Extractive

It is thoroughly chic today to describe photography as extractive which is a newish word for an old idea.

The idea is, basically, that some white man (Steve McCurry) goes to a far off land, and takes some pictures of people. He pays them little or nothing, but is himself handsomely compensated for his pictures. This feels unfair. There is no question here, one of the normal human responses here is "this is unfair" and that ought not to be set aside. It's all social, after all.

Still, let us pick this apart a little. It will closely resemble my discussion of consent, from a few days ago.

Physical objects are possessed, generally, by only one of us. My dog understands that if I have the ball, she does not. She understands that if she has the ball, I do not (this is a very desirable state of affairs, according to my dog.) Dogs, crows, children, understand this concept of having something. It is symmetrical.

Photography, being obnoxious, divides it in two peculiar halves.

If you are walking down the street, and I photograph you, I now have a photograph of you. I possess an object, of sorts. You, however, have not lost anything.

If I took from you a ball, you would rightly demand compensation. This kind of quid pro quo is also something that dogs, crows, and children understand. This is not a cultural construct, although we wrap it in culture. The idea of exchanging a thing of value for another thing of value is a very, very basic idea. It is instinctive, somatic.

In these transactions, the part where you take the ball away, and the part where I no longer have the ball, are inextricably connected. When I pay you for the ball, am I paying you because I now possess a ball? Or, am I paying you because you no longer have the ball? It doesn't matter, because the two cannot be separated.

When I photograph you, however, the two are separated. I gained a photograph, but you did not lose a photograph, or indeed anything else. Is the ethical requirement to pay you rooted in my gain, or in your loss? The question suddenly becomes quite real.

Because we lack the tools to, at a visceral, emotional, level to make sense of this half-transaction, we naturally feel that when something is gained (a photo) something is lost (what?) We feel, in an attenuated way, that the subject of the photo deserves something for their trouble, for their non-existent loss. There is a very real social impression that subjects have rights, and should be compensated, in a sense not on the basis that they have lost but that that photographer has gained.

We should, obviously, respect this to a degree. We are social creatures, after all. Also, though, I think we should recognize the halfway nature of the thing. You, the subject, didn't lose anything.

The photograph has value, at least notionally. In 99.9% of cases, of course, the photo has no value whatever. In these cases, when the tourist takes the snap and hands a dollar to the picturesque brown person, the latter has arguably made out like a bandit having lost nothing, and gained a dollar. In the end the tourist ended up with an object worth nothing whatever. There is no value to be shared here.

Still, Steve McCurry's photos have value. A Marxist would tell you that the value derives from Labor, which would be pretty much all McCurry Inc. Other theories propose that the value derives from the cost of production, again, McCurry Inc. Modern theory has some complex gobble around value just being the product of how bad people want the thing, and there we might have some justification for money being shared around, right?

After all, the picturesque old dude is inherent to the desire for the photo, right? If the value is merely a measure of that desire, I guess the old dude generated a bunch of that value, so deserves a piece of the pie. It makes sense to me.

This, however, teaches firmly that if there is no desire for the photo, the old guy doesn't deserve a cent. If I go to Afghanistan and photograph some picturesque people, and make a book, and sell a few copies, losing several thousand dollars in the process, there is no economic basis for compensating any of the picturesque people.

They didn't lose anything. Let us presume I paid them market rates for modeling, for their time, whatever. No value was created, so there is nothing to share. All that happened was that I acquired some photographs which, presumably, have some personal value. Perhaps I earned a few exposure bucks.

There are no simple answers here, any more than there is a simple answer to the question of consent. We're looking at a situation we lack the fundamental tools to make sense of. We can use our big fat brains to intellectualize some stuff, but whatever the result our emotional, and therefore social, response won't line up. Like consent, it appears to be something that admits no pat answers, and requires us instead to muddle through as best we can.

In closing, though: the use of the word extractive is, to my eye, a deliberate attempt to frame photography as essentially the same thing as mining. If I go to Afghanistan and mine a bunch of diamonds and carry them off, then Afghanistan and her people have lost some diamonds. To frame photography as extraction is to propose, without quite saying it, that when I photograph someone, that someone loses something. This is disingenuous, of course, and part of a larger program to frame photography as Super Dangerous and Problematic.

But, while I think the word itself is ridiculous, the central question remains.