Ethical photography in Global Health
These guidelines are intended to be a thoughtful reference for ethical considerations when storytelling through photography. While primarily designed for photographers, ethical standards in global health photography require shared responsibility among commissioning agencies, publishers, and audiences alike. Anyone who creates, commissions, publishes, or engages with imagery related to health, inequality, and lived experience may find these guidelines and the reflection they elicit useful – whatever their level of expertise. Rather than offering a prescriptive checklist, the document aims to provide guidance that can be adopted and adapted across different contexts and roles, from photographers and creative professionals to global health practitioners, educators, funders, and community partners. The intention is to invite deep reflection on power, representation, and ethics. Readers are encouraged to pause, question who they are, what they bring, and where they sit in relation to power (we refer to this as positionality throughout), and make more thoughtful, accountable choices about how visual stories are commissioned, created, and shared.
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