As a trans filmmaker and artist, Hatty Nestor’s Ethical Portraits: In Search of Representational Justice is more than a book to me—it’s a sharp, necessary lens that refracts the complexities of depicting others. Nestor’s essays take an unflinching look at the ethical entanglements surrounding representation, particularly of those who are incarcerated or marginalized, pulling apart the layers of power and accountability that shape these portrayals.
Nestor writes with the urgency of someone deeply invested in the humanity behind every image. Her focus on judicial portraiture—a genre that captures people when they are most vulnerable, most judged—is a brilliant entry point into a broader discourse about the stakes of representation. These sketches, created to serve institutions of law and order, reveal the power dynamics embedded in visual culture. For those of us who create art, her critique resonates as a quiet warning: to see is not always to know.
In Ethical Portraits, Nestor expands on ideas I first encountered when I interviewed her in 2020 for Girls in Film, UK. Our conversation touched on representation and accountability—concepts that sit at the heart of her work. Reading the book feels like an extension of that dialogue, with Nestor pushing the boundaries of those early insights into something profoundly reflective and nuanced.
Her decision not to interview prisoners directly was, to me, a powerful refusal of easy voyeurism. Instead, she interrogates the works of other artists and how they frame their subjects, emphasizing that storytelling carries a weight of responsibility even in the absence of those depicted. Nestor’s critique insists that it is not enough to give voice or visibility; the manner in which it is done—the structures it challenges or reinforces—determines its ethical foundation.
I found her analysis of Chelsea Manning’s representation particularly affecting. Manning’s image has been contested territory, shaped alternately by the state, the media, and activists. Nestor’s writing here is at once empathetic and incisive, unpacking how visual narratives can either imprison or liberate. The idea that art can return agency to the incarcerated, allowing them to reclaim their stories, feels deeply relevant for anyone working in storytelling.
One of Nestor’s most profound insights lies in her questioning of empathy. She asks whether empathy, as it is commonly used in art and media, risks becoming another form of control—a tool for projecting one’s own emotions onto another rather than understanding them on their own terms. For me, this idea lands with particular weight: how often have I, as a filmmaker, sought to connect with my audience without fully interrogating who benefits from that connection?
Perhaps what makes Ethical Portraits so vital is that it avoids easy answers. Nestor’s writing is rigorous but never prescriptive. Instead, she leaves space for readers to wrestle with their own discomfort, to confront their complicity in systems of representation that commodify or flatten the lives of others. This isn’t just about ethics; it’s about confronting the limits of our own vision.
As an artist, I appreciated how Nestor reconciles art’s dualities—its commercial existence as a product and its capacity for personal transformation. Her reflections sharpen the lens through which we view art, encouraging a self-awareness that feels both necessary and rare in our image-saturated world.
Reading Ethical Portraits reminded me why representation matters, and why it is never neutral. It is a process fraught with imbalances, but those imbalances can be illuminated and resisted if approached with care, accountability, and humility.
For anyone invested in the ethics of storytelling—whether as a creator or a consumer—this book offers more than intellectual insight. It demands a kind of reckoning with the ways we look, and the ways we choose to see. As I closed its pages, I found myself not just reflecting on Nestor’s ideas, but also re-calibrating my own.
Ethical Portraits is a necessary read, not because it offers solutions, but because it sharpens the questions that art must ask of itself: Who gets to represent whom? What do we owe to those we portray? And perhaps most hauntingly—what does our art take from them?
To learn more about Hatty Nestor and her work, visit her profile on the University of Reading's website.
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