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ShareThe power of photographs was once again brought into sharp focus after China arm-twisted the Bangladesh government into shutting down a photography exhibition entitled Tibet 1949-2009.
The exhibition, organised by the Students for a Free Tibet, showed a myriad of images of the Himalayan nation. They were at times graphic in their depiction of an oppressive China, and on others magical in their imagery of one of the most beautiful countries on Earth.
But China doesn't seem to be able to differentiate between the aesthetics of politics and the politics of beauty. China, however, is not up for debate here. Every country has its own way of dealing with a chequered past. This column is about the power of photographs.
Even the best writers will attest that no matter how powerful be the prose, a picture that cuts to the heart of the matter -- whether jovial or devastating -- is worth a thousand well-chosen words. Photographs know no language, and require the viewer to possess only one faculty: The ability to see. Photographs have been used to document 'the real story' throughout most of the tumultuous 20th Century. Our innate predilection for cruelty is unfathomable, and so we must keep snapping away in the hope that wisdom will someday dawn.
Closer to home, my pictures have been used to bring fraudsters to book. When I worked in a national daily based in New Delhi, I was asked to cover drought-affected villagers in 1996. On assignment, I got a picture of an elderly farmer sitting in his arid farm. Soon after the picture was published, I received a telephone call from the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC).
They wanted to know where the picture was taken as, they claimed, the farmer in question was dead and his children had claimed the insurance money four years before this picture was taken. They asked me if I could take them to the farm to see this modern-day Lazarus for themselves. I did and they saw him, alive and kicking. The case was kicked straight into court -- the photograph used as evidence and me as a witness.
Photographs are apolitical in as much as they are amoral, as they should be. They are beasts of their own device, and that is why governments across the world would rather choose to hide images than words. Words can be misinterpreted, but how could you say that the picture of a young Vietnamese girl, her body burned as she ran from her village, was anything short of murder. You can't, and neither did the American public.
