| “You
are either with us, or against us”. This single statement
has pushed  an
already polarized world towards an unprecedented frenzy of
military
jingoism. Definitions of good and evil, civilized and uncivilized,
and
though it is rarely couched in those terms - Muslim or non-Muslim
– have
determined the limits of inclusiveness.
Western liberal society
has had other dilemmas. Having traditionally
preached equality, but happily defended colonialism. Having
espoused free thought, but found forms of governance other
than their own, unacceptable. Having promoted the world charter
of human rights, but ensured that the rights of access to
their nation states, remains clearly restricted by arbitrary
definitions of membership, the ‘freedom loving states’
have marginalized the majority of the people in the world.
This exclusion of the
majority world by the minority has been bolstered by
organizations with clear mandates to protect the interests
of the included. Powerful global entities backed by the might
of bombs with many times the strength of the ones that wrecked
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, define what constitute weapons of
mass destruction. Arbitrary definitions of democracy coupled
with arbitrary acceptance of autocracy, determine the fate
of millions whose deaths are a ‘price worth paying’
for material gains.
There are of course
pockets of exclusion within the majority world. A
viral load that is loaded with stigma excludes the afflicted
from
traditionally caring societies. Caste and class systems coupled
with
colonial legacies, ensure the exclusion of the poor. Religious
and social
systems headed by men, deny women space and access that men
take for granted.
Exclusion affects the
medium of photography itself. Its popularity generates an
illusion of innocence. A belief in the veracity of the image
hides the fact that images are constructed, controlled and
propagated to suit dominant points of view. Photography is
gendered, and class based. Hierarchies within newsrooms deny
photographers the scope to make their own visual statements.
Word people with limited imagination, punctuate banal text
with visual clichés. Lacking visual skills themselves,
they have left this powerful medium to advertising
and marketing people to cultivate a new population of consumers.
Sellers determine the norms of our society without impedance
from the media.
Photography’s ability
to record detail, its unusual palette, its
instantaneousness, its contemporariness, its ubiquitousness,
its claim to
credibility, its relationships with time and space, its power
and its
inclusiveness have seduced some fine artists who have taken
on the medium with gusto, but rarely explored its full potential.
Whereas other artists have felt threatened and have shunned
it from their craft and from their study, unwilling to take
on the pliability of such a powerful tool. Photography is
too unforgiving. It tells much not only of the photographed,
but also of the photographer.
There are others who
have stretched the medium to its limits. From the
concerned photojournalists who have stood up for the oppressed,
to the conceptual artists who have taken on social issues
as their motif, there have been photographers who have aligned
themselves with the excluded, voicing their concerns, and
fighting for their rights. This is especially so in the majority
world, where photography neither has the glamour, nor the
economic returns often associated with the profession in the
west. The media however, has become a tool of the powerful.
Media distortion and suppression, combined with the acquiescence
of those who stand to gain, ensures that propaganda is packaged
as news, silence is bought and consent engineered. Each pen
that fails to write, each shutter that fails to open, each
voice that refuses to shout in protest, when governmental
and corporate power flexes its muscles bears the guilt of
compliance. This festival in giving space to the excluded
pays homage to the few who have continued to say no.
|
