Importunate voyeurism revealing intimate spheres of human life has become a form of communication in the contemporary culture. Intimacy of another person, and particularly their otherness appear to be a desirable attraction in art.
Photojournalism in the most intense way confronts the viewer with otherness. Watching the real world, the real Stranger is something that boosts people’s curiosity. Therefore, ‘close-up’ photos are often regarded as a kind of harassment. Faces and bodies of apparently excluded people, shown with the photographic truth, exceed the perceptive breaking point in a risky way. The Other becomes a subject, cannot go unnoticed. There are social worlds and those Strangers/Others which are not revealed, and if they are brought to light, it is mainly to define a certain problem, anomaly, oddity, in order to mock them or warn against them or to use them as a visual decoy.
There are few artists who, while photographing a Strange/Other corporeal object show genuine empathy, being aware of the fact that they cross the boundary of shame and morality.
By the power of reflecting the reality, photography is a demanding medium – it is all too easy to harm somebody, however the basic task of the photography is to 'touch' and get familiar with the Stranger/the Other.
Key words: photography, human, the body, voyeurism, intimacy, exclusion