Watch Where You Point That Thing: A Talk on Ethics and Photography

“I think with socially engaged photography, or at least my approach and intent with it is a lot to consider—the ethics of making work collectively with the community instead of, of a community.”
Emily Fitzgerald

Coming from a background in street photography, I was motivated by the human experience and allowing others to tell their own stories. There was a contradiction within this as street photography usually leads you to capturing photos in a voyeuristic manner where confrontation, weird looks, and surprising conversations aren’t foreign but come with ethical implications. This conflict led me to Emily Fitzgerald, a Portland State University professor and artist who primarily works with photos. I was seeking answers on how to practice photography in a way that gets you from point A to point B with ease, with relationships leading the way. Emily’s words are simple yet transformative, they evolved my appreciation for subtle ambiguities and a photo’s capabilities. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed hearing them. Remember, always watch where you point the lens.

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Domenic Toliver: Thanks for talking with me. I’ve been struggling with how to go about things, so I’m curious, what is your approach to photography within the context of social practice, especially when the focus seems to shift away from the final image and towards the process, interaction, or broader narrative the image contributes to?  

Emily Fitzgerald: That’s a good question. I mean, there are so many different elements and that has been a lot of what my research has been about, the different methods and approaches in utilizing images. Collaboratively making work, making work with people as opposed to taking photos of folks. It depends on what the project is, but I think a big part of my practice is collaborative storytelling and using images as part of the process as opposed to thinking about myself as a photographer. My practice has really shifted from being a photographer who takes photos to someone who uses images collaboratively and collectively. Sometimes that looks like me shooting photos, but sometimes it looks like working with archives, working with other people who take photos or using found images, or creating structures that people can plug into that are somehow image based or text-based, and sometimes photography is not central to my practice, sometimes it’s more peripheral, just depending on what the project is. My practice  often examines things like who has the agency to make images and decides what images are used. Though I’ve always been a photographer, sometimes taking pictures feels less important or it isn’t as necessary. In some ways, the camera can feel like a barrier instead of a connection. So photography sort of ebbs and flows within my practice. I think images are extremely compelling and photography has always remained a strong part of my practice, but maybe more or less central within certain projects. I often use archival photos, and writing, then sometimes I’ll kind of work as a curator, as opposed to a photographer. There are a lot of different ways of working with images, but I just really like collaboration through every stage or at least some stage within the process.

It’s always a balance. Like right now I’m thinking a lot about how to make images that I feel are aesthetically compelling and also conceptually strong, where there is a lot of agency, and that can be tricky if I’m working with folks that don’t have a background in photography.

Lately, I’ve been working a lot with students who are making their own work while I am building this photo program at PSU and right now teaching is interwoven with my art practice. 

Dom: Wow. It seems like there’s a lot of space for building connections, experimenting with different ways to tell stories, and also just fun new ways to use images. Would you be able to talk a little bit about one of your projects? Maybe, Being Old, and how that process you just explained worked within that one in particular? 

Emily Fitzgerald: Yeah, that project was, gosh, so long ago.That was my first work with the senior center which was called the Hollywood Senior Center, and now is called the Community for Positive Aging (CFPA). At that time, I think my grandma was still alive, but I had started working on this project with my grandma who was really a soulmate of mine. It was the last year of her life and we were collaboratively making images. My grandma was a beautician so she would tell me how to do my hair and makeup and I did a lot with her. I would curl her hair, and roll her hair in curlers. She would tell me how to roll her hair and how to put on her false eyelashes and all of this stuff. So while we were doing this I had a remote shutter release and she would press the shutter. So we were making images of ourselves collectively. It started as a documentary project of her, and when I started making it, I realized it was more about our relationship. So I started making images with her. 

Then I moved to Portland and I was in grad school and I had all these friends my age, but I didn’t have relationships with older adults here yet. So I wanted to build that for myself and for others. I approached the senior center, and Amber, who is still the executive director there, and I talked. I decided to do some sort of storytelling workshop, or at least that’s how we were framing it, but I was asking myself what a photo-based social practice looks like at a senior center.

I think there was a group of about 10 or 12 folks. There were seniors and then some of my peers who were in the social practice program came with me to some of the workshops. Then Amber and I talked about what she felt the center needed. That’s another element of working with the community. Thinking about what are the needs of that community and how  and if images could serve those needs. So part of it was community building and like you said, using my camera to talk to people.  A lot of the seniors at the center wanted to take photos. So they took photos of each other, and they brought in family photos, and archival images from their lives. We used those images to talk about family, home, and life experience . We were using the images to learn about people and their experiences and their histories. The organization wanted them to humanize the building. Because the building was a neighborhood center, but you couldn’t tell from the outside at that point. We decided that we would utilize the photos as a large-scale installation on the front and the back of the building to just sort of bring the inside out. The participants did a lot of writing about the images as a tool to engage folks and conversate. We decided to make a publication and because the publication included so many of their words along with their images, as a group we decided we were going to do a book reading, so the seniors read their words that they had written in the publication. 

Dom: That sounds awesome. It sounds like powerful work, not only for them but for you. 

Emily Fitzgerald: From there I kept working with the senior center. We collaborated with Beaumont Middle School pairing each participant with someone from a different generation. 

And at that point, we were thinking, oh my gosh, who rides TriMet a lot? There were a lot of seniors who couldn’t drive anymore and a lot of young people who couldn’t drive, so we decided that the installations from that collaboration would be on TriMet  bus stops. Both of those installations are still in the CFPA. So the building’s very lively. A third installation that I did with the third-year MFA students and participants from the CFPA we installed in the spring.The partnership with the senior center sort of ended up being like an ongoing, self-proclaimed residency. 

Dom: I didn’t realize it had gone on for so long, I just saw the first project and was instantly hooked. Older people are often disregarded or cast aside in society after a certain age and what you did seemed to bridge that connection back to the community while also allowing them to share their stories. 

Emily Fitzgerald: Now I’m sort of trying to develop a more formal relationship with the Senior Center and the MFA program. I think my plan is to run a class every winter there. And maybe something in the spring if I can swing it too. 

Dom: That would be dope. I would love to get in there soon and see what it’s like.

So you said you had a lot of intergenerational relationships and I guess working with that community would probably not be as tough as if you were to try to do something socially engaged with a community that you have no idea about. For example the annual Assembly, it’s pretty site-specific and I’m not from here, so I’m challenged with putting something together within a community I’m not at all familiar with. What’s the best way to approach that? In an authentic way. 

Emily Fitzgerald: That’s a good point. A lot of my work is site-specific. I’ve worked on a long-term collaboration, it’s finished now, but I think it was like eight or nine years long. It’s called People’s Homes. It started as a graduate project for the MFA program. I think a lot of it stems from my own curiosity about something personal for me. My collaborator and I, Molly Sherman, were at the time both living in Northeast Portland, and we were thinking about how we’re both white, middle class, cis women, our identities as artists in this neighborhood the racist history and gentrification in N and NE and with this interest in creating intergenerational exchanges and conversation.

I was new to this area, so I didn’t know a lot, but it was my curiosity that drove me, and for that project, we paired some of the oldest homeowners who are long-time residents of the neighborhood with younger artists. Lisa Jarrett was one of the artists that we paired with this amazing woman, Thelma, who passed away many years ago. She was in her 90s at the time and had survived the Vanport Flood. Each artist responded to the homeowner’s story. It was very place-based in the sense that we were like, what’s happening in our neighborhoods, and how do we talk to our neighbors? Part of the reason the first iteration was so strong was because we spent a lot of  time on it. Artists made these images in response to older residents’ experience. It could be drawing, text, photography, mixed media or whatever as long as it was responding to their stories. We turned the artist’s work into small-scale billboards that were displayed in the front of the homes. Then we made a newspaper publication that was also distributed at the homes. 

The next iteration was during the pandemic and was driven by what this project could look like on a systemic level. So we worked with nonprofits and paired them with older residents. 

Then the third iteration was in San Antonio, Texas, where my collaborator Molly Sherman lives. So now we were responding to a completely different place. What does that look like within the context of the framework of this project that we’ve set up? There were many collaborative decisions and discussions between Molly, the cultural organizations we partnered with, and the art space that commissioned the project, The Contemporary at Blue Star, and the residents. So I think it was kind of a fluid collaboration but I think that it is helpful that it is durational work. I often end up working on projects for a long time which helps to build the relationships and connections 

Dom: Yeah I can see how developing relationships and having those conversations would help you learn more about the community and the space. It seems more authentic. It makes me think of the ethics in social practice. As a photographer, I think a lot about language. We say “take” and “capture” when asking to photograph someone. Do you ever worry about how you come across? Or do you feel like having good intentions is enough when photographing other people? 

Emily Fitzgerald: It’s probably why I don’t do street photography anymore. I just feel like that reciprocity is harder to come by with street photography. I don’t think it makes sense because of the relational way that I work. I do think a lot about the ethics of work but I try to integrate different means of reciprocity within the project. So if that’s an honorarium or some sort of exchange that feels ethical. I think it’s a lot about representation and self-representation and thinking about how people want to be represented. Historically I’ve never used, at least since I’ve been thinking of myself as a socially engaged photographer, I never used an image that someone didn’t want me to use. And that’s a hard choice. Sometimes I feel like, oh my gosh, this is such a striking and stunning image, I love it and then, the person that I’m working with doesn’t want me to use it. So honoring that feels like the right choice. In my projects I’m often focused on the process as opposed to the outcome or as opposed to the aesthetics and that helps keep it about the people.

Dom: I get that. If the focus is on the people and reaching their needs, then it should just flow. I get that. You said you did street photography. I didn’t know that.

Emily Fitzgerald: I did more lifestyle but I did do some street photography and travel photography.  I guess that’s what I fell in love with, I still love it, but it never had the depth I wanted. I questioned myself and the ethics of that way of working. I think people do it beautifully and brilliantly. With solid ethics, it just feels much more difficult and rare. 

Dom: Yeah, I fell in love with street photography because I felt it was about the world around you, all the things going on, people living, and the random complexities of humanity. It felt like I was just showing these people telling their own stories, but then you’re also stealing something from them and not having that communication or collaboration. I’ve run into a lot of people trying to push my camera out of the way. Which is understandable. 

I think that’s why I’m here now. How do I do what I like, while also using it to transform the people I’m taking photos of. It comes with the intent of changing and raising awareness, but thinking that the process and work with the people is doing that, rather than the photo being that tool itself. 

Emily Fitzgerald: Yeah. I think you can do it though, and I don’t feel like I’ve done it successfully, but I think you can do documentary projects that are more socially engaged or have strong consideration of self-representation and ethics.  People are doing it, but it’s harder.

Dom: Yeah, I have so many ideas for projects, but it’s all about trying to find the right way to do them. That’s kind of the hardest part for me right now. Not tugging the wrong strings. And it’s not only understanding why and how but then trying to do it for others, with others. I need to have the courage to make mistakes, but also learn, grow, and fix them. 

Emily Fitzgerald: Yeah, there’s no right way. I think that’s part of it and so much is just learning as you go. Like life in general. 

Dom: Learning and growing as you go, that’s true. So the last thing I wanted to ask was what are you doing right now? Anything upcoming?

Emily Fitzgerald: I’ve been working on a project with the same collaborator that I did People’s Homes, Molly Sherman, and we are both interested in the spectrum of reproductive experience, from abortion to parenting to pregnancy loss and how people undergo this as a spectrum rather than isolated events, reflecting the varied journeys many individuals face throughout their lives.

During the pandemic and when we were finishing People’s Homes I had a baby, I also had miscarriages and an abortion. This was all happening along with the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, so our project is called the People’s Clinic for Reproductive Empathy, and we’ve been doing different sorts of smaller projects under that umbrella. But the project we are  working on right now is with the Flickr foundation to make a photobook about the spectrum of reproductive experience. 

Dom: I’m really looking forward to seeing more! You have so much going on, it’s amazing. Thank you again for speaking with me and sharing. I feel a little more confident, and a little more ready to tackle some of these ideas.

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Emily Fitzgerald is a socially engaged artist, photographer, storyteller, and educator. Through her work, she investigates what it means to collectively tell a story, equally prioritize the relational and the aesthetic, collaboratively make conceptual and visual decisions, and co-author a body of work with the ‘subject’. Her work is responsive, participatory, and site-specific. Emily brings large-scale art installations into non-traditional, public, and unexpected places in order to deepen our understanding and reframe our ways of relating to one another. She is the co-founder of MATTER Gallery and Works Progress Agency. Emily is an assistant professor in photography at the School of Art + Design at Portland State University.

Domenic Toliver is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice bridges film, photography, performance, and socially engaged art. With a background in sociology, he began his career as a behavioral analyst working with autistic children before shifting his focus to filmmaking. He earned an MA in Film and Media, pursuing directing while also acting in several films.

As a street photographer, Domenic explores themes of presence, perception, and narratives. Now pursuing an MFA in Art and Social Practice, he is particularly interested in the intersections of his practices and how storytelling can be a valuable tool in promoting social change.