Offensive Photography

In my photography class, we were once told to gather a collection of ten images that we thought were offensive. Some people used scenes of racism, some used extreme body modification, and some simply used really graphic photos. When viewing these images, I found some offensive and I found some disturbing, but I couldn't really get my head around what I really considered offensive photography.

When I eventually got down to it, I decided that what was important for me to do before I trying to complete this assignment was to deconstruct what it actually was: OFFENSIVE and PHOTOGRAPHY. Sure, there were things that were offensive, but they would have been offensive in any medium; what I wanted to find were things not only offensive but offensive to photography and photographers specifically.

What I decided to focus on were photograph that were taken with expensive or very high-end equipment (such as the Leica M8, the Nikon D3 or the Canon EOS 5D Mark II) but for some reason for another ended up being lacklustre, inappropriately editted in post production, or just taken in a manner inconsistent with the level of equipment (such as using a D3 in the manner of a point-and-shoot). To find these images I perused photosharing sites such as Flickr, looking specifically in groups dedicated to high-end equipment. My choice of Flickr as the source for photos was intentional because I believe that if you are going to display your photographs, they should never be your subpar work — and that is exactly what I was looking for. It is this combination of being poorly done and them shown that I find to be offensive photography; to me it speaks of a lack of professionalism, and a lack of caring both of which I think are intrinsic to photography.

With this in mind, I choose the following images:













NOTE: Just because a picture by a photographer has appeared here does not mean that they are a bad photographer in general, just that I though this specific photo of theirs was 'offensive.'