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Magazine
Framing impact
V. GANGADHAR
AP
Strengthening bonds of friendship ...
THE readers of The Hindu, I find, are debating the publication of big photographs packed with human interest on its front pages. This has turned out to be an interesting debate.
Noted shehnai player Ustad Bismillah Khan in animated conversation in New Delhi, employees of the West Bengal government registering their protest against the recent Supreme Court ruling against strikes, the young son of the late BSF Deputy Commandant Satish Chandra Menon killed while on duty in Kosovo at the funeral... these told their own stories. The last photograph brought out the anguish of the nation over the death of a young soldier better than any words. That is the impact of photojournalism.
Over the past few weeks, Indian newspapers had been publishing the photograph of the 29-year-old Ahmedabad tailor, Qutubuddin Ansari, a victim of the savage Gujarat communal riots of 2002, now in the process of being rehabilitated in Kolkata. During the riots, the photograph of Ansari's tear-stained face begging for mercy from his assailants moved the nation. Even the attackers let him go. This one photograph captured man's cruelty to man in the Gujarat riots. No words, no amount of tears could wipe out the anguish and sorrow of thousands of riot victims. The impact of photographs on readers can never be underestimated. Two such photographs, both from the days of the Vietnam War, come to mind. The first, an agency photograph, showed a group of children with terror stricken faces fleeing their homes which had been fire bombed by the
American warplanes with napalm bombs. Leading the group was a seven-year-old girl who was totally naked, her clothes burnt away by the fire. Her arms were raised and she was screaming in uncontrollable terror.
The second photograph showed one of the corrupt puppet Generals of South Vietnam putting a pistol to the head of a suspected Viet Cong terrorist before pulling the trigger. No trial, no justice but public murder. Again the fear on the face of the victim showed. The world sympathised with him and expressed horror and disgust at the brutality of the South Vietnamese Generals who were in power only because of U.S. support.
The two photographs received wide publicity in the U.S. and stirred the nation's conscience against the immoral, illegal war launched by the government. The U.S. government had been lying to its people that civilian targets were not attacked in the massive bombing raids and the South
Vietnamese puppet generals were indeed brave men who were fighting the Communist menace in South Asia. But the photographs told entirely different stories, which could not be challenged and U.S. public opinion slowly turned against the Vietnam War.
War or peace, photographs help to influence public opinion, Some years back the weekly Sunday Observer in Mumbai published a full page picture story on the plight of the unfortunate chickens in the city. They were brought in trucks, packed like sardines, without food and water to the city where dealers carried them upside down, squawking in anguish, to their shops to be slaughtered in front of other birds.
The pictures were enough to put off people from eating chicken for days together and led to a `Be Nice to Animals and Birds' campaign by social groups and the SPCA.
Another Mumbai newspaper, the under-rated Free Press Journal is now catching public attention. On most days, its front page is more eye-catching than those of the bigger newspapers. Why? FPJ carries more photographs, often five or six and carries the day.
Journalists know they have to report and publish photographs of more unhappy events than happy ones. But there are compensations. Recently, we had lots of pictures of Noor, the child from Pakistan, who was successfully operated for a major heart problem in Bangalore. The love and affection lavished on her made very good photographs and showed that India did have a heart.
Many Indians used to look at Life magazine and its wonderful pictures. Not many of us are lucky to travel around the globe. But there are compensations. Flip through the pages of National Geographic and take a trip across the crocodile-filled Amazon, the Samurai-warrior land of Japan and the rain forests of Brazil. The photographs create such an illusion.
Coming back to front pages of newspapers, they are primarily meant for news but accompanied by photographs, they make more compelling reading.
We cannot deny that most photographs portray unhappy situations, but then, the world of journalism, by and large, is not a happy one.
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