A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, Photojournalists Should Keep it That Way

 Grayson Wolf 

gw825219@ohio.edu

We are told that a picture is worth a thousand words. I genuinely believe that. Pictures can convey a more vital message than just words can. This sentiment could not have been more accurate than during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. Thousands of people flooded the streets in their local cities all over the country to protest the injustices they were seeing being done to people of color, most notably the killing of George Floyd.  

Photo Courtesy of Nieman Reports

What came out of these protests, along with significant change and great exposure, were the powerful pictures of these individuals' extraordinary passion for the cause they were fighting for. You could see it on the faces of everyone. Not only passion, but pain, love, agony, happiness, hatred, and power. There were also significant consequences, such as many people losing jobs because of appearing in those photos. Some were even charged with criminal action. So, that raises a question, should photojournalists be more careful when taking pictures of events like these and go even as far as blurring out faces?

When reading through our class reading from the University of Texas at Austin, the answer became clear to me, no. Photojournalists should not feel like they need to compromise their jobs to cater to the public. There is no sense of privacy when a person goes to a protest. Blurring faces also takes so much away from the power and meaning of the photos taken during these protests. The picture is no longer worth a thousand words when you blur faces. It takes out all of the emotion of the photo and shows signs and bodies with no faces.

In this beautiful video by MPB, their photographers take us through their thought processes while shooting the BLM protests. They talk about how it is about the story behind the picture and not just what is in the picture. In addition, two photographers talked about how they like to put their pictures in black and white to give the protestors some privacy. 

A picture is worth a thousand words, and I think it should stay that way. When taking photos at protests, I do not think it is necessary to blur out faces, and I do not think you should blur out faces. If protestors are worried about their job or possibly getting charged for it, I encourage them to hide their face. I believe it is ethical to keep the faces on photos taken at protests.