Devon Barthold- Steven McCurry

Steven McCurry is seen as this horrible person for changing portions of his photographs, but honestly I do not see why. He has said on multiple occasions now that his life has changed, he has changed, he is not longer a photojournalist and people should accept that. It is his life and he should be able to change the way he lives it. ‘“[McCurry] bears the responsibility to uphold the ethical standards of his peers and the public, who see him as a photojournalist,” writes NPPA Ethics Committee chairman Sean D. Elliot.’1 In this quote Sean is trying to say that he has to continue to follow the standards of photojournalism just because he was once one of them. That is not right at all, he should not have to follow something just because other people feel he should since he was once one of them. He should have the right to change his style, he should be able to take people or items out of pictures or change the colors of it. He is not changing the meaning of the photographs, he is just making them visually appealing.

Cutting out a few things here and a few things here that are distracting does not cause a lot of problems. The photograph still has the meaning it had before, it just is not as distracting as it was before. Steven said that it is basically impossible to assign himself to one category but he has changed just like media has, he has been photographing for 40 years.2 You cannot expect someone to stay the same for that many years, eventually you get sick of the type of work you do, so you cannot expect him to be a photojournalist for that many years. You cannot hold him to the same rules, he is no longer a photojournalist and now he is in a profession that has no rules. So changing a few things in the photographs is okay, he is allowed to do whatever his heart desires.

Steven is just like everyone else, he had to change with the times. He started out as a photojournalist, but he had to start changing what he did because of the times. ‘“To make a middle class living,” says Kennedy, “a creative person has to wear more than one hat and work in areas that go beyond his or her original aesthetic motivation for making images. Steve (McCurry) falls in that category.”’3 In this quote it accurately shows that to make a good living in life you gotta grow and develop from what you originally do, Steven needed to do this to grow. He struggles with the same problems as everyone else, money is an important thing nowadays no matter how someone feels about it. He should not be bashed for changing his style, that is a personal choice. He has clearly come out and said that he is not longer a photojournalist, in a perfect world he would not have had to come out and share that. But people are judgemental nowadays and you have to backup every single choice you make.

1. https://petapixel.com/2016/05/26/photoshopped-photos-emerge-steve-mccurry-scandal/

2. http://time.com/4351725/steve-mccurry-not-photojournalist/

3.https://nppa.org/news/ethics-matters-commentary-nppa’s-ethics-committee-regarding-photographs-steve-mccurry