Press Enquiries
The Photography Ethics Centre was founded by Savannah Dodd in 2017, and is supported by an international team of advisors. This social enterprise organisation is based in Northern Ireland, but operates globally. Our aim is to raise awareness about the ethics of taking and sharing photographs. We do this by producing educational programmes and materials, including workshops, guest lectures, online courses, podcasts, and articles - all about the ethics of photography.
Press Contact
Contact Savannah Dodd for press enquiries via email at savannah[at]photoethics.org or by phone at +44 (0) 7561 151 494
Savannah Dodd, PhD / Founder and Co-Director
Savannah is an anthropologist and photographer with expertise in visual media ethics. She currently holds a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Queen’s University Belfast. Savannah sits on the boards of the Belfast Photo Festival and of Source Magazine, as well as the Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Panel of Photo Museum Ireland. Savannah previously sat on the inaugural Ethics Panel of the Environmental Photographer of the Year Award. In 2023, she delivered a TEDx talk at Queen’s University Belfast.
Previous Coverage
“As photojournalism contests elevate certain images to global prominence, they also influence how violence, dignity, and memory are constructed in the public imagination.”
“When Russia's invasion of Ukraine stymied his travel plans, Belgian photographer Carl De Keyzer decided to take a virtual trip to Russia instead.”
“Conversations about the power of photography, the status of the subject, and the responsibility of the image-maker are now commonplace, but back in 2017, when Savannah Dodd launched the Photography Ethics Centre, they were not at all.”
Savannah Dodd, PhD., was awarded the International Visual Literacy Association’s (IVLA) Education Award at the 56th annual conference held in San Diego, California this October.
Photo Museum Ireland hosted this event which consisted of three panels, discussing EDI, AI, and sustainability.
On Monday, February 19, 2024, Fairpicture hosted their 10th FairTalk where we delved into what it means to uphold dignity through the lens of still and moving image and provide tools to create impactful narratives that respect the dignity of the protagonist.
Savannah Dodd asks us to think about visual media as data points, and she urges us to expand the dataset by cultivating an understanding of visual media ethics.
On this episode of The Beginner Photography Podcast, the importance of ethical decision-making in photography is explored. Host Raymond Hatfield and guest Savannah Dodd delve into the personal and contextual factors that contribute to ethical decision making, and the impact of sharing a photograph.
“How we wield one of the world’s most powerful weapons; writer Eleanor Scott looks at the artists, journalists, companies and photographers championing photography for social change.”
Referencing the Photography Ethics Centre’s Statement of Ethics campaign, “Quill asked photojournalists about their personal ethics.”
Is it time to extend the concept of responsible travel to the photos we take?
What ethical issues arise in the visual coverage of war? In the visual reporting of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, what are we seeing and what should we be seeing?
The Photography Ethics Centre has launched a campaign to encourage organisations and professionals in the photography industry to publish their Statements of Ethics.
The Belfast-based Photography Ethics Centre is today launching a new campaign encouraging photographers, editors, curators, organisations, and other professionals in the photography industry to write and publish Statements of Ethics. Amid tectonic shifts across the industry, ethics provides crucial foundations on which photographers can ground their work.
The Photography Ethics Center is asking all photographers to commit to publishing a statement of ethics on their websites. By doing so, the hope is that all photographers will think more proactively about the ethics of their work.
Savannah Dodd, a Portaferry resident, has attended a celebratory event in the House of Lords, having been recognised as one of the UK’s 100 most inspirational female entrepreneurs.
At the end of 2021, Dignified Storytelling released a handbook to promote storytelling practices that are grounded in the human right to dignity.
This conversation between Savannah Dodd, the founder of the Photography Ethics Centre, and David Campbell starts to set out the landscape of ethics.
“We are not trained in school about how we make meaning in photographs or read photographs yet we are doing it every day. As a culture we currently don’t have the skills to navigate that.”
Savannah Dodd speaks with Alice Chautard at the University of Oxford’s REACH programme for water security on photography ethics in international development.
BBC Correspondent Allan Little addresses the gulf between the reality of war and our ability to comprehend it from afar. He picks ups on Susan Sontag's essay on war photography.
The famous photo agency has had to confront big questions about the role of its storied archive in the photo industry today.
AmberSide hosted this panel with Sarah Waiswa, Liz Hingley, and Savannah Dodd. This was the second in their series of talks about the ethics of image making.
Long overdue, we can finally begin to confront issues of bias, morality, and principle that have long infiltrated the medium by many of its most prominent practitioners.
This episode of the Great Creators Podcast is about design, innovation and research in the Creative Industries and features indie games company Brain & Nerd’s Tina Lauro Pollock and founder of The Photography Ethics Centre Savannah Dodd.
In this article, Photography Ethics Centre founder Savannah Dodd is interview by The Politics of Representation Collective at Cambridge University to discuss the role of photo ethics in academic research contexts.
It would be seen as bizarre on a Greek or Spanish holiday.
Previous Press Releases
This event was organised by the Photography Ethics Centre in partnership with the photographies journal. It took place at Queen’s University Belfast on June 3-4, 2026.
Rather than seeking to delineate any universal ethical truths, the symposium undertook this messy endeavour, asking: How are photographers and other image-based practitioners negotiating the ethical decisions they encounter? Conversations spanned questions of representation and participation, as well as the challenges presented by archives, digital technologies, and the environmental crisis.
This symposium seeks to engage photographers, curators, archivists, and researchers in a critical discussion about the ethical dimensions of photography.
The results of this survey will help to inform where we focus our time and resources to best contribute to ethical advancement within the visual media industries.
On Global Ethics Day 2024, we published the results of a new research project which distils eight key lessons in photography ethics.
To celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Statement of Ethics Campaign, we are launching our own Photography Ethics Centre merch - and to celebrate the launch of merch, we are doing a giveaway!
The Photography Ethics Centre is today launching a new campaign encouraging photographers, editors, curators, organisations, and other professionals in the photography industry to write and publish Statements of Ethics.
Savannah Dodd has been named as one of the UK’s most 100 inspirational female entrepreneurs by Small Business Britain’s f:Entrepreneur ‘#ialso100’ campaign.
This new podcast series is all about the ethics of photography. Through weekly conversations with accomplished photographers, we will cover topics like consent, dignity, power, responsibility, impact, and collaboration, among many others.
This week, we have launched a brand new online training course designed specifically for photojournalists and documentary photographers.
Our Writing for Other Platforms
Debate is growing about ethics as concerns are raised about photographic practices across all kinds of industries, especially in light of the rise of AI-generated imagery.
Savannah Dodd takes stock of the challenges and opportunities for ethical photographic practice that the growth of generative AI technologies presents.
A reflection about dignity in dementia care and in photography of ill health. This essay was commissioned by The Lancet and based on Savannah Dodd’s project Thanks, Gd.
While turning the camera inward may alleviate ethical qualms about positionality, photographing the people closest to us is not without ethical considerations. Seven photographers discuss the ethics of working on stories close to home.
Over the course of the coronavirus pandemic so far, there have been many questions raised about what it means to visually represent a public health crisis ethically: What kinds of visual stories do we need?
In their second collaboration, Andrew Jackson and Savannah Dodd discuss the impact of the prioritisation of the white, male gaze, both for photojournalism and broader society.
Last year, Photography Ethics Centre founder Savannah Dodd delivered a workshop for community youth workers at Greater Shankill Alternatives in Belfast, Northern Ireland, funded by the Rebecca Vassie Trust.
It is the broader socio-cultural context that shapes how we learn to value different ways of seeing. And it consistently puts white, male ways of seeing right at the top.
There is a difference between how we photograph people with a handheld camera and how we photograph people with a camera drone when it comes to accountability. Can the same regulations really govern the two?
The issue of consent is key across the photographic community. But development photography, in particular, presents a unique set of challenges because of the complexity of the subject/photographer relationship.
In this episode of the Queen’s Management School Good Business Podcast, Dr Laura Steele is joined by Savannah Dodd, founder of the Photography Ethics Centre, to discuss issues of photography ethics.