No, don’t expect this to be about juicy compromising pictures of Tiger Woods. It’s much simpler and yet apparently more complex for many. It simply has to do with a photographer (Scott Kelby) facing the dilemma of removing his (great) pictures of Tiger Woods from his blog and sports portfolio, after a number of people in his target audience are asking him to do so on the grounds of “moral unworthiness”.

You can access Scott’s blog entry here, along with the more than 100 comments people left (all supportive of his decision to keep the pictures).

I find that issue and the ensuing thread fascinating! It turns out that that was the first story I read, just before taking a sip of coffee yesterday morning and I was all fired up and posted my response on the blog.

I commented on three things:

1) that in this story like in so many others, we make a big deal out of a very mundane situation (man cheats on wife, wife catches him) because WE have decided to elevate someone to Sainthood

2) that yet again we have a group of people that have the nerve to impose their moral standards on others, unsolicited, and appoint themselves as moral judges and juries. I don’t like it because it is plain rude, and because people will cave in and be politically correct, and the world becomes a bit more average and grey (and the real issues don’t get solved in the meantime). As a photographer, I like color, contrast and saturation.

3) the main issue – one that I am surprised to see so many people not addressing in the comments: what do Tiger’s actions have to do with the right of a photographer to display pictures of the man? Photography is capturing a moment, a person, a scene, good or bad, ugly or beautiful. A photographer (or any artist) should not compromise her work by asking creative permission from any group (unless of course you want to live in a totalitarian regime like ex-Russia or China). The artist exerts his freedom of choice and expression at creation time. The recipient exerts his freedom of choice and expression by selecting what to view or listen to. Going back to my point #1 above, if all we agreed to photograph and display was the nice and beautiful, we would not have much to turn our lenses to – nor would we even be able to agree on what “nice and beautiful” is!

To be continued…