When GOOD photographers do BAD things

There will be some issues that people disagree with me on. We've all got our own opinions and that's fine. I'm not interested in discussing individual cases, I'm interested in how other people approach reconciling their own personal relationship with photography and other artwork against their own moral code. For those pointing out that the JK Rowling tweets are not comparable to Polanski's crimes etc. — That's the point. Where do we draw the line?

Nicely handled, beautifully edited, written and thoughtful considerate. Hope many people see and appreciate this work and your channel.

My own experience throws light on this question for me. My grandmother, who grew up in a white farming family in Arkansas, looked after me for a great part of my childhood. She, and my grandfather, were loving and caring, and gave me a basis for being able to love others in my later life. But after they bothdied, and I was going through their papers, I found a box of 8x10 B&W prints. These were ordered so that they began with distant views, in which I could make out a procession with cars in a landscape, which gave a time, the early 1920's, and a place, the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. As I leafed through the prints and the photographer got closer and closer to the procession, it was possible to make out figures dressed in white among the cars. Closer yet, and you could see that they wore white pointed hoods. After some study I learned that when my grandparents moved to Colorado, in the early 20s, the Ku Klux Klan had moved west as well, and it experienced a flowering in that new environment. These were carefully arranged photos my grandparents had kept for more than fifty years. But that whole background was unknown to me as a child and young man, and seemed to have nothing to do with my experience of my grandparents. It was a shock I had never expected.  I discovered those photos 25 years ago, and I've been thinking about them ever since. My judgment is this: we are all of us composed of a whole cast of personalities, some given to us at birth, others acquired in the patchwork world we grow into. Some of these personalities harmonise with each other, but others are at odds. This is just a given in our twisting and woven human lives. The knowledge that my loving grandparents were very likely supporters of the KKK at one time does not fit easily with the rest of what I know of them. But once I came to know that not only they, but everyone else on this earth is a jostling company of different persons in single bodies, I learned finally to be at peace with both my love for them, and my total rejection of the hatefulness they seemed to entertain as well. I think in substance that the question you pose is has no different answer. It is a shock to learn that the Nicholas Nixon we can celebrate as a feminist artist also harbours the Nicholas Nixon we deplore as a sexual exploiter. Was it Solzhenitsyn who wrote that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart? I'd say: relax and enjoy the photographs, but never let that enjoyment be mistaken for approval of the man's sexual predation.

One thing is for sure: Jamie Windsor´s essays are a visual and thought-provoking experience.

What bothers me most about this is the "should we" as if some peoples judgment should rule for everyone. Its that type of thinking that makes people think they can shut down other people just because they disagree with their Art

Quentin Tarantino's comment about the 13 year old girl is really unbelievable. I will never look at him the same now.

“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.” - Marcus Aurelius

One question remains for me to ask here: Why do we expect that an artist must be morally correct in all aspects of life without blame? He or she is only an artist who is particularly talented in this one of his or her special fields. This does not mean that he or she has moral integrity. Can, should or must we first demand a character reference before we consider the person's art to be good? Well, now there were two questions. Finally, here is a statement: I am afraid of the rising cancel-culture, as it develops into a new censorship culture that frightens me.

so much food for thought here. i appreciate the thought of not reacting aggressively to how others choose to deal with their relationship to art by bad people

Personally, any deep emotional connections made to art prior to learning something repulsive about its creator are hard to sever. I tend to accept the possible persistence of those attachments for myself, while refusing to form new relationships with the artist's work. And I definitely no longer advocate for either the art or the artist, publicly or privately. Hard to know what the appropriate societal response should be. I don't think denying the work or its historical significance is truly productive. Rather, I suspect we should embrace candor and include as objective as possible discussion of the artist's misdeeds and the ways in which those actions–once brought to light–affect perception of both the work, its creator and the cultural reasons they were able to achieve such prominence. Broader (rather than narrower) comprehension of such unfortunate situations seem to be more effective at safeguarding society against their recurrences.

Interesting, as ever and thought provoking... As WS once wrote 'The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.'

I don't think this tension between art and the artist can ever truly be resolved precisely because the arguments pull us so powerfully in different directions at the same time. every single one of us is imperfect to some degree and in that sense we are aware of the contradictions inherent in condemnation of behaviours and attitudes in others when we are hardly paragons of virtue. On the other hand there are some behaviours and attitudes that are so reprehensible that they will forever cloud our judgement of some artists. Our attitude in each case is subjective and yet also has wider social impacts, as the cumulative effect of our support or condemnation contributes to how an artist is viewed. In the end I think we are uncomfortably held forever in the tension between art and the artist and this is necessarily so.

I wanted to thank you for this video. I’ve been struggling with this question myself. I still haven’t decided how I feel about this but your video definitely helps. Welcome back!

"Having done great art does not give you free range to do bad things without consequences." No, it doesn't. But the consequences are decided by the law, as far as the artist having done something illegal. I feel that you confused artists having something criminal, with artists having opinions "we don't like". I wish we would differ more between the two. Essentially what we are doing, when we don't differ, is to say that someone having an opinion, which we don't like, is as bad as having done something criminal. How is that for having a dialogue? Also, about separating the art from the artists. I'm a Jew who enjoys Wagner's music. I wish that he would have been enlightened, rather than finding his opinions in the most base thoughts of other humans, but his music is still greatly composed. I chose to view it like this: a person can give charity, for then one day do something criminal. Should we then tell people to return the charity he has given, because we now found out that he's not a good person? Obviously not, let the positive outcome of the positive things he did do stay for the good of us all, even if he still needs to take the consequences of his bad actions.

I guess there is something to "never meet your heroes, they will disappoint you". I personally have a hard time separating the art from the artist. If the artist is awful to someone, I just don't connect with their art. It's like you said, tainted. There are books I can't read, even if I loved them previously, there is music I can't listen to, there are photos that make me wonder if the person in the picture has suffered to have that image taken, and so on. The art is part of the artist, and if the artist went "bad"... Yeah.

Great video. This is also something I struggle with, and I’m glad you also pointed out the selfishness of having to struggle with this to begin with...and questioning where to draw the boundaries. One thing I’d like to add is, why we even have defined these works as important? Most “important” works are defined so from the white, western, perspective. And there is no denying their influence, but to “remove” or, rather, move on from these works wouldn’t leave us devoid of great art, but give us opportunity to support and learn from non-westernized, or marginalized, great works that were often censored or ignored throughout history at the cost of celebrating these problematic and harmful authors...

Thanks for putting this insightful video together, Jamie! I often struggle with this exact issue, still exploring my own answer to it...

I believe your question is merited. Myself, I tend to separate the actions and practices of a person from their creative work. Not always easy but it is a choice I've always striven to hold constant. It is how I hope others will respond to my creative work despite differences in religious or political views.

I like how you propose a conversation, giving your own thoughts about it but keeping an open mind. This is for sure a hard topic and I don't think we'll ever get into a solid answer, but it sure is a healthy discussion, more so to us artists out there.

Glad You're still here Jamie!