Kernochan Symposium: The Art of Looking: Ethics in Photography

Symposium: The Art of Looking: Ethics in Photography

In an increasingly complex world where photographic images can be distributed worldwide with the click of a button, concerns about ethics in the industry are on the rise. Whether photographing on assignment, in the street, or for purely artistic purposes, photographers are on the front lines. Where do they draw the line between documenting reality and intruding?

Join us for a symposium “The Art of Looking: Ethics in Photography” at Columbia Law School on February 10th at 3:00PM. Registration was available online at the Event page until 5:00 PM on Thursday, February 9th. There is no cost to attend, but all attendees must register. No CLE is offered for this event.

Speakers

Amy Adler, the Emily Kempin Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, is one of the leading scholars of Art Law in the US. She teaches Art Law, First Amendment Law, and Feminist Jurisprudence at NYU Law, and lectures about these topics to a wide range of audiences in both art and law. Adler’s scholarship focuses on the persistent conflict between legal rules and cultural and artistic expression, addressing topics such as fair use, moral rights, online norms, authenticity, and the art market. Her recent scholarship focuses on the role of copying—and copyright law—in contemporary culture. Another series of recent articles explores the relationship between art and free speech. Adler graduated from the Yale Law School, where she was a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal. She graduated summa cum laude from Yale University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and where she received the Marshall Allison Prize in the arts and letters. Adler clerked for Judge John M. Walker Jr. of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Nina Berman is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, journalist and educator. Her work broadly focuses on war, trauma, militarization, and political resistance. As a freelance photojournalist in the 1990's she reported for Time and Newsweek on gender violence in Bosnia and Afghanistan. Since 2001, she's focused her work mainly in the U.S.A. She is the author of Purple Hearts – Back from Iraq, (2004) portraits and interviews with wounded American veterans, Homeland, (2008) an examination of the militarization of American life post September 11, and An autobiography of Miss Wish (2017), a story told with a survivor of sexual violence over 25 years and shortlisted for the Aperture and Arles book prizes. Fellowships, awards and grants include: the New York Foundation for the Arts, the World Press Photo Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship and the Aftermath Project. Her work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, the Museum of the City of New York, the Library of Congress, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Musée de la Photographie in Belgium and the Harvard Art Museums among others. She has participated in workshops around the world for young photographers in conjunction with the NOOR photography collective, and writes frequently on photojournalism ethics and practice for the Columbia Journalism Review. She is a Professor of Journalism at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she directs the photojournalism/documentary photography program.

Donna Ferrato is an internationally acclaimed photojournalist known for her groundbreaking documentation of the hidden world of domestic violence. Her seminal book Living With the Enemy (Aperture, 1991) went into four printings and, alongside exhibitions and lectures across the globe, sparked a national discussion on sexual violence and women’s rights. In 2014, Ferrato launched the I Am Unbeatable campaign to expose, document, and prevent domestic violence against women and children through real stories of real people. Ferrato has contributed to almost every major news publication in the country, and her photographs have appeared in nearly five hundred solo exhibitions in museums and galleries worldwide. She has been a member of the Executive Board of Directors for the W. Eugene Smith Fund and was president and founder of the non-profit Domestic Abuse Awareness Project (501-c3). She has been a recipient of the W. Eugene Smith Grant, the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Outstanding Coverage of the Plight of the Disadvantaged, the IWMF Courage in Journalism Award, the Missouri Medal of Honor for Distinguished Service in Journalism, Artist of the Year at the Tribeca Film Festival, and the Look3 Insightful Artist of the Year. In 2008, the City of New York proclaimed October 30 “Donna Ferrato Appreciation Day,” and in 2009, she was honored by the judges of the New York State Supreme Court for her work advancing gender equality. In 2020, Ferrato was chosen as one of the Hundred Heroines by the British Arts foundation, Hundred Heroines. In 2021, Ferrato was named Artist of The Year at The Tribeca Film Festival. Her new book, Holy, published in 2020 by powerHouse Books, is a call to action. It proclaims the sacredness of women’s rights and their power to be masters of their own destiny.

Gail Halaban is an American artist born in Washington, DC. Her interest in photography began when she made a pinhole camera for her first-grade science fair. Though her equipment has become more complex, her love of photography has never wavered. Her work plays with the notions of truth and fiction - straddling the line between documentary and staged. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design, Brown University, and Yale University, from which she received a Master of Fine Arts in Photography. She teaches at Columbia University in the Department of Narrative Medicine. She has been published widely including three monographs. Her work has been exhibited extensively in solo and group shows including a solo exhibit in 2018 at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York. Numerous galleries around the world have shown her work with her primary representation at the Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York City, Jackson Fine Arts in Atlanta, and Weinstein Hammons in Minneapolis. Public and private collections including the Hermes Foundation, George Eastman Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, Nelson Atkins Museum, Getty Museum, Cape Ann Museum, Wichita Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of art hold her work. Her books are available at Aperature Books, and her gallery is available online at Houk Gallery.

Kay Hickman is a New York City based documentary photographer and visual artist. With an inquisitive eye, she offers a unique and empathetic perspective into the everyday lives of the people she photographs. Her work largely focuses on documenting the human experience as it relates to identity, human rights and health issues. Hickman’s work has been featured in The New York Times, TIME, Vogue, Utne Reader, Ms. Magazine, OkayPlayer, Coeval, Jazz Halo and Photographic Journal: MFON Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. Hickman also Joined the Everyday Project’s Advisory Board where she works on various initiatives, as well as helps curate Everyday Black America’s instagram feed. Hickman is inspired by works of Gordon Parks, Vivian Maier and Carrie Mae Weems, to name a few. She fell in love with visual arts at a young age and often went to the museum with her Mom. She found it to be a great method of documenting the era, while also gaining insight of the person who created the work. From these experiences, Hickman realized the importance of representation and seeing through an empathic lens.

Lesley Martin is creative director of Aperture and founding publisher of The PhotoBook Review, a newsprint journal dedicated to the evolving conversation surrounding the photobook. Her writing on photography has been published in Aperture, IMA magazine, and FOAM, among other publications, and she has edited more than one-hundred books of photography, including On the Beach by Richard Misrach;Illuminance by Rinko Kawauchi; LaToya Ruby Frazier: The Notion of Family; Zanele Muholi: Hail the Dark Lioness; The New Black Vanguardby Antwaun Sargent; Sara Cwynar: Glass Life; and Zora J Murff: True Colors. In addition to commissioning The Chinese Photobook, she was a contributing editor to Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s and The Latin American Photobook. She has curated several exhibitions of photography, including The Ubiquitous Image, part of the inaugural New York Photo Festival in 2008; the New York Times Magazine Photographs, cocurated with Kathy Ryan (2011); Aperture Remix, a commission-based exhibition celebrating Aperture’s sixtieth anniversary (2012); and Mickalene Thomas: Muse (2016). Martin co-founded the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards in 2012. She received the Royal Photographic Society award for outstanding achievement in Photographic Publishing in 2020, and is currently a visiting critic at the Yale University Graduate School of Art.

Mickey Osterreicher serves as general counsel to the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) and is Of Counsel to Finnerty Osterreicher & Abdulla. He is an award-winning photojournalist with over forty years’ experience in print and broadcast journalism. His work has appeared in such publications as the New York Times, Time, Newsweek and USA Today, as well as on ABC World News Tonight, Nightline, Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News and ESPN. As a lawyer, Mr. Osterreicher is well-versed and actively counsels clients on all aspects of First Amendment and copyright law, cameras in the courtroom, the federal shield law, media access to public proceedings, public photography, anti-paparazzi statutes, use of drones for newsgathering, and fair use.

Cathy Kaplan (moderator) is a retired partner in Sidley’s New York office. Cathy served on the Executive Committee and co-headed Sidley’s Global Finance group for 14 years, and she continues to help curate the art collection of Sidley's New York office. In addition, Cathy remains actively involved in the arts community, serving on several boards and committees. She is the Chair of the Board of Trustees of The Aperture Foundation; for eight years, she served on the Board of Directors of Her Justice (which provides legal services to victims of domestic abuse), and she now chairs its annual Photography Auction and serves on its Senior Advisory Board. She is also on the Photography Committee of the Whitney Museum. Cathy is Chair of the Board of Visitors of Columbia Law School, where she is an adjunct professor and teaches seminars on Law and Finance and Law and Finance of the Art Market. Cathy serves on the Governing Board of the Yale Art Gallery and is Chair of the Nominating Committee of the Board. Cathy also serves on the Board of the Bronx Council on the Arts. Cathy continues to represent collectors, artists, galleries, corporations and museums in a wide range of art-related transactions. Cathy has also represented banks and funds on art financing transactions. In 2022, Cathy was honored by the New York Law Journal with the Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her accomplishments and impact on the legal community and the practice of law over the course of her career.

Philippa Loengard (moderator) is the Executive Director of the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts. Her research focuses on issues surrounding the visual arts and entertainment industries. She is particularly interested in issues of taxation as they pertain to the arts and the rights of authors and creators. Loengard is the Chair of the Copyright Division of the ABA. She also serves as the Chair of the Artists' Rights subcommittee of the Art Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association. She was in private practice at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel before joining the Kernochan Center staff. An interest in intellectual property issues as they related to her work in documentary film provoked her return to law school. Prior to attending law school, Loengard worked in television production for several years as an assistant director on multiple shows and also as a coordinating producer for A&E Television Networks. She is a graduate of Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar and an article editor for the Journal of Law and the Arts. Loengard holds an LL.M. from New York University School of Law. Loengard graduated with a master’s degree from Stanford University, where she was the 1994 recipient of the Karl A. and Medira Bickel Fellowship, and has a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University.

Symposium: The Art of Looking: Ethics in Photography

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