Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Potography plays a key role in fashion magazines. In this type of publications, also called feminine, images occupy a privileged position. One of the main reasons is that fashion needs to generate desire and enthusiasm: it always has to go a step further because its essence is aspiration, and this component of dream and seduction can be effectively transmitted through a photograph. Likewise, fashion is a trend: it is synonymous with constant change and the photographs, because of their immediacy and instantaneous characteristics, adapt to that sense of transience that fashion requires. Through this article, we intend to point out the differences between the photography taken for a fashion editorial and fashion advertising photography, based on the fact that both have fashion and photography in common and that both are subject to commercial interests. Finally, the ethical limits of fashion photography will be addressed.

In a digital world, multimedia data needs a clarifying text, as these documents offer polysemic interpretations. Hence, the texts work as support to further develop the image’s necessarily concise meaning. The captions in media websites typically appear in the news pages, not on covers, owing to the limited space available. In digital editions, multimedia documents have a function related to design, the need to attract attention and provide a link to the content. In this respect, we wonder whether opting for design doesn’t underestimate the actual information provided by the photo caption. This may be a matter of post truth, as it is increasingly complex to find true and accurate texts. Through this work, we reflect on the irruption of ICT and on the loss of information in communicative processes. The digital front pages of four newspapers are explored in search of captions that contextualize and clarify the multimedia’s polysemic quality. Our goal is for young people to have tools to assess the objectivity and subjectivity of journalistic texts. This didactic proposal presents a series of activities offered to verify whether rhetorical mechanisms – appropriate to argumentative and literary discourse – play a key role in identifying misinformation in the post-truth era.

As a teacher, I revisit what happened in the non-formal teaching-learning process of an expanded photography workshop, which was also part of a pilot program of social reintegration with vulnerable populations coming from the streets, prostitution and seclusion. The purpose is to recognize how the construction, and awareness of, the photographer’s gaze, are protagonists of a particular type of intelligence that makes photography an interesting social communication strategy. This analysis is framed in the pedagogical considerations that shaped the workshop and discusses how some specific exercises triggered the intellectual empowerment of the students, through which they developed a conscious look supported by two guiding principles: the living and organic image and the off-line image. This process also constituted an exercise of photographic intelligence, considered to be urgent in order to coexist in a world that is permanently bombarded by photographs that unite or separate us.

Photographer Kevin Carter committed suicide shortly after receiving the Pulitzer Prize for a photograph he made in Africa where a vulture seems to stalk a hungry child. Although the common place has been to accuse the reason for the photojournalist’s suicide for remorse, the ethical dilemma is much more complex and the context of the case deserves a more thorough review of the facts and situations that led Carter to end his own life.

This study aims at constructing a socio-mediatic scenario that will enable an analysis of the deepfake phenomenon, a true threat to discourses in time of post-truth. To do so, it proposes a classification of genres, cases, discursive fields, technologies of production and detection, ethical issues and cultural challenges that are imposed by this emergent form of constructing narratives through image and sound. The background of this scenario is set by the concept, post-truth, understood as a phenomenon that arose within the digital media, and which has fueled a war of power discourses in such media. The deepfake scenario is revealed to be emergent, evolutionary, changing, highly dynamic and progressive; further, deepfake is identified as a phenomenon that functions as political tool, piece of entertainment, means of activism and threatening weapon that poses new technological, ethical, legal and cultural challenges.

Are there links between photography and discomfort? Why are images that are disturbing to watch published and shared? Should we show this kind of photographs? From these and other questions, we reflect on the complex role of images in the current digital scenario. Indeed, uncomfortable photographs and disturbing images circulate on the Internet, emphasizing the need to strengthen critical reading and reflective skills. Furthermore, the primacy given to images in contemporary culture, and the manifold ways in which it affects our understanding of the world, sets before us the challenge of developing a form of techno-ethics that will contextualize, and and reflect on, images -especially the uncomfortable and disturbing ones- with a full awareness of the perils of lies, manipulation and power.

This paper uses Michel Tournier’s novel, Golden Droplet, to illustrate the ambivalent relationship between photography and morals. The relationship between the photographic and the moral acts can have a negative character, in which the photographer -normally owing to economic reasons- makes non-moral use of the photographic act. To establish the photographic act as a moral act, this paper seeks support in the thinking of philosopher Adela Cortina, who puts forth a minimal ethics (ética mínima) or practical philosophy which, based on Kantian ethics, suggests that the collapse of general ethics can lead to its replacement by an ethics that recommends moral practices for specific situations. Moreover, such ethics is based on self-respect and the recognition of others not just as means, but as ends in themselves.

This paper addresses a series of issues related to advertising activities; in particular, those related to ethics in photography and the use of images for advertising. To do so, it firstly revises the notion of ethics in advertising and, secondly, it discusses the Spanish Advertising Law and the system of self-regulation of advertising activities. In addition, it is important to highlight the role played by both the Spanish Jury of Self-Regulation and the Advertising Observatory of the Women’s Institute. Finally, the figure of the professional advertising photographer is discussed.

This study discusses the importance of understanding the context of a given photograph for effective indexing. It is based on the application of Matrix 1 and Matrix 2 of the Photograph Indexation Reading Model that was developed following the Complex Method and the primary functions of images. The model was applied by two groups of Library Science students at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, using Matrix 1 and Matrix 2, as well as by an external user who only applied Matrix 2. The research presented in this paper is of an exploratory and applied nature. It analyzes a sample of two photographs that portray contemporary events. Participants were instructed to apply free indexing. It was observed that, when looking for information about the context of the images, information professionals had more resources for selecting key-words when indexing using Matrix 1. On the other hand, the external user who used Matrix 2 directly, without searching for information about context, only identified key-words related to the content that could be seen and interpreted in the photograph.

This study presents the methodology employed to create the Sistemas de Información Histórico Fotográficos (SIHF) (Historical-Photographical Information Systems). It discusses the documental and technological resources utilized for the creation of a SIHF applied to the study of the trades in local history. Further elements include creating a documental corpus, data processing and analysis, as well as implementing an automated data retrieval and processing manager. The conclusion obtained is that SIHF are made possible by an adequate combination of methodological and technological resources and skills.