Ethics

Photography has always existed in dialogue with its systems of distribution. The darkroom, the magazine spread, the gallery wall — each framed what was visible, what was valued, and what was remembered. Today that system is no longer physical but algorithmic: a lattice of opaque calculations and engagement models that mediate nearly everything we see. Photographers, consciously or not, now compose within this system’s logic. The question is not only what we choose to photograph, but what the network chooses to show.

Street photography has always occupied a complicated space — both literally and ethically. It thrives in the unpredictable theater of public life, where chance encounters and fleeting gestures become visual poetry. Yet beneath its spontaneity lies an enduring tension: the photographer’s right to document versus the subject’s right to privacy. This tension has existed for more than a century, shaped by shifting social norms, laws, and technologies. Today, as cameras have become ubiquitous and sharing instantaneous, that debate feels sharper than ever.

Photography has always balanced between depiction and interpretation. Every image, even one captured straight from the camera, is already a negotiation with reality — a choice of framing, timing, exposure, and perspective. Yet in an age of limitless digital manipulation, that negotiation has become more complicated. The question is no longer whether an image tells the truth, but what kind of truth it tells.

This is the territory where editing becomes ethical, not merely aesthetic.

Photography has always balanced between documentation and invention. Every photograph is both a record of something that happened and a product of interpretation—shaped by framing, timing, exposure, and intent. The medium has never been purely objective, but it has long held an implicit contract with truth: that something, at some point, stood before the lens.

In the age of AI-generated imagery, that contract is being rewritten. The camera is no longer the only instrument capable of producing photographic realism. We can now synthesize scenes that appear every bit as credible as those captured in light, yet owe their existence to no physical world. The question is no longer what happened here? but what does it mean to call something a photograph at all?