to highlight the simultaneous individuality and universality of art and identity. The anniversary edition will be marked by the release of a publication that brings together the work of 130 contemporary photographers, advancing the visibility of women artists and bringing their personal practices and motivations to light.

And for both in-person attendees and those who cannot make the fair, Paris Photo will again be accessible online through their comprehensive online viewing rooms, where in-person exhibitors as well as a collection of exclusively online exhibitors can be found.

Paris Photo will run November 8–12, with VIP Access November 7, at the Grand Palais Éphémère.

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