Street Urchin of Bangkok

KKJohn wrote:

Peter Bendheim wrote:

Nice work

Looks like the same person I took a pic of a few years ago in Bangkok - but a bit older in your pic. I wonder if by some strange coincidence it was.

Nice shot. You could be right, tho a lot of these street people look similar. Did you notice if she had a tooth missing by any chance?

Any thoughts on the ethical issue of street photography? Or again about the exploitation of these young people used for begging by gangs?

From the shots: number six (the close up portrait) works by far and way the best for me. The one's from a greater distance are less appealing to me (likely because of the constraints of shooting such subjects) and the other portraits are slightly out of focus/soft? I really like number six though.

On the ethical front: I don't think you have much to worry about in terms of choice of subject. Street photography is at its best when it's photographing the marginalised. That being said, where ethics certainly enters for me is when those shots are then presented. Here I must take issue with your title- "street urchin"- and your comment in this reply that "a lot of these street people look similar." The title seems offensive to me; must we resort to Dickensian tropes? And this remark that all "street people" look the same is just plain nonsense and exactly the kind of dehumanization that good street photography should attempt to overcome. I would have liked these shots a lot more with less of this 'look poverty!' language and some context. I presume you don't speak the local language but could not interact but some kind of external context could be used in the place of that and/or a thicker description of your perceptions of her life. Sorry if this seems harsh, I just really think you should be careful with the language. Picture six is great though