“To photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude.” –
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others.
Photography has evolved significantly over centuries. Not just
the process of photographing but the intent has changed with time. The shift
from commissioned photographs of the early nineteenth century to the “shutter,
non-professional” photographs of this century can be traced easily. Camera
Obscura or the Dark Room Camera of the nineteenth century, now comes to your
fingertips in the form of smart phone cameras. Photographs are a pivotal part
of the 21st century mass culture where images are just a snap away.
Photographs and memory are deeply connected. The use of
photography for memory or remembrance goes back to the 20th century ethnographers,
Margaret Mead and Geoffrey Bateson, who used camera for the first time in the
field of ethnography. Mead says, “I think that we must squarely face the fact
that we, as a discipline, have only ourselves to blame for our gross and
dreadful negligence.” She wrote that camera could have “caught and preserved
for centuries” dances, rituals performed perhaps for the last time, animal
sacrifices and so on. She emphasizes to “memorialized (everything) on film,
before it all disappears in front of everybody’s eyes.” Susan Sontag, in her book, ‘Regarding the Pain of Others’ says that photographs indeed provides a
quick way of apprehending something and a compact form for memorizing.
Photography is something which did not come naturally to me.
All the more, it is even too early to call myself a photographer. But it is
fair to say that I compulsively take photographs, which are of course an
amalgamation of a technology at-hand and opportunity. I have delved myself into
capturing everything that catches my attention over the past year. So when I
had to write a paper on photography and its ethicality, I did not know where to
begin. Photography came to me as an instinct—an instinct when words failed me
and I was left with camera to express what I saw in front of my eyes.
The question of ethics, insider-outsider,
subjectivity-objectivity, and larger histories of colonialism and orientalism
are closely knit with photography. I carried these questions with me everywhere
I went. A few days ago, I was walking by a relatively lower middle-class
housing colony and spotted two boys playing cricket. Unlike the most gully
cricket, they were throwing a plastic doll’s head as a ball. The sight of a
head being thrown into air became grotesque and interesting at the same
time. But seeking consent of the subject, which is the first requirement in the
ethics of photography became live, the moment I took out my smart phone to capture.
So instead of going ahead with the photo, I went near them and stood in one
corner. They stopped playing. I smiled and asked if I could capture them
playing. And that was it. One of them, who had the playing stick in hand,
rushed inside the house. The other, smilingly followed him. Both of them now
stood as close to their house as possible and waited for me to leave. Their
father came out, laughing and told the boys that I just meant to photograph. I
apologized and left the place with a heavy smile. Throughout the metro ride, I
kept thinking about what had just happened. I had lost on a ‘beautiful’ shot
but I told myself that at least I asked. But the truth is, I lost a good
photograph. I again soothed myself saying that I respected the desire of my
subject. But it is also true that I lost a good subject. The photo along with a
few hashtags could have bagged a few hundred likes. But I was happy or at least
that’s what I told myself that I kept the ethics of photographing as priority. This
was the turmoil.
I still contemplate why did I choose to photograph only the
boys who played with the head of the doll and not otherwise. The image of a
human face being swung in the air and then tossed by a bat invoked what Susan
Sontag in context of war photography calls, “the image as shock”. And
juxtaposes it with “image as cliché”. She says, “images be jarring, clamorous,
eye-opening seems like elementary realism as well as good business sense. The
image as shock and the image as cliché are two aspects of the same presence.” In other words, the so-called
conscious choice of the photographer to capture a moment of shock, is done with
an intention to unite the good will of the people in the form of likes and
comments; who in economic terms also become the consumers of that photograph.
Like Sontag says, Shock has become the leading stimulus of consumption.
Now that we are talking about shock and its cosmopolitan
consumptive implications, it is important to talk about Mayank Austen Soofi, whose work both fascinate and
disturb me.
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| Mayank Austen Soofi. Photograph by: Dayanita Singh |
Austen Soofi, whose
Instagram bio reads, “The self-proclaimed hyperlocal Homer”, popularly known
for this long-time blog The Delhi Walla, remains an inspiration for me. One of
the Instagram followers of Austen Soofi, Taruna Khatri, commented on his post
which echoes perfectly with what I feel towards his work. She says, “Who
would’ve thought captions could have genres of their own. “Mayank Austen Soofi”
is my favourite caption genre and if it weren’t for my conscience that begs me
to be original I swear I’d begin to write captions like that all the time.
Sometimes I’m walking down the road and I see a dried up Bougainville with a
few flowers in front of an old wooden door and I go like “Emily Dickinson’s
outhouse” or something like that. I find a street dog looking at me and I go
like “A loyal stranger’s direct gaze” or I go into the old city for a case
study and immediately think of the “The disappearing element of the hyper local
architecture”. Very less people have had impact on me like this. There’s wes
Anderson and then there’s you. Everything you post is a delight. Consider this
“Sylvia’s self-confessional poetry” or something like that. I’m sure you can
think of something better.”
While we are talking about captions, it is only necessary to
talk what Sontag has to offer about the importance of putting captions.
According to her, if there’s a distance between the reader and the subject in a
photograph, then “what the photograph says can be read in several ways.
Eventually, one reads into the photograph what it should be saying.” There’s a
considerable distance between the subject and the words Soofi deploys in explaining
them. But to me, it appears that the intention behind putting captions like, “Cent
Percent King Lear!” for an ordinary aging man; makes the subject more distant, exotic,
and extraordinary.
John Berger, in his book, ‘Ways of Seeing’ tells how we see
things is affected by what we already know or what we believe. Hence, the
admiration I held in Mayank Austen Soofi’s work (both writing and photography)
reflected in my photography and captioning skills. What I see, or the way I see
it, corresponds to what Austen Soofi has to offer. Nothing can be learnt in
isolation. Everything is affected by every other thing – they are relational in
nature. So, when I stop on a empty road, to photograph a rickshaw puller
sleeping, the role of Soofi’s perspective is at play.
In one of the interviews on his book, Nobody Can Love You
More, which is a book about the lives of sex-workers of Kotha no. 300 at
G.B. Road, Delhi; Soofi was asked about the significance of the title. To which
he replied, “I wanted it to be beautiful.” The usage of the word ‘beautiful’ opens
up another set of debate for me both as a writer and a photographer. What
comprises beautiful? Whose perspective qualifies for something to be called beautiful?
Who/What is beautiful and for whom? A beggar lying bandaged on footpath or a daily-wage
laborer sleeping on his cart; they are the actual hardships of life but for some it becomes a beautiful spectacle.
In another interview, he said that he never wanted to
simplify complicated things. But the way he captions photographs or calls the
title of his book “beautiful”, his words fall back on him. Like Soofi, many more
photographers (consciously or unconsciously) have fallen into the trap of
making the vision of suffering spectacular. “But the spectacular is very much
part of the religious narratives by which suffering, throughout most of Western
history, has been understood”, says Sontag. I have fallen into this trap as
well and it is not limited to the photos I capture but other kinds of visuals
which draw me—postcards are one of them. I love postcards. No matter where I
go, I buy postcards, not to be sent to a friend or family but to be glued on my
bedroom wall. But it is not as simple as it seems. There’s a pattern to my
purchase. I buy postcards only of the tribal women of Rajasthan. Sometimes
I look at the collage and ask myself, “why do I buy postcards of tribal
communities?” One of the postcards which deeply unsettles me is that of a
tribal woman breast feeding her toddler, staring into the camera with one
breast exposed. I remember one of my friends asking the intentions behind
buying a particular kind of postcards. I simply turned to her and said, “They
are beautiful. Aren’t they?”
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| Postcard on my wall. |
But there are things more to them besides being just
beautiful. Each postcard, which claims to represent indigenous communities, carries
with them a trail of exoticization. And probably this is what draws me to
Soofi’s work. There is certain grandeur, epic-ness to his portraits. Sontag
talks about the epic or grandeur nature of photographs. In context of the
Crimean and the American Civil War, she says, “As for the war photographs
published between 1914 and 1918, nearly all anonymous, they were – insofar as
they did convey something of the terrors and the devastation—generally in the
epic mode…” Hence, there is a romanticization in the idea of wars being fought,
just like photographs of Austen Soofi where he makes the beggar or laborers, the
European or Mughal kings.
But there is something which Soofi’s photographs do.
Something which is a little difficult to explain. Something which is as vague
as these sentences. I’ll attempt to explain it through an interview which he
gave, and says that he wants to “capture the ordinariness of their (his
subject’s) extraordinary lives”. Sticking true to this statement, he captions
his photos, which are about ‘ordinary’ people by adding a layer of
extraordinariness through linking them to European classic writers like Woolf,
Shakespeare or Proust. But what about this fascination to the colonizer’s
literature remains a question unanswered. Why do people from Indian diaspora
need validation of the Western Literature?
Mayank Austen Soofi, as an author talks about the importance
of consent while writing anything which is other than oneself. While writing
his book, Nobody Can Love You More he tells that, if any of his subjects
showed any discomfiture in sharing any information and asked him not to
incorporate the detail, he obliged. But what about his photography? Does he
seek permission? He acknowledges the limitations of a writer or photographer
and says, “I think when you are writing a book about somebody else’s life, it
is a little unfair, because it is my thought process at work and they have
little control over it. I cannot be their voice.”
While I was balancing this admiration and discomfort with
the genre of on-spot photography, also known as “shutter, non-professional”
photography, it struck me that seeking permission to respect the desires of the
subject results in loss of candidness or originality of the moment. Further, it
made me question what comprises of candidness. It is more often than not
intrusive.
But finding answer to the question of whether my postcard collection
is beautiful or exotic remains unanswered. According to Christopher
Pinney, the practice of photographing with new technology is also a colonial
practice. But the history of Photography as a colonial project goes back to
nineteenth century, when Lord Canning, the Governor-General of India, expressed
his desire to photograph the native castes and tribes of the country. Project
titled, ‘The People of India’ was compiled between 1868 and 1875, and comprised
of 468 annotated photographs to classify and categorize the colonized subjects.
The origins of the project lay in the desire of Lord Canning to possess
photographs of native Indian people. In the essay, ‘The Camera Obscure and its
Subjects’, Jonathan Carry talks about the attempts made to theorize vision and
visuality … that emphasize a continuous and overarching Western visual
tradition.
Bringing consensus to the debate of ethicality in
Photography has been a hard-fought battle. It has been widely discussed not
just by the professionals but amateur photographers as well. Indeed, it is a
battle which provides you with the means of fighting but does not leave you
with a settling victory. How I see it, you cannot purely devour into ethicality
while photographing your subject. But it is the attempts you make – even if
failed, count. When you honestly try to understand the complexities of your
subject and not take them for granted. “Margaret Mead obviously did not think
it was necessary to deal with the ethical issues of photographing those who had
little interest or stake in a project in which their ‘participation’ as
subjects was vital.” No matter how much oddly satisfying the photographs of
Mayank Austen Soofi are, his mere acknowledgement of the complexity of the
subject brings everything into perspective. He says, “I think when you are
writing a book about somebody else’s life, it is a little unfair...” Hence, it can’t be ignored that camera is an apparatus of
political and social power, resulting in what Carry calls, “monolithic
construction”. But it is important to be aware of this monolithism and continue
to acknowledge its complexities.
References-
Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. Picador.
Crary, Jonathan. 1992. The Camera Obscura and Its Subject.
Techniques of the Observer. October Books.
Berger, John. 1972. Ways of Seeing. Penguin Books.
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