Our love of voyeurism

Every tragedy becomes a photograph in this hyper-documented world

Last week, in a horrific accident in Chennai, two people were charred when their car hit a tree and went up in flames. The next day, at the spot where they died, some people posed near the tree and clicked a couple of selfies. This is not a one-off case. Reportedly, people often mill around accident victims and click their photos or videos instead of helping them, or return to the spot later to tell the world that they were there.

Issues of morality often arise in the case of photographs of war and disaster. Last year, a powerful image of a woman in her yellow airline uniform — shocked, covered in dust and blood, and with her clothes ripped off — emerged after the Brussels airport attack. Some people wondered whether the photograph had stripped the woman of her dignity, while others argued that the Islamic State had done that through the bombing. Oft-asked questions about such images are: is it all right to photograph someone who is suffering or dying? What purpose does it serve? How would the photograph affect the family of the deceased? Photojournalists often grapple with these questions.

Whether it was the case of the Brussels woman, or the controversial photograph by Kevin Carter of the Sudanese child, or Nick Ut’s photo of a child fleeing from Napalm bombing during the Vietnam War, the subject was the victim. The photographer was the observer recording history, furnishing evidence of events, and holding up a mirror to harsh realities.

However, in the case of the Chennai accident, the people posing near the burnt tree were only interested in recording their presence there. The intention was similar to another grisly image that a colleague showed me once, in which a young man with a sorrowful expression posed near his dead grandfather. The Facebook post was apparently his way of telling the world that he was grief-stricken. In these cases, photography is not an act of observation but an act of intervention. The photographer and the subject are now often one and the same; anything else in the frame is purely incidental.

Culture of schadenfreude

What explains this culture of schadenfreude in which we are now immersed? Is the ‘fear of missing out’ or the need to participate so crucial that even experiences of grief are no longer personal and require validation? In the thirst for approval or ‘likes’, have we forgotten to be humane, to respect the dead?

We all love seeing beautiful images, which often crowd our social media feed. However, the commercialisation of photography has also unfortunately unleashed a culture of perversity. As Susan Sontag said in On Photography, “Photography has now become a defense against anxiety and a tool of power.”

In this hyper-documented world, perhaps we will do well to take a step back and wonder how it would affect the couple’s family if they saw smiling people where they lost their loved ones, or wonder if that poor grandfather deserved such a farewell. “To collect photographs is to collect the world,” Sontag had said. The ‘I’ doesn’t constitute the world.