Look at some past Pulitzer Prize images and you'll see people on the brink of death. One that I recall showed a mother and her daughter falling from a burning building. The mother died, the daughter landed on her mother and lived. It's a haunting, disturbing image. The famous shot of the Challenger explosion catches the moment of death for 7 brave astronauts, albeit not as up-close-and-personal as the subway shot. It's a very gray area indeed. Shots of homeless people are also two sided. They can raise awareness and compassion for a troubling societal issue, but they can also seem like an invasion of privacy and an assault on the dignity everyone deserves. Tough call.

I've done some street photography, but only of people who were not "in distress" shall we say. I don't feel I invaded their privacy as the shots only show what they were doing in public view anyway. And there was no loss of dignity. But I agree with Denise that there are times when your moral compass is having a hard time pointing north when deciding whether to take the shot or not. Even with the subway shot, some folks feel it was ok to print and others are horrified by it. I guess our moral compasses don't always point to the same north.