To Witness and To Care
The canon of protest imagery -if there is such a thing- largely focuses on the protest as a site of outrage and more often than not, violence. The notion that a protest, while an expression of dissent, is also a place fuelled by care and a sense of community is one that is not expressed through photography often.
‘To Witness and To Care’ aims to show images of care at protests while simultaneously -through the process of creating and treating the images- showcasing what one contends with when creating an image that will be shared on the internet. An image posted online may be used in ways that the person sharing the image did not intend. The modification of an image for harassment, the threat of doxxing, the use of the image for facial recognition by both the State and private contractors, and simple misrepresentation are all things to be cognisant of for the photographer.
‘To Witness and To Care’ is a series of images from multiple sites of protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act in New Delhi from December 2019 to January 2020. It seeks to show the act of protesting under constant surveillance and tries to contest the idea that protests are worth documenting only when they are violent. Care has been taken in all the images presented to obscure the identity of protestors to prevent any harassment that may take place through these images’ publication or circulation. This has been done both through the images’ composition and their treatment.
Faces add to the indexical value of an image. There is no denying this. They are important in documenting history. But record can be kept for the future without endangering those in the present. The absence of a face does not negate the indexical value of the image but rather, the anonymity that that absence lends can be valuable to understand the nature of surveillance and harm that may be caused by including a face. This series is an attempt to advocate for care as a radical act through aesthetic, and as a process of image-making.
