The Hindu : Seeking anonymity

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Aug 26, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Seeking anonymity

By Kalpana Sharma

While the media might feel justified in using images of people who have not been identified, once the person in the picture stops being anonymous, is it right to continue to use the photograph?

QUTUBUDDIN ANSARI, the 29-year-old tailor from Ahmedabad, must be crossing his fingers. He hopes that he can disappear into the anonymity of a big city like Kolkata and that the media will forget him. His misfortune is that the photograph of him pleading for help with folded hands has become the "face" of last year's communal carnage in Gujarat. This image has haunted him after it was flashed across newspapers in India and worldwide. And it is the reason he has accepted voluntary displacement from his home in Gujarat. Mr. Ansari's experiences, following the repeated use of that image, raise several troubling questions about the role of the media.

When Mr. Ansari came to Mumbai, en route to Kolkata, he was confronted by a fairly unsympathetic media. He narrated how the repeated use of his photograph by news organisations had made life hell for him in Ahmedabad. His situation was worsened whensome newspapers managed to trace him after the violence, and ran a photograph of him as he looks under normal circumstances alongside the well-known image of his terrorised face. In the latter image, he was an anonymous individual. But in the former, he was identified and named.

As a result, he was recognised by many people. Even a public service advertisement on television and in cinema theatres, featuring prominent personalities stating that they were Indian, flashed Mr. Ansari's photograph. His permission was never taken for this. Children teased his seven-year-old daughter saying they had seen her father crying. Mr. Ansari says he did not know if the people who recognised him were sympathetic or hostile.

Yet even after Mr. Ansari narrated this, many at the press conference turned on him and asked why he was speaking to the media if the media was responsible for his problems. Sadly, the majority of the journalists present had missed the point entirely. When asked what he would say to the photographer who had taken the picture, a guileless Mr. Ansari said, "What will I say? He was doing his job." However, what he meant to say, but did not explicitly, was that in the Gujarat of today, to be identified as a Muslim is not a comfortable feeling, particularly as those who attacked localities such as the one Mr. Ansari lived in continue to walk around freely and have not been charged.

Mr. Ansari's problems arose from the fact that the original photograph continued to be used even after the violence had ended, and after he and his family had begun to try and lead a normal life and after the press had identified him. It even followed him outside Gujarat, to Mumbai and then to Malegaon, where he found work as a tailor. His unasked-for notoriety, thanks to that image, cost him his job in Malegaon. A desperate Mr. Ansari asked mediapersons in Mumbai, "why do the media keep printing my picture?" How do we answer that?

Once an image enters the public domain, does the individual portrayed in the image lose his or her rights? There are many instances where photographers have taken arresting pictures of anonymous individuals, photographs that are far more eloquent than hundreds of words to illustrate a tragedy, war, disaster, celebration or momentous change. For instance, take the photograph of the child, whose glazed, dead eyes stare out at you, and symbolise the terrible and criminal tragedy of the Bhopal gas leak and the ensuing devastation caused to the lives of thousands of people. We do not know the name of that child or his family. But has anyone asked what must his family feel each time that image is repeated to illustrate the Bhopal disaster?

While the media might feel justified in using images of people who have not been identified, once the person in the picture stops being anonymous, as in Mr. Ansari's case, is it right to continue to use the photograph without any thought for the individual? After all, if Mr. Ansari had been a well-known person, would the media have continued to use such an unflattering image, even if it conveyed so much? Does poverty remove a person's right to "informed consent" in such matters?

The other side of the story is that sometimes a photograph, or a photographer, can actually save a life or lives. In Mr. Ansari's case, the photographer in question actually did intervene. When he realised that this man and his family, and others, were trapped in a locality where a mob was burning and killing, he alerted the Army. Mr. Ansari acknowledges that they were saved because the Army finally came on the scene. He perhaps does not know that it was the photographer who saved them.

In a more recent case, the photograph of 12-year-old Ali Ismail Abbas, the Iraqi boy who lost both his arms, was severely burned and lost all his family members in the American bombing of Iraq, actually saved his life. That image of the child with confused and appealing eyes illustrated the senselessness of the war. It brought forth help for Abbas from journalists and others. An Australian journalist raised funds for the boy. Today, Ali Ismail is alive and is in England being fitted with artificial limbs. Without media attention, it is doubtful if he would have survived. But the photograph that was flashed across the world does not appear anymore. So the media seems to have tacitly accepted that the child must be allowed the dignity to rebuild his life. Should we not accord Mr. Ansari the same right?

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