Q: Do you think that a photographer has responsibility in any way for the actions he or she is photographing? Is a war correspondent partially responsible for the war he or she photographs, for example?

Scott Lothes: In the purest sense, no. And by the purest sense, I mean the photographer as the invisible observer. In reality, photographers can be quite visible, and their presence does not go without notice, nor without effects. But that's getting complicated, so for the sake of this argument, let's stick to the purest sense, where the photographer has no responsibility for his or her subject matter. Where the photographer's responsibility begins lies in his or her motives.

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