Screw the Ethics?
This man without a nose refused to let me photograph him. So my four-year documentation of him began in secret.He walked past my studio window every day between 09.00 and 09.20 and returned carrying a plastic bag. Over the years I take covert pictures and I take out a video camera hidden in my jacket; I talk to him whilst secretly filming.The resulting project is graphic and intrusive. The close up images of his face are macabre and disturbing. His disfigurement is shocking; a big hole in the front of his face where you can see down onto the top of his palate.I agonize over whether I should use these pictures in my work. I don’t have his permission to print or display them so it could even be illegal to use them. If I exhibit the project I might be perceived as the villain for being insensitive. I am forced to examine my own ethics in order to make a decision. The philosopher Peter Singer discussed how our moral ethics should prevent us causing other people pain and this is what I would aim for too.However I also consider his own behaviour; he has chosen notto wear the prosthetic that I know that he has. He has chosen to leave his deformity on full view for everyone to see, which in itself imposes a certain level of tolerance upon his passers-by. Perhaps this gives me the right to take and use my photographs.The ethics of the viewer must also be taken into account. To go and see an exhibition that highlights the plight of such a man is no simple undertaking.
By taking part in the process the viewer is also party to his morbid curiosity getting the better of his morals.To see this man in the displaced environment of an exhibition removes the moral code that we adhere to. It is as though we have been given permission to change our normal behaviour into something that we would normally not perceive as acceptable.This piece of work, like a large proportion of the photography and film that I produce, is concerned with identity and social acceptability. I want to highlight people and characters that force the viewer to question what he sees and at the same time to examine his own experience and beliefs. In many respects some of the traits in these people are a reflection of my own insecurities, confused identity and shaping by events in the past.