Photography is Not a Crime

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Photography is Not a Crime

It’s a First Amendment Right

By Carlos Miller

The Homeland Security Bureau of the Miami-Dade Police Department has published a “Terrorist Awareness Guide” where it advises citizens to be on the lookout for people taking “inappropriate photographs or videos.”

And no, they are not talking about perverts shooting up the skirts of women.

They’re talking about people taking photographs of surveillance cameras and other things that are plainly visible to the naked eye.

Here is an excerpt of what the pamphlet says:

Maybe you are at a National Monument and you
notice a person nearby taking a lot of photos. Not
unusual. But then you notice that he is only taking
photos of t he surveillance cameras, crash barriers at
the entrances, and access control procedures. Is that
normal for a tourist? Absolute not!

The following should cause a heightened sense of
concern:

•       Unusual interest
•       Surveillance
•       Inappropriate photographs or videos
•       Note-taking
•       Drawing of diagrams
•       Annotating maps
•       Using binoculars or night vision devices

It should be noted that Detective Bustamante of the same homeland security bureau was one of the officers who responded to our first Metrorail incident where we were “permanently banned” for taking photos.

Bustamante proved pretty clueless of the law when he informed us we needed a permit to photograph anything within the Metrorail, regardless if we were shooting commercial or not.

Read the entire document below. The portion on photography is on the second page in the right-hand column circled in red.

Terrorist Awareness Guide MDPD-PINAC

Tags: Photography, police, privacy, surveillance, terrorism

Flotilla Fabrication

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“The average person believes implicitly that the photograph cannot falsify. Of course, you and I know that this unbounded faith in the integrity of the photograph is often rudely shaken, for, while photographs may not lie, liars may photograph.”

Lewis Hine 1909

Photographers often get defensive when reminded that many of them resort to ‘digital manipulation’ using the new tools currently available. Discussions about the limits of what is permissible regularly sparks off heated debates, particularly in contests. Jobs have been lost, awards cancelled, and credibility undermined when photographers have digitally manipulated photographs to create the image they have wanted.

Sadly, the arguments raised have largely dealt with issues of technique rather than issues of ethics. One school of thought suggests, ‘if it was doable in a darkroom, then it can be doable in a computer’. Others claim that conventional darkroom techniques, such as dodging, burning, or changing contrast are acceptable, but inserting, taking away, or displacing visual elements are off limits (though these too were, and had been, done in the darkroom). More ‘artistic’ criteria suggest that the essential ‘mood and character’ of the original image must be preserved. None of this addresses the central issue Hine had brought up in 1909. Is the photographer lying?

I believe the discussion needs to shift from ‘how’ the image was altered to ‘why’ it was altered. Indeed, photographers have ‘enhanced’ their images by using filters to darken skies, dodged and burned in the darkroom to change relative emphasis of visual elements, sometimes even eliminated visuals that distracted from what was considered central to the photograph. Subtle changes in tonality and gradation altered the ‘feel’ of an image, affecting the emotional response one might have to the visual experience.  In the analogue days, the skill sets required hand-eye  coordination to a far greater extent than is needed today. The modern photographer needs to learn about pixels, paths and plug-ins. The software used, the amount of RAM and processor speed are the new vocabulary that replaces darkroom tools of yore. But even in the digital age, the skill of the practitioner often determines whether the change is detectable.

There are those who subvert the process and deliberately play on detectability of the process, confronting the viewer with their interventions, questioning her perception of what is acceptable, stretching her boundaries of credibility. Indeed, on occasions, flaunting these very norms to raise uncomfortable issues of how images are read. Early theorists like Professor Fred Ritchin, currently at Tisch School of The Arts, New York University, have eloquently analysed how this ‘manipulation’, instead of undermining the credibility of the photograph, has returned the onus of authenticity upon the integrity of the author rather than the acceptability of the tools (human or mechanical).  One believes a photograph, as one believes a word, based on the reliability of the source, rather than the mode of production. The hugely talented pioneer of digital photography, the Mexican photographer Pedro Meyer, playfully, intelligently and skillfully, toyed with us, shaking the pillars of our age old beliefs, forcing us to question the process of seeing and believing.

Of course the photograph still retains the characteristic of being the primary source. “I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. I have photographs.” It is precisely because the photograph or the video, is seen as an unmoderated fact, that it is so powerful. It is precisely the reason why lying through a video or photograph can be so effective.

In this age of spin, rhetoric and hyperbole, does the liar, by shaking our confidence in the medium, undermine the veracity of the one source that we still implicitly trust? In some ways of course it does, but by doing so, the liar does us a favour. It reminds us to question, not merely the medium but also the source.

Buddha, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed were believed because they were trustworthy. They had established their credibility. They had a track record that gave their word a respectability that others who said otherwise did not have. I have no way to vouch for the veracity of the incredible claims that they made. That is the basis of a very different discussion. But it is undeniably true that centuries after they have gone, there are people who live by their ideals and are prepared to die for them. The lives that they lived, made their words believable. We believed their actions, which led to us believing their words.

That brings me to the point of this article. The video of the attack on the flotilla. People have correctly pointed to the technical errors in the released videos. The fact that there were white frames inside the sequence, that consecutive frames did not match, that crude alterations revealed the manipulation where people are seen to be walking through metal pylons, the amateurish display of a catapult by turning towards a camera on a tripod and holding it high, in the middle of an attack by armed soldiers, the fact that a voice inserted in the video is that of a woman on another ship, all make the video a laughable piece of ‘evidence’. Indeed, the detection of the tampering is what is being used as evidence of lies being told.

My argument is elsewhere. What if the Israelis had produced the perfect video, backing up their claims. What if their technicians had been more skilled, their computer animations more realistic, their actors more adept and telling their version of the story. Would that have validated their version of the story? I would like to return to who is telling the story. The veracity of the source.

Lies are more difficult to protect than the truth. If the version they had presented had been genuine, there would have been no need to confiscate all the visual material, releasing selective segments, with obvious tampering. If they had nothing to hide there would have been no need to jam the communications at the moment of attack, or to erase the audio from certain segments of the video. There would have been no reluctance to make all the evidence available and let the viewers decide. Suspicious behavior gives rise to suspicion. For a nation known for manipulating the truth at all levels, casting doubts on authentic data, vilifying honest citizens, persecuting every hint of dissent, it is the fact that the source is Israel that is the greatest reason for disbelief.

If a time were to come when Israel had a change of heart and for once spoke the truth, like Matilda in her burning house, there would be none to believe her. That fire is imminent and Israel’s house of lies might well be close to burning.

———————ENDS————————–

Other points of view.

BBC Panorama Video 1

BBC Panorama Video 2

“>Al Jazeera Storming of Gaza aid convoy

Legal assessment of Gaza Flotialla raid

Related links:

Military ties between India and Israel

In Defense of Helen Thomas

Human Rights Council Condemnation of Israeli Attacks

Adopted by a recorded vote of 32 to 3, with 9 abstentions.
The voting was as follows:
In favour: Angola, Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritius, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudia Arabia, Senegal, Slovenia, South Africa, Uruguay;
Against: Italy, Netherlands, United States of America;
Abstaining: Belgium, Burkina Faso, France, Hungary, Japan, Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Ukraine, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland:

Tags: attack, flotilla, Gaza, Israel, media, Palestine, propaganda, Shahidul Alam, terrorism, War

Power from the barrel of a lens

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By Satish Sharma

Forget about the power that, according to Mao, flows from the Barrels of Guns!

A lot more power actually flows through the matte black barrels of lenses. Camera lenses! And this is a power that flows a lot more silently and, most of the time, it works it magic very subtly.

Very rarely do pictures explode on the media scene like the now infamous cover picture on the August 9th issue of Time magazine. Very rarely do pictures present us with such a questionable and ‘teachable’ moment about photography and its political uses. Rarely do photographs become such a powerful peg for discussions that go on and on. Discussions that need to go on because we have to understand, dissect and discuss the spaces that photography occupies in contemporary society. Spaces that are hardly any different from the times when photography was a medium controlled by the political and secret department of a British colonial government. Photography, we have to remember, was invented at a time when colonialism was at its height and became a major player in the colonial game. Something that British army cadets, who were to be posted in the colonies, were specially taught and equipped for.

Images of Afghanistan by Mohammad Qayoumi (prior to CIA intervention and Russian invasion).

Photography is a powerful language, a valuable voice of authority for authorities. One has to understand how it is used. A “Writing with Light”- Photo Graphy is becoming more powerful than any other human language. It is more than just the world’s first universally understood language, one that needs no translators and appears to have no word language limitations because it is a technology driven by newer and newer technologies which give it a reach and power that no language ever had.

The endless flow of camera constructed pictures is, today, increasingly constructing our social and political landscape. Constructing us, actually, by manipulating the mental spaces that we live in. Defining our Drishti – our perception and very sense of self ! There are, after all, more photographs shot every year than there are bricks in the world. And photography, in its different, camera lens based, avatars (film and television, for example) is what makes us what we are -who we are manufactured to be.

Cameras construct our worlds in ways that word oriented languages did not because the visual language they present us with is perceived to have credibility, a veracity and a connection to objective truth that words did not. Pictures are becoming the bricks that construct our contemporary, increasingly visual world. A world that can no longer just ban the making of pictures as it once did or tried to do. A world in which technologies drive the move away from the word driven and language riven cultures towards vast visual information landscapes that are increasingly becoming part of a real, war driven, information wars . Wars that are, says the Project for a New American Century, about Full Spectrum Domination.

Domination that is blatant about not allowing any challenges –‘military, economic or cultural”. Domination that seeks ‘control of all international commons including Space and Cyberspace, Culture not excluded’ and is driven by never ending wars that see whole societies as a battlefield. A battlefield where – in the language of the US Marines’ ‘Fourth generation Warfare’ – “ the action will occur concurrently- throughout all participants depth , including their society as a cultural and not just as physical entity”. Special Human Terrain teams now work alongside the American Armed Forces. These anthropologists, ethnographers etc are uniformed cultural warriors. They are, very problematically, working in battlefields to understand and subvert cultures and peoples. Humanity is now a terrain to be controlled.

It is against this background of militrarised information and cultural control that one needs to look at the Time magazine cover. It was its founder, after all, who first projected the idea of the 20th century as ‘An American Centrury’. Henry Luce founded a media empire to project his agenda. Time, Fortune, Life and even the March of Time film series served to mediate his synarchist ideas of corporate control of political power. That he was a member of Yale university’s secretive Skull and Bones society like so many other American leaders, only adds to ones suspicions of hidden agendas.

Interestingly enough, Luce first used the term ‘American Century’ in a publication that is iconic in its use of photography. The words appeared in a 1941, Life magazine editorial.

Born in China, (a country which has interesting links to both synarchism and the Skull and Bones Society) he was the son of an American missionary and wanted the United States to be more missionary in the global and universal projection of its power beyond its territories. Go beyond territorial control, into the control of ideas and ideologies

It is the fact that he foresaw the power of photography in doing that and foregrounded it in his publications that interests and intrigues me. I am not surprised that “Time’ _ the first Magazine he founded – is still used (and uses photography) to push the ideas of a New American Century promoted by 21st century synarchists like Dick Cheney . No Wikileaks, digital world, challenge to mainstream, corporate media is to be allowed, or go unchallenged . Not in these days of information wars and their clear cut ideas on ”Perception Management”.

The introduction in the August 9th issue of Time by the editor, Richard Stengel, makes it very clear that the magazine was aiming to counter the information leaked by Wikileaks on the uncontrollable net.

“The much publicized release of classified documents by WikiLeaks has already ratcheted up the debate about the war. Our story and the haunting cover image by the distinguished South African photographer Jodi Bieber are meant to contribute to that debate. We do not run this story or show this image either in support of the U.S. war effort or in opposition to it. We do it to illuminate what is actually happening on the ground. As lawmakers and citizens begin to sort through the information about the war and make up their minds, our job is to provide context and perspective on one of the most difficult foreign policy issues of our time. What you see in these pictures and our story is something that you cannot find in those 91,000 documents: a combination of emotional truth and insight into the way life is lived in that difficult land and the consequences of the important decisions that lie ahead.”

The cover photograph offers an insight, but it is an insight into the workings of corporate media. It is definitely not about any truth – emotional or otherwise. It is, for all practical purposes, a political poster that you pay for. The accompanying text about “What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan” is a statement and not a question. It is a statement about staying on militarily, and it ignores the fact that Bibi Aisha’s mutilation occurred last year, at a time when the American led forces had been in the country for nearly nine years and with their own puppet government in place. Had intervened in, decades earlier, to actually create the Taliban. A government that hardly gives women any real space in the new Sharia ruled Islamic Republic that exists under American largesse. Reports by Afghan and womens’ human right groups actually show, from the times of the Taliban, an increase in the violence against women.
The cover photograph itself is a cynical attempt to photograph a desired future. It closely echoes the Steve McCurry photograph of another young Afghan girl on the cover of another American magazine. That ‘National Geographic’ cover represented the sad state of Afghanistan under Soviet occupation. This is one actually about life in Afghanistan after decades of American intervention and a decade of actual occupation.

Both the covers, interestingly enough, presented young and good looking women. Ones a western audience would be comfortable with. Ones the women in the west could connect with more easily. It is after all, they who are the actual targets of the propaganda. They and the lobbying they represent. Lobbying that is seen as necessary to keep the other international, partner armies in Afghanistan.

It is an earlier WikiLeaks document which makes that agenda clear. The CIA’s “Red Cell Special Memorandum: Afghanistan: Sustaining West European Support for the NATO-led Mission- Why Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough” presents a plan for a propaganda war designed to shore up declining public support in Germany and France. Support for a continued war in Afghanistan.
The memo is classified as ‘Confidential/No Foreign Nationals’ and presents a well thought out plan for the targeted manipulation of public opinion in the two NATO ally countries. Winning hearts and minds! This time in Europe and in America.

The fall of the Dutch government on the issue of Dutch troops in Afghanistan, worried the CIA. They became worried about repeat events in the countries that have the third and fourth largest troop contingents to the ISAF mission and proposed PR strategies that focused on pressure points that had been identified within these countries. For France it was the sympathy of the public for Afghan refugees and women. For Germany it was the fear of the consequences of defeat (drugs, more refugees, terrorism) as well as Germany’s standing in NATO.

The CIA report had clear bullet points. Power points, actually! They are about reinforcing Power.
• “Public Apathy Enables Leaders To Ignore Voters”
• “…But Casualties Could Precipitate Backlash”
• “Tailoring Messaging Could Forestall or At Least Contain Backlash”

The CIA thought that “Appeals by President Obama and Afghan Women Might Gain Traction” and very clearly stated that “Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the ISAF role in combating the Taliban because of women’s ability to speak personally and credibly about their experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory. Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share their stories with French, German, and other European women could help to overcome pervasive scepticism among women in Western Europe toward the ISAF mission…

The ‘media opportunities for Afghan women’ became a simple oppurtunistic use of Afghan women. They and their bodies fitted seamlessly into the old orientalist discourses about western, humanising and civilizing missions. Missions meant to liberate oriental women them from their savage and cruel men. This is about white knights in shining steel or modern camouflage armour rescuing dusky, eastern damsels in eternal distress. Distress that photography was successfully used to stress in the beautifully lit and textured colour of a magazine cover reduced to a campaign poster for more war. More occupation of more oriental lands in the name of more oriental women. That the real prizes were and are natural resources is not worthy of mention except when those resources might be seen by a western audience, to pay for western wars.

Jodi Bieber did a great job – aesthetically speaking. The cover portrait could be a professional fashion shoot! And the mainstream media jumped in to push her and their own messages about the need to fight on. They asked no serious questions about how empathy the photograph evoked was used to promote antipathy. To promote more war and further the occupation of a suddenly mineral and oil rich Afghanistan. There were no questions about the price that the civilian population of Afghanistan, including women and children were paying in lives cut horribly short by wars that go on and on and seem to be designed to do just that in an unending war on a tactic that the weak use to resist stronger occupiers of their resource rich lands . Who is terrorising whom, one wonders. And why?

Two interviews with Bieber that I heard on BBC and CNN, were focused in foregrounding her as a now famous photographer. A South African photographer, now based in London she was projected as a white, concerned woman photographer empathising with her Afghan sisters even as she (and they, the media themselves) ignored the privacy concerns of her subjects – women for whom purdah may actually be more than just a dictate by the terrible Taliban. The women who had to continue living their lives in the very badlands of Afghanistan she was showing up as evil and dangerous.

I remember that ‘privacy concerns of victims’ were and are still used to prevent the release of photographs of tortured Iraqis in Abu Ghraib. And even when the pictures were used the faces were carefully blurred out. That concern for privacy and the blurring to hide the identity of Bibi Aisha was not necessary for the Time cover, it seems. Dropping the family name while putting her on the cover of a magazine that sells millions of copies is no real attempt to protect her identity. Concern for the’ rights of victims’ matters when it might show up the ugly face of American occupation but doesn’t when it is the other side that is sought to be demonised. The real story of the mutilation is not important either. Later stories that checked out the Time story found that Aisha’s father in law had done the deed and then got a sanction for it from village elders. It had not been ordered by any Taliban Commander, as the Time story insisted.

Afghanistan becomes “ a broken 13th century country for the British Defense Secretary . A country full of “barbarians with 1200 AD mentality” for Erik Prince , the CEO of the infamous mercenary Blackwater ( now Xe) . What is wiped out of memory is shown by a collection of photographs from the Kabul of the mid 20th century. Recently republished in ‘Foreign Policy’ along with an essay by a Mohammed Qayoumi who lived there then, they present a conveniently forgotten Afghanistan. A country where women could wear western skirts and have bobbed haircuts as they attended universities and trained as doctors and nurses.

There is more to people than just the ugly western stereotypes the Time cover tries to reinforce and create anew. The freedom loving Mujhaideen heroes of the Soviet era are now Talibanised as barbaric terrorists. Terrorists cannot be “humanised” even in photographs that the world will see. I am reminded of the Red Cross photographs of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (wearing a white robe, sporting a long salt and pepper beard and sitting serenely) that were seen as dangerous by a former Research Director of the Combating Terrorism Centre in the US Military Academy at West Point. Jarret Barchman said ‘whats problematic for me is it (the Photograph) really humanises the guy”. The dangerous other is now not even supposed to be a human.

The history of photography, especially in American wars is an intriguing history. It is a story more mistold than told. It is a story of careful control. A control that began after the Vietnam war which, the Pentagon believes, was lost because of the freedom and unhindered access that photographers had in Vietnam and photographs got to the media at home. Since then, photographers and even journalists have a limited (if any) access to American battle fields. One is now embedded into an in-bed -with intimacy that makes dangerous disclosures difficult. Images that are released and printed go through a careful culling by self censoring photographers and the editors at home. Editors who act as censors and become the controllers of what the world is allowed to see. No dead bodies of American soldiers. Not even in flag draped coffins. Rights to privacy of dead soldiers and their families was the official Bush excuse when, actually, no one wanted a repeat of Mogadishu where pictures of dead American soldiers being dragged through the streets had forced an American withdrawal.

I wonder at how easily photography is used as a political weapon even as the medium itself is denied any political space or purpose.
Photography after the Second World War and McCarthyism was consciously pushed into the sanitised spaces of art galleries and museums away from its past as a concerned, conscience pricking tool. We were told by institutional gate keepers like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, that Photography was only about itself. It was an Art form that was about navel gazing photographers and about flattened formalist fields. Photography was not supposed to exist outside its own frame. It was not a medium that could be a window looking out on to the world’s uglier face – holding up a mirror to it. Photography was to be a mirror for a photographer to look into- see and explore his subjective self – express himself as an artist. An artist who never ever read what Roland Barthes says about one of the best ways of destroying the power of photography. Making it a Fine Art. But that is another story!

Related links:

The face that launched a thousand drones?

Once upon a time in Afghanistan

Sitting on a man’s back

Tags: 9/11, Afghanistan, CIA, privacy, propaganda, Rights, Soviet Union, Taliban, War, war on terror

The Face That Launched a Thousand Drones?

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By Anne Holmes

The much talked about August 9 Time magazine cover, unabashed in its aim to shore up support for the war effort in Afghanistan, has left many still shaking their heads in disbelief at such brazen exploitation of a woman’s suffering. It’s not the first time the plight of Afghan women has been used to manipulate public opinion. It’s a narrative we have become so accustomed to since the 2001 invasion, that many of my most intelligent female friends did not recognize it for the subversive emotional blackmail that it is. More important, they said, was the attention it brought to women’s issues. Well, let us talk about those issues in earnest, then.

The picture, by South African photographer Jodi Bieber, shows an 18-year old woman by the name of Bibi Aisha. Her story is tragic, and all too common in places like Afghanistan. Married off at a young age, she was beaten regularly by her in-laws and forced to sleep in the stable among the animals. Aisha decided to flee, but women wandering around on their own don’t go unnoticed in Afghanistan, and before long, she ended up in a prison in Kandahar. While not officially a crime, running away is often treated as such and can receive hefty sentences; in this case three years. But her father found her, and took her back to her in-laws. Her punishment for disgracing the family was decreed: her husband, A Taliban according to some accounts, should cut off her nose and ears. She was left for dead in the mountains of Oruzgan. As a testament to her fighter spirit, she managed to drag herself to her father’s house, who took her to a US Army hospital where she was cared for until they turned her over to a shelter in Kabul. This was 2009.

After an article about her ordeal appeared in the Daily Beast in December of last year, the Grossman Burn Foundation in California offered to perform reconstructive surgery on her this past spring, long before her face appeared on Time’s cover. She arrived in the US to begin treatment last week, just as her portrait appeared on newsstands amid the media frenzy surrounding the recent release of some 76,900 classified Afghan war documents. Perfect timing.

Aisha’s story will have a happy ending. America will have done right by her. She will get her nose back and hopefully go on to live a perfectly normal life far away from her abusers. It’s a heart-warming story. But what about the remaining 15 million Afghan women, nearly 90% of whom it is estimated suffer from some form of domestic abuse, and moreover, what does this have to do with America’s war?

Most people will never read the accompanying article in Time magazine. They will only see the disturbing gaze of a mutilated woman and the message scrawled beneath it “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan,” question mark excluded. Most will never examine the mechanisms within them that bring about the deep emotional response. Subliminal advertisers know all too well that a powerful image can make a target audience ignore the caption, all the while absorbing it subconsciously, reducing them to zombie-like consumers ready to do whatever the ad tells them to: buy this car, try this diet, sell your house, dye your hair, get a new phone, support our war. Using emotional triggers like scantily clad women in ads that sell anything from watches to hair-loss treatment, have proven effective time and time again. A strong image can be a thousand times more powerful than the words that accompany it, but words can manipulate the message of an image in far more virulent ways. The photograph alone is subject to interpretation. But in this case, the two combined, we are being sent a clear message that tells us this is what will happen if we leave Afghanistan. Who among us wants this to happen to another Afghan woman? Guilt is the precise emotional response that makes us suddenly feel that being against the war is somehow a travesty.

Setting aside the obvious (that this is what is happening now, today, on our watch) how can Time editor Rick Stengel be so sure of the future? “I think we answer questions. I don’t think we ask them,” Mr. Stengel said in an interview with Katie Couric when she pointed out the missing question mark at the end of the headline. It’s one thing to draw conclusions about questions that can actually be answered, like is there undeniable evidence that Bernie Madoff cheated lots of people out of money? It is another to predict the future of a foreign country at war, something analysts, historians and military advisors have been unable to do since time immemorial.

Mr. Stengel explained his editorial choice in the first pages of the magazine as follows: “What you see in these pictures and our story is something that you cannot find in those 91,000 documents,” he said, referring to the recent release of leaked classified papers titledThe Afghan War Diaries by whistleblower website Wikileaks. The White House has been struggling desperately to convince the public that we can’t leave Afghanistan amid the fallout following the leak, a trove of documents that reveal the true horrors of the war campaign on the ground, and it seems Mr. Stengel decided to play steward to the Pentagon and help sway public opinion.

In his chosen message, two points of absurdity emerge: when in the history of mankind has a war ever been fought in the name of women’s rights, and how can one justify the murder and mutilation of thousands of innocents in the name of eradicating domestic abuse, never mind the fact that the Pentagon has no vested interest in the said cause. Countries don’t spend billions of dollars to mobilize troops to liberate women from the chains of institutionalized misogyny.

Why then, should we believe that saving the Aishas of Afghanistan is a just cause for war? It’s a narrative we have heard periodically for nine years, though never when it stood to benefit the women in question. In the lead up to the war, we were shown images of Afghan women being beaten and executed by the Taliban at Kabul’s infamous soccer stadium. Stories in the press abounded about the terrible living conditions of women under the Taliban, pulling on the heart strings of the typically more pacifist female demographic, and yet, nary a member of congress brought the matter to the floor prior to 2001. If it was really a just cause for mounting a full-scale invasion, it begs the most conspicuous question: why have we not done so in other parts of the world where our sisters are suffering too?

It’s the same ludicrous line we’ve been fed about wars in the name of democracy and freedom. We went in to Iraq to liberate the people from a terrible dictator. What we ended up doing is “liberating” well over 4 million people of life, limb, or home, ripping the country asunder, ushering in extremist factions that made some of the once secular nation’s women dress in the code of Hijab or wear a Burqa for the first time in their lives.

So why have we heard this line about the women every time proponents of the war seem to be dwindling? Because it works. Look no further for evidence than a recently leaked CIA document in March of this year, drawn up after the Dutch decided to pull out of the war. Amid fears that Germany and France, who supply the third and fourth largest contingents to Afghanistan, might follow suit, it suggests pushing stories about abused Afghan women to drum up support for the war:

Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] role in combating the Taliban because of women’s ability to speak personally and credibly about their experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory. Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share their stories with French, German, and other European women could help to overcome pervasive scepticism among women in Western Europe toward the ISAF mission.

But women in Afghanistan suffer abuse at the hands of Talibs and non-Talibs alike. It’s a social problem, not a Taliban problem. Of course, ousting the Taliban did women a favour in many regards. They regained suffrage, for one. Yes, today women nearly fill the 25% quota for parliamentary seats, and education is no longer officially forbidden. But how many women really benefit from the new constitution? What is written on paper is rarely applied in practice for the vast majority of women, particularly those living in rural areas, which represent about 77% of the population.

According to a recent survey by the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), “more than 87 percent of all women suffer from domestic abuse, making the country one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman.” That is today. Are we to believe that 100% of women were being abused under the Taliban, or will be if they return to power? Is that meagre 13% of violence-free women really the result of the ISAF mission?

In 2007 I did a story on Afghan women who self-immolate. They are so desperate that, one day, something compels them to douse themselves with petrol and strike a match. I listened to their stories with unease. They were beaten, raped, used as prostitutes, molested and enslaved; all by husbands, fathers, cousins, uncles, brothers, or in-laws. Not one of them was from Taliban territory. Though it’s impossible to get a real sense of the numbers, most agree that the phenomenon is on the rise, and yet, we are meant to believe that the war effort is making progress on the front of women’s rights.

Oppression and brutality against women are not endemic to the Taliban alone in Afghanistan. Last year, President Karzai, in a bid to gain votes from the country’s Shia minority (roughly 19%) passed a controversial new law curtailing women’s rights. The Shiite Personal Status Law (SPSL), allows a man to deny his wife food if she does not submit to his sexual will, gives custody of children to fathers and grandfathers, and requires a woman to get permission from her family to work or to travel outside the home without a male escort. “It also, in effect, enables a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying ‘blood money’,” says Human Rights Watch.

It’s worth noting that the Taliban are Sunni, not Shia, and that the US-backed president has enacted a law for the non-Taliban sector of society, rolling back rights for women that were written into the constitution. Before the elections, the Times Online reported that “the United States and Britain [were] opposed to any strong public protest [against the law] because they fear[ed] that speaking out could disrupt [the] election.”  The bill was pushed through parliament in February of 2009 and came into effect in July of last year. Afghan women fumed, while US and UK leaders stood by, and where was Time’s cover advocating for women’s rights then? Here are the covers they ran in February 2009.

Central to the debate about the message the Time cover sends, is the question are we really making progress for women – and if so, why should we believe that a good reason to continue fighting? While many people were moved by the cover, some things just don’t add up. After nine years of war, the public has grown wary of these kinds of media stunts. We are not so dumb anymore. The Bush years are over. Challenging our leaders is no longer tantamount to a capital offence. Not “supporting the troops” is no longer suggestive of treason, since so many of them are returning home to join the growing anti-war movement. Support for the war has plunged to an all-time low (36%). Too many US soldiers have committed suicide or come home suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). People are starting to feel uncomfortable about the number of Afghan civilian casualties, which sadly should have been an issue long ago, but what the Wikileaks documents show us is that the army has been cooking the numbers. All those deaths of “enemy combatants” were in reality far too often civilians. Such facts Americans are not happy to learn. The truth is coming out, though the editors of Time, like the Pentagon, obviously want to deflect our attention from it by shoving our faces in another gruesome reality that somehow makes even the staunchest pacifist wonder if maybe we should soldier on.

In my discussions with friends about the cover, I was amazed how many educated, sharp women couldn’t see how they were being manipulated. Many felt it was much more important to shed light on the plight of women, and missed the absurdity of the message attached to it. Some of them were Iranian expats, for whom the subject of women’s rights is all too close to home. But then I asked, what if Time magazine were to run a cover like this one?

See full article:

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Related link

Tags: Afghanistan, propaganda, Taliban, USA, Violence, war on terror, women

Viewer or voyeur? The morality of reportage photography

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Do you look away from images of real-life horror, or look closer? A series of shocking photographs from Somalia asks disturbing questions about the ethics of bearing witness

Sean O’Hagan

Monday 8 March 2010 14.23 GMT

“To catch a death actually happening and embalm it for all time is something only cameras can do,” writes Susan Sontag in Regarding the Pain of Others, “and pictures taken out in the field of the moment of (or just before) death are among the most celebrated and often reproduced of war photographs.”

Sontag goes on to describe the context in which Eddie Adams took what was arguably the most shocking image of the Vietnam war: the moment in which a South Vietnamese police officer executes a Vietcong suspect by shooting him point-blank in the head. She points out that the picture was both authentic and staged – “by General Loan, who had led the prisoner, hands tied behind his back, out to the street where journalists had gathered. He would not have carried out the summary execution there had they not been available to witness it”. Wearily, Sontag concludes that “one can gaze at these faces for a long time and not come to the end of the mystery, and the indecency, of such co-spectatorship”.

I was reminded of that final quotation when, a few weeks ago, I navigated the winner’s gallery of the World Press Photo of the Year website. There, amidst the many dramatic images of conflict, death and destruction, was a series by an Associated Press photographer, Farah Abdl Warsameh, entitled Stoned to Death, Somalia, 13 December. The four images are shocking in a way that even the most graphic war reportage seldom is any more. The first shows the victim being buried up to his neck in earth. The second shows a group of men, their faces concealed by headscarves, raining rocks down on his head. The third shows his bloodied torso being dragged out of the soil. The last shows the men hurling large rocks at his prone and lifeless body to finish off their gruesome ritual. There are no captions; we are left to guess the context.

One’s immediate instinct on coming upon the photographs is to recoil in horror, which is what almost everyone I showed them to did. A colleague described them as “a kind of pornography of suffering”. (The Sunday Times ran the series last week in their Spectrum section devoted to the World Press awards. Many readers were outraged and appalled.)

Last week, in a blogpost for Foto8 magazine, the veteran picture editor, Colin Jacobson, wrote that “the rather disgusting pictures … raised some interesting ethical matters”, which is one – somewhat understated – way of putting it. More problematically, Jacobson said that “obviously there was collaboration between the photographer and those carrying out this gruesome death sentence”. Perhaps. But what kind of collaboration? Unlike the shooting of the Vietcong suspect, the dreadful execution of the Somalian man would seemingly have gone ahead at that time had the photographer not been present. (Other images from the series, not included in the World Press selection, show an audience of villagers who had gathered to witness the execution.) On that level, the photographer did not collaborate with the killers, though he almost certainly gained permission from someone to shoot the stoning. He also shot every stage of the killing in all its protracted and torturous barbarity. What it takes to do that, and at what personal cost, only he can say.

Images as extreme as these beg so many questions about the morality of reportage. Did the photographer, one wonders, have any communication with the victim in the time leading up to the event? Would our reaction to the photographs be different if we knew that the condemned man granted the photographer permission to bear witness to his dreadful death? Would it be different if we knew that the photographer risked his own life to travel though strife-torn Somalia to bear witness, which, as one of the respondents to Jacobson’s blog points out, was probably the case. Does such extremity diminish us or enlighten us? Or simply shock us into a kind of impassioned helplessness?

Part of the complex power of these photographs comes from what Sontag calls the “provocation” inherent in all images of real suffering. The first of many questions they ask is: “Can you look at this?” Perhaps Sontag comes closest to articulating the moral dilemma at the heart of extreme images of suffering when she writes: “There is shame as well as shock in looking at the close-up of a real horror. Perhaps the only people with the right to look at images of suffering of this extreme order are those who could do something to alleviate it … or those who could learn from it. The rest of us are voyeurs, whether or not we mean to be.”

Tags: capital punishment, Death, Islam, Photography, stoning, Violence, voyeurism

Give photography a chance

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By Giedre Steikunaite

A photograph’s story is not only the one told in the image. Who took a picture, and why, also matters. Now who takes pictures of the developing world, and why?

“The vast majority of the published images that we see of the developing world are taken by predominantly white, predominantly male photographers from the “north” or the “west” (whichever language you use) and we think a) that this is unfair and b) that it leads to a distorted view lacking balance. The distorted view is intrinsically dangerous as it perpetuates stereotypes,” said Dr Colin Hastings, responsible for strategy and financing at Majority World, in an interview with igenius.

How about giving Majority World photographers a chance to represent the world they live in themselves?

Majority World, a global initiative set up to provide a platform for indigenous photographers from the Majority World to gain fair access to global image markets, is in its third year. Their online library contains loads of photographs, both individual and featured, ranging from Adolphus Opara’s Slum Aspirations to Aaron Sosa’s Daily Havana to Saikat Ranjan Bhadra’s Grey Reality. The idea is to shift the current practice of the global North photographing the global South and allowing the South to do it itself.

Photographers in the developing countries face numerous challenges. At first it was said that they don’t exist, then that they “don’t have the eye”. But apart from these prejudices, there are serious problems photographers have to deal with: lack of access to the internet, costly cameras, scanners, and computers, lack of awareness of Northern markets, no money to travel and build up a portfolio, poor business and marketing skills and, probably worst of all, untrusting potential clients, who are nervous to assign an unknown photographer in a distant land.

Let’s come back to those white males who dominate the global photography market with their orthodox reflections of the Majority World. And aid. “Development isn’t simply about money. What about developing mutual respect; enabling equitable partnerships; providing enabling environments for intellectual exchange? What about creating awareness of the underlying causes of poverty? These are all integral parts of the development process. When all things are added up, cheap images providing clichéd messages do more harm than good. They do not address the crucial issue: poverty is almost always a product of exploitation, at local, regional and international levels. If poverty is simply addressed in terms of what people lack in monetary terms, then the more important issues of exploitation are sidelined,” wrote Shahidul Alam, an international photojournalist and Chairman of Majority World in The New Internationalist in 2007.

Back then, the situation started to change, if only very slowly. In that same article, Mr Alam agreed that due to the media’s deteriorating financial situation, some adjustments had taken place: with media’s budgets squeezed, it’s getting harder to fly Western photographers to make some shots in a far away land.

This is where local photographers come in handy, but the fact is yet to be recognized by news outlets. And it ain’t so sunny out there, either. “Certain rules still apply of course, such as the vast differentials in pay between local and Western photographers,” wrote Mr Alam.

I asked Dr Colin Hastings who works tirelessly to promote Majority World photography, how to encourage global media organizations to use images made by local photographers. He said we need to make a distinction between purchasing images pre-taken and uploaded into an existing photo library (known as “stock photography”) and “assignments”, where a photographer is commissioned to take specified types of image for a particular purpose.

“As for stock images, all we ask is that Majority World photographers have equal opportunities to get their images into photo libraries and showcased across the world and available for sale. At present they are marginalized and face many disadvantages. It is providing an equal playing field that is at the heart of what Majority World is about, enabling them to have the resources that Western photographers just take for granted.

“When it comes to assignments, Western media, editors and photographers tend to go out with a predetermined agenda often to find images to confirm their existing preconceptions and stereotypes often based on information that is way out of date. This is an issue of editorial bias, i.e. do you really want to find out the truth (whatever that is).

“Well, you are more likely to find out from someone who is of the culture, speaks the language, understand the nuances and the history, than from someone who jets in for a few days, is essentially a voyeur from the outside of the culture, and may be viewed with a mixture of incredulity and suspicion by those being photographed… To say nothing of the ethical issues about whether anyone “should” be or has the right to take photos in any situation.

“It is right to acknowledge that it is not a simple matter to employ and brief an unknown photographer at a distance, especially where there are language and other cultural barriers to communication. But that can also be too easily used as an excuse. There are suitable and reliable photographers out there who do fine work. Part of our role is to take the risk out of this process by finding the most suitable photographer and acting as a communications facilitator.

“We have to help the client to change their behavior and ways of doing things and also help the photographer to understand and to respond to the clients’ needs.  It’s complex!”

Three years ago, Dr Hastings expressed his wish for every postcard sold in a tourist destination in the global South to be taken by a local photographer. “My vision is to see a whole range of beautiful high quality photographic products – cards, calendars, diaries or digital products images – taken entirely by Majority World photographers,” he said.

We’re not there yet, but hopefully on the way.

Photos: fish by Partha Sarathi Sahana, water by prakhar

Tags: aid, development, exploitation, Majority World, Photography, trade

Representing ‘Crossfire’: politics, art and photography

Shahidul Alam in an interview with New Age

by Rahnuma Ahmed

Media reports on “Crossfire” exhibition

Latest report in Indepndent

Shahidul Alam’s exhibition, ‘Crossfire’ (a euphemism for extrajudicial killings by the Rapid Action Battalion), was scheduled to open on March 22, at Drik Gallery, Dhaka. A police lockup of Drik’s premises before the opening prevented noted Indian writer and social activist Mahasweta Devi from entering, forcing her to declare the opening on the street outside Drik. The police blockage was removed soon after Drik’s lawyers served legal notice and the lawyers had moved the Court, and after Government lawyers i.e., the Attorney Generals office, had contacted the Dhaka Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s office, and the Home Ministry, during the hearing on the government. The court commented that even after repeated rules had been issued on the government, crossfire had continued to occur. The court’s response and subsequent events enabled Drik to open the exhibition for public viewing on March 31.

Shahidul Alam in front of a collage, part of his Crossfire exhibition. Cartoon in the background of Home Minister Sahara Khatun, ‘No crossfire killing taken place’. — Wahid Adnan/DrikNEWS

You work in the documentary genre, this work is show-cased as being symbolic, interpretive. Does this mean a change in genres?

I find these categorisations problematic. I see myself as a storyteller. There’s fiction and non-fiction. This is clearly non-fiction, though it draws upon many of the techniques that fiction would use. The allegorical approach was deliberately chosen as I felt it had, in this instance, greater interpretive potential than the literal approach. Quite apart from the fact that one could hardly expect RAB to allow photographers to document their killing (they do sometimes have TV crews accompanying them on ‘missions’ but they are never allowed to be there during ‘crossfire’), I felt that showing bodies, blood and weapons would not add to the understanding people already had. We are not dealing with lack of knowledge. ‘Crossfire’ is known and, in fact, it is because it is known that the exhibition is seen as such a threat. So, while reinforcing the known with images would have a value, it would be unlikely to be as provocative as these more subtle but haunting images are likely to be.

I wanted the images to linger in people’s minds, perhaps to haunt them. They are desolate images, quiet but suggestive. The attempt is not one of inundating the audience with information, but leaving them to meditate upon the silence of the dead.

Crossfire deaths continue despite regime changes. How do you view this?

Criminals have survived because of patronage of the powerful. The removal of criminals, through ‘crossfire’, does not affect the system of control, but merely substitutes existing criminals for new ones. This is why crimes continue unabated under RAB. All it does is to undermine the legal system. Unless serious attempts are made to remove such patronage and, better still, catch the godfathers, the extermination of thugs and local-level criminals (and many innocent people are also killed) will have no effect on crime. The ruling elite knows this. So why use RAB at all? I believe it is to keep control. Dead criminals don’t speak. Don’t give secrets away. Don’t take a share of the spoils. They are disposable, and RAB is the disposal system.

Every government has used RAB and other law enforcement authorities to remove troublemakers. Bangla Bhai had become a liability when he was apprehended. He didn’t die in crossfire, but was hurriedly hanged all the same despite the fact that he wanted to talk to the media as he had ‘stories to tell’. Dead people don’t tell stories. So, all governments would rather have RAB, to clean up their mess, than be confronted by their own shadows.

A change of government does not change this structure.

The inclusion of the Google map has turned this exhibition into a collective, history-writing project. Why that added dimension?

Art projects are generally about the glorification of the artist. The audience is generally a passive recipient. I see this as a public project. I have a role to play as a storyteller, but my work is informed by not only the collective work of my co-researchers, but also that of human rights groups, other activists, and most importantly by the lives, or deaths, of the people whose stories are being told. The survivors, the witnesses and others affected by these deaths are important players in this story and it was essential to find a way to make this project inclusive. I would be kidding myself if I assumed this show would put an end to extrajudicial killings. I also believe there are still many unreported cases.

The Google map has the twin benefits of being interactive and open. We have already been told of one person who had been crossfired but his name hadn’t come up in the archival research.

The internet will also allow a much wider participation than might otherwise have been possible.

Besides the Awami League’s electoral pledge of stopping extrajudicial killings, it had also promised us a ‘digital Bangladesh’. I think it is appropriate that this digital Bangladesh be claimed by the people.

What is the significance of research—in the sense of dates, names, places, events—for this project, and for the exhibition?

The assumed veracity of the photographic image is an important source of the strength of this exhibition. We have deliberately moved away from the mechanical aspect of recording events through images, but supplemented it by relating the image to verifiable facts. Meticulous research has gone into not only providing the context for the photographs, which has been included in the Google map, but each image, in some way, refers to a visual inspired by a case study. By deliberately retaining some ambiguity about the ‘facts’ surrounding the image, we invite the viewer to delve deeper into the image to discover the physical basis of the analogy, and to reflect upon the image. The photographs therefore become a portal through which the viewer can enter the story, rather than the story in itself. Yet, each image, relates to a finite, physical instance, that becomes a reference point for a life that was brutally taken away.

Your exhibition is political, with a capital ‘P’. Why is political engagement generally not seen in the work of Bangladeshi artists?

Art cannot be dissociated from life, and life is distinctly political. To paraphrase the renowned Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali, the price of tomato is political. However, life is also nuanced and multi-layered. Our art practice needs to be critically engaged at all levels. While the war of liberation is understandably a source of inspiration for many artists, there are many other wars of contemporary life that seem to slip from the artist’s canvas. Most artists, with some exceptions of course, claim they produce art merely for themselves. I don’t believe them. Of course there is great joy in producing art that pleases oneself. But I believe art is the medium and not the message, and all artists, I suspect, want their art to have an effect.

I know it is passé in some quarters to be producing art that is political. Being apolitical is a political stance too. While I can understand schools of thought that have rebelled against the traditional trappings of art, I do not see the point of producing art that is not meaningful. Strong art is capable of engaging with people. It is that engagement that I seek. My art is merely a tool towards that engagement.

I understand what you mean. A lot of the artwork that’s being produced in Bangladesh stems from commercial interests. Producing formulaic work that sells is the job of a technician and not an artist. Sure, an artist needs to survive and we all produce work which we hope might sell, but once that becomes the sole purpose of producing art, one is probably not an artist in the first place.

There is a strong adherence in Bangladesh to an antiquated form of pictorialism. This applies both to representational and abstract art. Ideas seem to take back stage. While I’m wary of pseudo intellectualisation of art, I must admit that the cerebral aspects of art excite me. The politicisation is an extension of that process.

Books on crossfire have been published, roundtable discussions have been held. Why did the government react as it did, do you think it says something about the power of photography?

The association of photographs with real events makes the photographer a primary witness, and thereby the photograph becomes documentary evidence. This makes photography both powerful and dangerous. Way back in 1909, much before Photoshop came into play, Lewis Hine had said ‘While photographs may not lie, liars may photograph.’

Today, liars who run corporations and rule powerful nations, also have photography at their disposal. This very powerful tool is used and abused, and it is essential that we come to grips with this new language. Advertising agencies with huge budgets use photography to shape our minds about products we buy. Politicians and their campaigns are also products that we, as consumers, are encouraged to buy into. I see no restrictions on the lies we are fed every day through advertising or political propaganda. It is when the public has access to the same tools, and in particular when they use it to expose injustice that photography becomes a problem. These seemingly ‘innocent’ photographs become charged with meaning as soon as we learn to read their underlying meaning. This makes them dangerous.

Perhaps this is also why photographic education has been systematically excluded from our education system. A tool for public emancipation will never be welcomed by an oppressive regime. And we will have oppressive regimes for a while to come.

‘Crossfire’ was curated by an international curator, and you yourself have curated exhibitions abroad. Do you think international curators are more likely to engage with work such as ‘Crossfire’ on the basis of aesthetic considerations rather than lived, political ones, since s/he will  be less knowledgeable about its history, meanings, metaphors, how the government has manufactured popular consent, resistance, etc. For instance, and you mention it in the brochure: John Pilger, the well-known journalist, had written when Barrister Moudood Ahmed had been arrested during the Fakhruddin-Moeenudin regime, he’s ‘a decent, brave man.’ And of course, it’s quite possible that Pilger didn’t know that the Barrister saheb, as law minister, was one of the political architects of RAB.

Ah yes, Pilger bungled that one. I think artistic collaborations create new possibilities. Our art practice is so often informed by western sensibilities that we at Drik deliberately explore southern interactions. The discussions between Kunda Dixit of Nepal and Marcelo Brodsky of Argentina in Chobi Mela V (our festival of photography) pointed to the remarkable similarity between the political movements in Peru and in South Asia. This made the inclusion of a Peruvian curator even more interesting, and Jorge Villacorte is a respected Latin American curator and art critic. Several other recognised international curators, from Lebanon, Tangiers and Italy had seen the show. I was somewhat surprised that while they introduced interesting ideas about curatorial and art practice and were hugely appreciative of the aesthetic and performative elements of the work, not one of them ever asked me about the impact it might have upon crossfire itself. Though it would be arrogant to suggest that this show would put an end to that.

As someone deeply in love with my country (I find words like patriotic and nationalistic problematic), my primary concern is the welfare of my community. If my work can contribute to improving the lives of my people, I will have been successful, regardless of how my art is perceived by critics. If the work is perceived as great art, but fails in its ultimate goal of furthering the cause of social justice, then I will have failed.

That said, the exhibition was only a small part of the larger movement for democracy. The activism surrounding the show, the legal action, the media mobilisation, and the spontaneous popular actions were all part of the process. The international curator had an important role to play, but only as a point of departure. We have since had students critiquing the curatorial process, where they have brought in elements relating to their political practice and social concerns. The debate resulting from the work is more important than the work itself. But it is the power of art, and particularly photography that makes such actions so vital.

There is an interesting sub-text to this exercise. The dinosaurs of Bangladeshi art have been incapable of recognising photography as an art form. Photographers are still not invited to participate in the Asian Biennale (though foreign photographers have even won the grand prize in the event). There is still no department of photography in either Shilapakala Academy (the academy of fine and performing arts) or Charukala Institute (the institute of fine arts). These are 19th-century institutions operating in the 21st century. It is interesting however, that while Charukala Institute refused to show my work in 1989, because it was a photographic, and not a painting, exhibition, it was the students of Charukala Institute who organised the first public protests when the police came and blockaged our gallery to prevent the opening of the Crossfire exhibition. It is reassuring that the students at least can raise their heads and look above the sand.

Drik under Crossfire (Independent)

Posted in New Age on 8th April 2010

Media reports on “Crossfire” exhibition

Tags: Art, censorship, crossfire, culture, exhibition, extra judicial killing, government, Law, media, Photography, police, Rahnuma Ahmed, Shahidul Alam

Siege of Drik Gallery

New Age Editorial

DAILY STAR Editorial

Tags: Art, censorship, culture, democracy, exhibition, Freedom of Expression, Law, Photography, police, RAB, Shahidul Alam

To Print Or Not To Print

A bitter controversy arose from the distribution of the following photograph by Associated Press, of a dying US marine in Afghanistan. Shahidul Alam of Drik and other leading Asian journalists were interviewed by Lynette Corporal of Asia Media Forum. The interview in its original form is given below.

Lance Cpl. Joshua “Bernie” Bernard, 21, lying on the ground with severe leg injuries after being struck by a grenade in an ambush on Aug. 14, his fellow Marines tending to him. Bernard later died of his wounds. Afghanistan © Julie Jacobson/AP

LC: One of the oft-debated topics around is whether to publish or not images of death and suffering of people in conflict areas. As a photographer, what is the most important for you: to show the world the real score, the gritty reality of war or hunger or sickness or respect the privacy of individuals by refraining from showing such graphic photos. Or is there  a way to do both?

You have been involved in such dilemmas before and were faced with painful choices, how did you resolve that?

SA: From an ethical perspective, the primary question is whether publishing a picture is in the public interest. The ‘public’ is not a monolithic unit and many things that may be considered to be of public interest will not be in the interest of some members of the public. In this case there are many interests to consider. The people at the receiving end of the war, the world at large, the weapons industry, the politicians, the US public, the soldiers and very importantly, the family of the deceased. The family clearly did find the publication of the picture distressing. I am sure the family found the death of their kin far more distressing. I am surprised that Mr. Gates who feels that AP should consider the feelings of the family when deciding to publish the picture (incidentally, AP did not publish the picture, but made it available for publication), was not himself, prepared to respect the feelings of the family when the war machinery he represents, decided to send the soldier to his death. It is precisely the ‘judgment and common decency’ of this war cabinet, that is being questioned here. When one considers the agony that the war continues to cause the many other stakeholders then surely reporting accurately on an issue of major importance cannot be shied away from. Hopefully, the publication of pictures like these will play a role in reducing the possibility of other families of other soldiers going through similar pain.

There is also the implication that the word ethics stands alone, unaffected by the political space it is surrounded by. Donald Rumsfeld’s concern after the Abu Ghraib photographs were revealed, were more about the distribution of these photographs than about the incidents they revealed. His concern being people “passing them off, against the law, to the media”. The recent distribution, on a much wider scale, of the far more disturbing image in the video of the dying woman in Tehran, led to no similar outcry of insensitive distribution, no concerted demand to take down the images from youtube. Rather there were tributes to the dying woman.

The offender in that instance was the much vilified ruling party in Iran, and hence it was the condemnation it brought, and not the ethics of the display, that was the news. There have been attempts to restrict the display of gory images of non-Americans too, as in Kenneth Jarecke’s image of the charred Iraqi soldier.

Gulf War/Dead Iraqi Soldier, 1991 © Kenneth Jarecke/Contact Press Images

On that occasion, it was not the disrespect to the dead soldier that was the issue, but that the image damaged the spin of that time, that the ‘clinical’ attack avoided ‘collateral damage’. Images of the dying in Gaza, distributed by all who could get their hands on them, led to no concern of being insensitive. The nation that protested to Japan in 1938, about its bombing of China saying “The bombing of non-combatant populations violated international and humanitarian laws.” seems to have few problems bombing civilians itself.

We are witnesses of our time, our job is to record accurately, and fairly. The value of a photograph is not static and changes with time and circumstances. To decide not to photograph is to exercise an editorial viewpoint that a person cannot possibly make under pressure, often facing personal harm, especially when the failure to take that photograph might result in that moment being lost to humanity forever. The witness is not the judge, and there will be many judges in many different courts, for many years to come. What one has to remember is to be respectful of the people being represented. This gives rise to another issue. The degree of respect seems to vary depending upon who is being represented. I repeatedly see gory images of majority world peoples being plastered all over magazine and newspaper pages, especially when it is a case of ‘what they do to each other’. The depiction of our savagery is common fodder for world media. Savagery is to be scorned regardless of who the savage is. It is in times like these I am reminded that some lives are more equal than others.

When faced with difficult choices, there are no easy answers. No textbook of ethics can make your decisions for you. I use the only mechanism I know, by asking myself if I would have been comfortable being subjected to the same treatment. It is a technique I use not only as a photographer, but in life itself. I must however admit, sometimes I take the picture even when I am not sure of the answer, if I feel it is a picture I must record for posterity.

LC: In your opinion, how do journalists and photojournalists in the region in general handle the ethical issues of a conflict situation, for instance? If there’s one thing that needs to be improved as far as ethical values of journalists in the region about reporting conflict and other sufferings are concerned, what would it be?

SA: Sadly, majority world journalists and photojournalists, have not generally, demonstrated high ethical standards in their reporting. This is partly due to poor training. Few media organizations, even highly profitable ones, invest in developing the skills of their personnel. In photojournalism it is also attributable to photography being treated with disdain, where the hierarchy of a newsroom places the news editor (who often has little knowledge of photography) at the top and the photographer at the bottom. As such, the photographer rarely has a say in how her photographs are used. For many, this leads to a lack of self-respect. A photographer who does not take pride in her profession is unlikely to subject herself to high standards of any kind. Journalistic rigour, technical, aesthetic and ethical, has to be inculcated at all levels of reporting. In the case of photojournalists the general practice of photographs not being credited also plays a role. When a photographer does not have to take ultimate responsibility for her work, identified through her credit line, she is far less likely to be concerned about her credibility.

Responsible reporting requires time, persistence and sensitivity. While speed is king and bottom lines rule, accountants see this in terms of increased costs as opposed to better reporting. This will only change when there is a major culture shift from higher profitability to better reporting. Profit and better reporting are not mutually exclusive terms and better reporting would often, in the long run, lead to greater profitability. It would certainly lead to greater impact. Sadly, few newsrooms take this long-term view. In the end the reader has to play her role by going for publications that have high journalistic standards. Only then will the newsroom respond.

LC:  From the Asian media’s perspective, would you as a photojournalist do the same as what the people at AP did — publish the photo in the interest of truth, no matter how painful it may be?

SA: Every time. I would print it well, with full credit and engage in the ensuing debate. (see point above about AP not publishing the picture but making it available for publication).

17^th September 2009. Dhaka.

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Brian Palmer

Huffington Post

A defining moment?

By Rahnuma Ahmed:

‘UNEASY lies the head that wears a crown,’ wrote Shakespeare. She is still haunted by memories of ‘grenades and bullets’, said Sheikh Hasina recently (New York Times, March 13, 2009). It was an obvious reference to the attempt on her life outside the Awami League central office during the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led four-party alliance government. An attack that left two dozen dead. In early February, before the BDR rebellion occurred, the prime minister had to move from her Dhanmondi residence to Jamuna, the state guesthouse, far more secure. According to newspaper reports, international intelligence sources (US, UAE, Pakistan) had informed the government that Sheikh Hasina’s life was at risk from global terrorist organisations working in league with local militant groups.

Uneasy too, it seems, lies the head that has lost a crown. Ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia also has reasons to fear for her life. Ministers and lawmakers belonging to her government, Ruhul Kuddus Talukdar Dulu, Nadim Mustofa, Mizanur Rahman Minu, Alamgir Kabir, had reportedly extended patronage to JMB militants . Its top-ranking leaders had been arrested during her reign. Although the executions had taken place during the caretaker government period, rumours say, JMB militants view it as a betrayal. One that they have not forgiven. (They had wanted to speak to the media, but it was a wish that remained unfulfilled. Who knows what beans they would have spilled?). Rumours say JMB militants are biding their time.

Leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, too, must be losing sleep as legal procedures for holding war crimes trials are increasingly worked out by the government. As a sidenote I cannot help but wonder about the US administration’s offer of help. Surely, it does not extend to extraditing Henry Kissinger, the-then US secretary of state, who had supported the Pakistan army’s campaign of genocide in 1971?

Regarding the BDR uprising, widespread public apprehension still remains: will we ever get to know the truth? Will we ever learn why, what happened, did happen? The commerce minister, Lt Col (retd) Faruk Khan, coordinator of three ongoing investigations, has since retreated on his earlier comments of JMB’s links to the Pilkhana carnage. These, we were informed, were based not on probe findings, but on ‘personal observations’. This was soon followed by a bit of wrangling with CID officials over whether video footage, containing evidence of the rebellion, had been recovered or not. Now that that is more or less settled, photographs have surfaced of the Durbar Hall meeting, in, of all places, Facebook. A selection has been printed in some of the leading dailies. How did they get there? The ISPR (Inter-Services Public Relations) surprisingly said they are ‘not aware of such pictures.’ More discerning minds, besides commenting that they ‘raise more questions than they answer,’ have pointed out that there is a central story line to the photos and the captions: that the BDR officers had not fired the first shot.

The Durbar Hall photographs seem to have distracted public attention away from the deaths of several BDR soldiers. According to Amnesty International there are credible reasons to think that four of these deaths were caused by torture. Surely, the timing of the release of these photographs, like the surfacing of many other events and innuendoes, is a mere coincidence?

Civil-military relations: replacing history with naiveté

SOON after the Pilkhana carnage, I happened to watch a talk-show on a private TV channel. The discussant was a senior retired army officer, also a freedom fighter. In the light of the carnage, he said, three things should no longer be mentioned: command failure, intelligence failure, and corruption (in the army). I add to this list, ‘accumulated grievances’, one that I have come across elsewhere.

They hardly are.

But the more I think about it, the more evident it becomes that he was advocating an erasure of history. The history of our army’s intervention in politics, including the two years of army-backed Fakhruddin rule.
It is difficult to follow his advice, especially as I listen to audio-tapes (the ban on YouTube having been lifted) of the March 1 encounter between angry army officers and the prime minister at Senakunja. Apologists have pointed out that the rudeness on display is understandable. Grief-stricken at having lost so many of the best and brightest, the emotional outburst of the officers was only to be expected.

But, of course. Particularly since bereavement in Bangladesh is neither individuated, nor is it a private affair, as is the norm in western societies. Launch and ferry disasters occur regularly, and one often sees bereaved family members crying out at the injustice: at Allah, for not having been merciful; at launch owners, for having been criminally negligent; at district officials, for their laxity in conducting rescue operations. But their aggrieved tone beseeches. It implores. It is that of a supplicant unlike that of the army officers at Senakunja.

Although the BDR rebellion was, in an objective sense, a fratricidal conflict (to quote from the prime minister’s moving address to the nation, ‘brother against brother’), it quickly took on the overtones of a civil-military conflict since the government had opted for a political (negotiations), instead of a military resolution to the rebellion (storm Pilkhana and ‘crush’ the rebels).

Emotions, too, are embedded in larger structures of power, and powerlessness. And although the voices of our respectable army officers refer to a senior-junior division within the officer ranks, to a division between power-hungry army elders vs juniors who are mere pawns in their power games, in the final analysis, this division gets over-ridden. What emerges is a collective voice, a voice that does not take cognisance of the fact that the person whom they address is no other than the one overwhelmingly voted to power by the nation’s electorate, to lead the nation. To embody and represent the collective will of the people. And this ability to not take cognisance is deeply embedded in a particular history of power. It is a history that cannot be denied or wished away, however much one may wish to do so. It is the history of the army as a contestant of state power. As a usurper of state power. As a wielder of state power. One that is, after all is said and done, based on its monopoly of coercive force. One of the questions raised, rather plaintively, amra ki emon shujog-shubidha pai? (After all, what benefits and facilities do we get?), speaks of a detachment from the social and material realities of Bangladesh. To civilian ears, it cannot sound anything but naive. And it is the entrenchment of these vocal officers (since only three splices of the Senajunja meeting have been made publicly-available) in a history-less space, one that is not materially grounded in the structures of either society or state, that in a sense, reinforces civilian perceptions of the army as an exclusive and isolationist group.

It has served to not only deepen the civilian-military divide but paradoxically enough (or, maybe not) to garner support for civilian power and authority.

A blurring of the civil-military divide in India and the US

IT IS generally assumed that military rule occurs only in third world countries, it is caused by weak political institutions, competition between political and military elites for power. But things are not as simple as that. Let’s take a closer look at two of the largest democracies in the world, India and the United States.

There is evidence of growing militarisation in neighbouring India, but this has been caused not by the weakening of political institutions, nor because of changes in civilian-military relations at the formal, institutional level. Sunil Dasgupta argues that two trends, the growing internal security role of the military, and the growing ‘militarisation’ of political, technical and administrative leadership, have resulted in a blurring of the civilian-military divide.

And, in the case of the United States, although state power rests with civilians, it is an acknowledged fact that the nation is ruled by the military industrial complex, interestingly enough, a term popularised by president Eisenhower, the general turned politician. Eugene Jarecki, author (The American Way of War), filmmaker (Why We Fight) and public policy thinker, in a recent interview says once upon a time Clemeceau had said that war should not be left to the generals. But in the last eight years, it was civilians (Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice) who brought the world to one of the most dangerous points witnessed in our human history. It was civilians who told the generals to shut up.

Eisenhower had said in his farewell address – and Jarecki adds, think about this in the 9/11 context – in meeting crises whether foreign or domestic, whether great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular or costly action could prove the miraculous solution to all difficulties. But the real answer to crises is to seek a balance in, and among, national programmes. There is no such thing as perfect security. It has never existed, it never will. In opting for spectacular or costly actions, we can destroy from within what we are trying to protect from without.

The nation’s subalterns. Lessons to be learnt

THE majority in this nation are subalterns: peasants, garment factory workers, jute mill workers, indigenous peoples protesting against coal mines that will uproot and destroy means of livelihood and ways of life, people lacking basic healthcare, schools, women wanting to be free of sexual harassment, and many, many others. We have lessons to learn from the Pilkhana tragedy. The real answer, as Eisenhower had reminded us, lies in seeking a balance in, and among, national programmes. Not in chasing after a mirage of perfect security.

NewAge, March 30, 2009

4 BDR men ‘fall ill’, land in DMCH

Tags: BDR, border security, governance, Military, Rahnuma Ahmed, torture