In our recent story about the future of McNeil Island Correctional Center I shot only photos that avoided showing faces of prisoners. We photographers have to avoid showing the identity of persons in a photo from time to time, and the reasons vary.

Before being allowed into the prison I had to agree to the Department of Corrections' requirement of not showing prisoners in a manner that might allow them to recognized later. Which mostly means 'no faces'. The DOC has that requirement to protect the state from possible lawsuit.

So I'm photographing prisoners with this constraint in order to protect the state-- not to protect the prisoner, nor the TNT.

Here's the logic:

There's no law restricting photography of prisoners, but civil lawsuits are a risk.

The Department of Corrections has total control of the prisoners. If a prisoner says to me, "go ahead and take my picture", and I put him in the paper identifiably, he could later file a lawsuit against the DOC arguing, in effect, "The DOC failed to protect me! I didn't want to be depicted in the paper at all. I only said 'OK' because I might get in trouble if I didn't cooperate. I have no free will. Because I've been seen in the paper, I'm now infamous as a criminal. After I'm out I'll be subject to humiliations and discrimination because of that negative publicity. I've been harmed by the DOC." And he might win such a suit.

So the DOC protects themselves and the taxpayers by keeping prisoners out the paper.

This limitation can be overcome, however, if the prisoner signs an agreement that he's not under any pressure, that he really does want to be in the paper, and he holds the DOC harmless. But the procedure is cumbersome enough that we only use it when we know in advance whom we want to photograph.

The reason that the newspaper isn't at risk of such a lawsuit is for basic first amendment reasons. As long as we don't publish false or misleading things nor invade privacy, we're pretty safe against suits.

As far as protecting the prisoners themselves, like anyone else, if they don't want to be in the paper, they won't be. We rarely photograph someone if they say 'no'. Exceptions mostly are public officials, celebrities, and criminal defendants.

And I ain't no Paparazzo.

Photojournalists encounter similar constraints in primary schools and hospitals. Kids and patients are presumed to not have totally free will or legal authority regarding publicity, so those institutions only let us in if we agree not to photograph someone until a release has been signed or some equivalent.

When I was embedded in Iraq, the American military enforced the restrictions of the Geneva Conventions and wouldn't allow us to photograph prisoners of war at all. Civilians who were detained for searches or were arrested, such as the men above near Mosul who were arrested for trying to evade a dragnet, were OK.

We also generally avoid showing faces (or printing the names) of those arrested until actual criminal charges are filed, or at least certain. A picture of someone in cuffs creates a pretty strong impression of criminality, and if they end up not being charged with a crime, they might have a slander case against the paper.

Of course, there's another way to conceal a person's identity: obscure their face. Everyone has seen done it a zillion times on TV, but we're purists when it comes to manipulating photos.

The above photo of a kid being detained at gunpoint in 1993 is the only time I can remember publishing a photo with the face obscured. It was a valuable photo for the TNT's project on violence, so we bit the bullet (so to speak) and used one of Photoshop's filters.