Originally submitted by: jadelay

A few weeks ago, a2ethics.org did an interview with Jack Bridges, a photojournalist who now lives in Chicago. Bridges, a Greenhills School graduate, is from Ann Arbor. His work, on display at the school for a special exhibit, is quite extraordinary. The photos are of his four and a half year sojourn in meeting, talking to, eating with, helping and being helped by several residents of the Robert Taylor Homes, the 30,000 resident housing project in Chicago. The Homes have since been demolished. Bridges' photos are extraordinary. You can see them on his website: jackbridges.com, by clicking onto "The Chicago Housing Projects: The Last High Rise. " Before you do that, however, I would recommend that you listen to the podcast interview Bart Bund, our a2ethics.org web director, did with Jack Bridges. (Go to our home page at the top.) It is not your usual "coded" interview. Bridges openly describes many of the ethical dilemmas he faced as a white outsider coming into the project in order to record and portray the lives of its mostly Black residents. Photojournalists, and for that matter, authors who want to do research and write about communities where they are "temps," and not part of the community they are seeking to cover, are rightfully scrutinized and met with suspicion. The potential for exploitation is one that most photojournalists and other professionals are quite aware of; and if they are not, the community they are "studying" clearly is. The interview touches on this issue. But what makes it most fascinating is the discussion of the levels and types of trust required to do this kind of work as well as the trusting compromises made by both the community members, welcoming the stranger, in this case Bridges the photojournalist, and Bridges, who must gain a certain trust from them. As I listened to this interview, I was thinking about the issue of gaining trust: how it is that professionals who are outsiders become trusted by the people they serve or work with. And this is not just an issue for the outsider photojournalist. The residents of Robert Taylor Homes have created whole structures of trust in order to survive and live in their community. Some of these organizations, as with any community, are illegal and unethical. Among them are the gang members Bridges is introduced to in order to gain access to the Homes in the first place. The gang members themselves have their own established levels of trust with the residents. This issue of trust is prominent in any relationship the photojournalist establishes with subjects. What are the dangers that too much trust brings in this kind of relationship that have ethical consequences? If the photojournalist gets too "embedded," he or she risks his or her integrity and autonomy. If the photojournalist is too distanced, he or she will never get the pictures. In any event, we might wonder if it is the photojournalist's right to get the pictures in the first place. Why not just give the cameras to the residents themselves?