EXPOSITORY WRITING

As an aspiring creative immersed in an entrepreneurial context, I wanted to explore the ethical themes that might play into the realization of important and impactful art. In Global Professional Practices, I learned about the diverse regulatory systems that exist in different parts of the world and how they all play a part in the development of any new idea, that being in the context of art, business, innovation, or entrepreneurship. When I started exploring Steve McCurry’s huge success that largely revolves around Sharbat Gula’s Photograph, I was not expecting such a debate on ethical practices. I was very surprised by Gula’s story, and how different positionalities within the worlds’ strata of privilege might uncontiously contibute to entrenched situations of capitalized exploitation. The main question for my analysis became that of the ends justifying the means, which transformed the Sharbat Gula debate into a complex philosophical analysis of the world.