Learn something new alongside a community of photographers from around the world with the Photo Ethics Centre.
Get involved with some of their online courses and apply empathy, autonomy, and integrity to your photography practice.
So many of the negative stories we see today about photographers and photography organisations could have been prevented if the people involved were ethically literate.
Yet photographers have incredibly few opportunities to access ethics education. Self-taught photographers are often unable to access training courses, and degree-seeking programmes often do not cover ethics in a meaningful way. This means that photographers – especially those working freelance – are largely left to figure it out for themselves, with very few resources and little institutional support to guide them on that journey.
Photographers without ethical literacy are at risk of unknowingly breaching national or international laws and ethical norms about privacy and confidentiality, copyright, consent, and child protection. These breeches can be costly – in terms of both time and reputation. Beyond the individual photographer, photography ethics is important for our wider society. Photographs shape how we view the world, and when we take and share photographs, we are shaping how others view the world. This is an enormous responsibility. Photographic integrity is in jeopardy today because this responsibility is not always taken seriously.
In order to make ethics education accessible to photographers working today, we offer online courses that are accessible to photographers and visual storytellers across the world, working in all genres and at all levels. Our online courses are especially geared toward individuals who:
- work in the photography industry
- take and share pictures regularly
- use photography in their work
- are interested in photography ethics
Here some of the courses available:
The Photographer’s Ethical Toolkit
The Photographer’s Ethical Toolkit online course is our award-winning primer in photography ethics, and it is available online as a free service. Why is it free? Because we think photography ethics is important, and we want people to learn about it. It’s as simple as that.
Our Photojournalism Ethics course series is a three-part journey into the ethics of photojournalism and documentary photography. The aim of this series is to strengthen the skills photojournalists need to navigate ethical dilemmas in their work. When you enrol in one of the Photojournalism Ethics course modules, you will have access to a private Facebook group where you can work through course material in discussion with other participants.
When you complete all three modules in the Photojournalism Ethics course series, you will be invited to apply for certification. Please note that active participation in the online exercises is mandatory in order to qualify for certification.