 Okay, we will begin the session then. All right, so hello to everyone from Nagaland and welcome to Dot Talks live from home. With me, Elika, I will be your host and moderator for today's talk. Now, this is the 10th lecture of the Dot Talks webinar series. And our speaker for today is Dr. Mohammed Shafiq K. He has completed his PhD from the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. And his research interest includes visual cultures, migration studies and minor literature. I'd like to warmly welcome my friend Shafiq to this Dot Talks lecture series and for accepting our invitation. Presently, he is an assistant professor at Manipal Center for Humanities, Manipal Academy of Higher Education. He has previously worked at the University of Hyderabad and the Central University of Kerala. Now Shafiq has been researching on, as he tells me, on amateur photographs and the methods he's applied to his studies has been from a cultural anthropology and cultural studies point of view. So his talk for today is titled The Visible and the Invisible How to Study a Photograph, in which he will be sharing with us some of the existing and new methods on studying and conducting and ethnography of photography. I would like to give the time to you, Shafiq. Please take it forward, but let me share the screen, okay? Yeah, thank you, Elika. Thanks also, Kulo, for inviting me for this talk. So yeah, there is the presentation there. Today I'll be looking at photography as a popular art form. Okay, so this picture that you see is actually me. This picture was taken sometime in 1991. And behind me, you see the city of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. I grew, I mean, I spent some new years there and this picture was taken on one of those days. Now, this picture is a very good example. As to what can go wrong when we take photograph as a document of reality? I will discuss this more with detail too. I mean, I'll be borrowing a lot from Christopher Finney. But before that, if you look at this picture, it gives the impression that I live in this place, but I did not. The fact is that we lived some 200 kilometers away from the nearest city. So the city that you see behind me actually exists. Yes, that way it is an indexical, often indexical nature. But I did not live there. I was, we were visiting someone and I remember we were visiting my uncle. And it was taken from the balcony of the place that he works at. So the thing about photograph is that it is a visual document, but it hides a lot of information. A lot of information there is invisible in the photograph. Like what are some of these invisible things in a photograph? For example, I mean, the most obvious thing is that there is an outside to the frame. A photograph is a framed thing. There's an outside to the frame. You do not know what is on the other sides. What is behind? I mean, who is taking the photo? For example, we do not know what is on the left. What is on the right? We do not know. We also do not know the range of photographs that were taken along with this photograph. I mean, usually if you look at our social media, for example, if you look at family albums, for example, you know, when we were children, we used to have these films, right? So the studio would ask us. So once they develop the negative, the studio would ask us, which of these negatives do you actually want to print? Because you know, not all photographs were good looking. Not all photographs were developed. So obviously we do not see the range of photographs that were taken along with the photograph. So that is another invisibility of the photograph. The third invisibility of the photograph, and this is the most important when it comes to looking at photographs as a realistic, as a visual document of truth, of reality, is that photographs are generally of, I mean, I'm looking at amateur photography here, are generally of happy occasions. You have photographs which are, you have photographs which are of birthdays, you have photographs when you go for a tour, you have photographs when you graduate, you have photographs of all the happy occasions in your life. But we do not have photographs of these sad occasions in our life. So in order to look at a photograph, as if it is a document of reality, we'd be looking at a very limited version of that reality. And this limited version is usually of the happy occasions in our life. So obviously, I mean, today we know, especially in the age of social media, that we are very limited, very selected range of photographs ever get exhibited. But when photography came in, so Elika, we'll have the next slide. So yeah, if you look at for the last couple of years, I've been working on photographs which were taken by migrant workers in the Gulf. So these are some of the four, I mean, I just made a collage of the different photos that I have collected. And as you can see, they are all male. One of the things that I face when I study these photographs is that, these are, I mean, many of them are more like moldy and because our weather is very humid here, photographs really do not last for a long time. Also, you can see that the other problem with these photographs are that they are actually part of the domestic space. In the sense that, you know, that today we post a lot of photographs, but it's a new thing. Photographs are generally hidden in some rack in these houses, in some albums. You have to have, and this is one major thing about studying photographs, which is that you have to be some kind of an insider to study photographs. If you look at Christopher Pinnick, for example, many of his, I mean, I'll come to his study later on, but I'm just giving an example. Many of his photographs actually come from our source from the studio rather than from people themselves. Because, you know, it's a source where you can get. But otherwise, when you go to a house, you actually have to have access to the house in order to get these photographs. You also, because, you know, there are many of these restrictions which are there, I mean, which are culturally specific, which are attached to the gaze. Like, you know, just like how you cannot have access to all the rooms in a house. You can also not have access to everything that can be seen by the eyes. In the sense, for example, family photographs usually have people who are not there anymore, people who have passed on. And not everyone will be comfortable showing those photographs to a stranger. Family photographs also will have photographs that were taken inside the house and not in public places and were not really meant to be seen by outsiders. And, you know, families usually have a problem when someone else comes and sees it. Okay, so before I get to that, if you look at the history of photographs, photograph was not really looked at as an art until, you know, the second, until the mid-20th century. But if you look at it, there's a hundred years history of photograph before that. The photographs, I mean, the film photographs were developed in late 19th century, I think 1890s or something, by Eastman color, and then soon after that Kodak. But before that, you have this, what is called the daguerreotype from 1839. So you have actually a long history of photograph, but the reason why it was not studied as an art is because it was more seen as a physical activity. The thing about photograph is that it is already mediated. Now someone like Walter Benjamin would say that that is its positive potential, that is its democratic potential. But, you know, I mean, the reason why he is saying is that, you know, I mean, he has another agenda to it, but I won't go there. If you look at how photographs were used in its early history, it was as if photographs have this unmediated access to reality. While the fact is that, you know, photograph is very mediated in the sense that there's a machine which comes in between you and the world when you take a photograph. So in the next slide, you will see that, so this is coming from Christopher Pines book, Camera Indica, 1997 book, which actually is a representative of the shift that has happened in cultural anthropology when it comes to photographs. So he is giving this as an example of how photos were used in early photography in India. So this is, so after the 1857 revolt, see it was in the 1860s that camera, like photographs became really popular. Around that time, for example, the British royal family ordered some 600 photographs of themselves. At that point of time, photographs became this new machine that can record reality. So Pines says that after 1857, photographs were used for two purposes, first of which was detection. By detection, now this has got to do with, like, you know, in those times, there was this field of anthropometry where you can look at people's physical characteristics and tell, you know, and speak about their mental properties. So after 1857, the British in India were quite paranoid, let's say, because the 1857 revolt was, as you know, it was a revolt by their own soldiers. So it was completely out of the blue and therefore they were paranoid. So they employed camera to photograph the different castes and tribes in India and these photographs were used to study their bodies. So if you look at these photographs, one is the left one is a Baniya trader and the right one is a Banjara tribe. What they used to do is that they used to make these people pose as if they are doing their traditional activities. So the Baniya is running a shop while the Banjara, it's just, I mean, he's just sitting there and then based on these photographs, so you, for the Banjara, you also have a specimen of man and woman. So based on this, they used to say, okay, this tribe we can trust or this tribe, okay, you know, it would be like, you know, look at their nose, they are untrustworthy. It was that kind of science that was going on at that point of time. So they would say, they would look at these photographs and they would have this detailed catalog of people based on their past experience. Like, you know, in 1857, it is obviously not a straightforward story. There were so many people in India who supported the British and there were so many people in India who are opposed to the British. Now, British, going by their racist ideology, they obviously mapped this onto races and tribes. So, you know, which tribe can you trust? Which tribe can you not trust? Which caste can you trust? And all of this was supposed to be mapped onto their body. Like, you know, it was as if your body can say what you are actually. Now, the second function of photographs, which is in the next slide, is that of preservation. Now, if you look at this photograph, again taken from Christopher Rubines' book, you will see these girls, so they represent some tribe in Andaman here. Now, the sad fact about this photograph is that all these girls actually used to attend the English school. They used to be properly uniform. They used to be like you and me. But the photographer made them wear whatever these things that they are wearing in order to make this photo of this real document of a tribe. Now, this was preservation, because after 1857, the British also realized that the older ways of life are fast eroding. There is a new social order and we have to preserve the past. So, the people were made to dress up as if they were past. So, in cultural anthropology, especially in visual anthropology, you will see that until the 1970s, more or less, photographs were considered to be a true representation of reality, such that there is this famous example of moderate need. She would ask her subjects. Like, you know, so there's a mother feeding a baby, but the thing is because the light was not clear enough, she would ask her subject to not feed her baby and wait for adequate light to come and then feed her baby. The sat, I mean, and then she would have this explanation that, you know, but because the baby is hungry, the mother would obviously be thinking of feeding the baby. And therefore, you cannot say that it is a post-photograph. So, this kind of realist effect, or, you know, if it is actually a post-photograph, they would write this as a post-photograph. It was as if, you know, there was some kind of direct connection between what the camera can capture and what it is in reality, which is that, I mean, there was some kind of connection that they assumed that, you know, that one can capture reality as it is. Okay. Now, so one of the major things, so obviously as part of this entire debate, you can see that the major point between a photograph and reality was that, you know, I mean, everyone believed photographs to be worth for their indexical nature, indexical in the sense to show what it is in reality. Now, Christopher Pinney, so in the next slide, so Christopher Pinney looks at photographs in India. If you look at the title of his book, it is interesting because he says, the social life of Indian photographs. He does not say the social life of photographs in India, by which he means that the Indian photographs are a thing in itself, in the sense that it follows a different order that is rooted in Indian dealings with the visual. So he puts forward two important theories. One is that of Darshan. By Darshan, so basically in Western photographic theories, the idea is that the person who looks is the powerful person as opposed to the object which is looked, which is an opposition of weakness. Now, the idea behind Darshan is that this particular equation is reversed, which is that the person who looks at the deity at the God's picture possesses his power because the power is given to the God who looks back at him. So in voyeurism, in the Western theory of voyeurism, the power comes because you look at a person and the person does not see that you are here. You are looking at that person. Like for example, Pipping Tom. The power of Pipping Tom is that the person who is being peeped at does not know that there is this person who is looking. Why in the idea of Darshan, the idea is that the person knows and because the person looks back at you, it increases your power. So the direction of power is changed in an Indian photograph, that is one point. But that, obviously he connects it to a Hindu tradition. Now the second point what he calls is the surfaceism, surfaceism, surface, which is that when you study Indian photographs, you should not look at the semiotic. You should not look at the meanings because the Indian photographs do not operate in meanings, but what he calls surface, on the surface, surfaceism. So if you look at the photograph which is there on the slide right now, he says that this is a very good example of surfaceism, but it is what he calls an interocularity. Interocularity is a word which is like intertextuality, which is that one text, I mean just like one text can appear in another text. For example, there is a reference to one movie within another movie. Similarly, I mean interocularity is when one kind of visual is being referred to in another visual. For example, here the photograph is clearly designed after Amitabh Bachchan's Angry Young Man. So in order to make sense of this photograph, you have to already have a prior understanding of this angry young man phenomena. Like this person who is dejected with life and who wants to overthrow the existing systems, all of that will come into the picture, but it is not in the, any object in the picture, but it is rather in the surface of the picture itself, how, for example, the montage is done as if to resemble an Amitabh Bachchan movie. Now, if you look at Christopher Pini, but again it is a work of cultural anthropology. Now if you go to the next slide, you have the example from Stuart Hall who, unlike Pini, is looking at his own community. So this picture that you have here, this photograph is taken from his essay Reconstruction Work. It is about one of those black migrants who came from Caribbean to England. Now if you look at this studio, it's a studio photograph and it's obviously absurd in the sense that the telephone does not, for example, it's not connected to anywhere. It is just a telephone, it is just a stylized picture. But Stuart Hall would say that rather than reading this within the genre of studio photographs, within the genre of portrait photography, what you have to read it is actually for what it means to the person. Like, you know, you have to think from the perspective of the person and for that person most probably this picture will be sent back home by post. And the function of that photograph is to show first that he is alive, that he has made the ship journey in one piece and secondly, he is doing all right. So this is the point of experience coming into studying photographs, which is that. So when I go back, like, you know, when I study migrant photography and I study those migrant photography from the 80s and 90s, it is not a world which is not completely unknown, which is complete. I mean, it is not a world which is completely unknown to me. I know something of that world, though I cannot assume that I know it totally. So if you come to our next slide, you will have Tina Combs' very interesting book on Black Photography in England. She's also looking at this Caribbean migrants who came to England and she's looking at those photographs which have come from these ghettoized places in England and she's saying that these photographs should never, should not be read for what you can see in the photograph. Rather, it is only a person who belongs to the community which he does, who can read it for what the photograph is quietly saying, which is that, you know, I mean, it all looks like happy photographs, but these photographs have very difficult histories behind them. These people have very difficult histories behind them. The people in the neighborhood know what kind of people these are and it is only by that quiet listening. So she uses this idea of quietness, which is that every photograph has a quiet frequency. You have to listen to it in your solitude. You have to listen to it with your insider's experience and it is only then that these photographs will speak to you. So she says, so if you compare Christopher Pinney and Tina Combs, so Christopher Pinney uses the word aspiration for, you know, I mean, he looked, for example, Christopher Pinney recalls this episode, he goes to Chandni Chowk and there he sees the studio and in front of the studio, there are lots of photographs. People who have posed with Amir Khan, who has posed with Anil Kapoor, you know, obviously these are all, you know, I mean, these are all fabricated photographs, but he says that this is how photographs are used, because that they aspire. This is this, he calls this the chamber of dreams. Photographs are chamber of dreams. Now Tina Combs also uses a similar phrase. She says, these are future conditionals, which is that one of the function which photograph does for precarious communities is that they already live in the present what they want to be in the future, which is that, you know, when your survival is not really guaranteed, or when your freedom is not really guaranteed, you would want to be now for the photograph what you would like to be in the future. So, you know, people dressing up as fashionable people, people dressing up as people who are doing really good in their lives. She says, these are future conditionals, in the sense that this is what they want their future to be, but obviously they are not really sure whether this future will at all happen, which is why, which is how you have to read this photograph, not as a document of the present, but as a document of a possible future, a conditional future. Okay, now I go to my last slide here and we are already nearing our time. This is an interesting study by Ariella Azule, she's an Israeli artist as well as someone who theorizes on photographs. So she calls photography ontologically civil. Civil in the sense, I mean, what she means by civil is what we, in our ordinary, I mean, regular conversation, we mean democratic, it is that what she says is that's even French revolution happened, for example. The kind of Republic which came to be was completely outside the imagination, like it would have taken a leap of imagination to think that everyone who is in a particular region can have a say about their future together and arrive at a consensus as to some kind of consensus, which is always destabilized, which is always slippery as to how their country can be run. She says a photograph is actually this kind of photograph in itself. So she's not saying that, you know, a photograph as it is in a particular cultural context. She's saying photograph in itself is a civil document in the sense that there are too many people involved in a photograph. For example, I mean, you know, traditionally we say the photographer, the object, the camera and the audience, what she says that the photographer has an audience. The subject in the photograph has an audience in her mind. The subject in the photograph has their own agency. The photographer has its own intention, but the camera has its own base of functioning, all of which makes a photograph into a highly unstable field, which exists at a point of time only as a matter of consensus. Now it is always a slippery consensus. So this is the civil contract of photography. So coming back to my story, so if you look at some of the latest kind of things which happen, because photograph hides a lot, some of the recent development in studying of photography has been to use what is called photo voice or photo elicitation, which is that you do not take photographs and then you look at the photograph. You actually ask for people. So when was this photo taken? What was it about? And anything that they would say, you do not have to restrict your conversation to the photograph, but is about what this conversation can this photograph generate, which does not have to be about the photograph. But all of which is actually a potential of the photographic self. So, yeah, so these are the things that I want to... Yeah, so that's it. Thank you. So these are some of the methods that I've been using, yeah, thank you. Okay, all right. Thank you, Shafiq. And that was... I think this is a conversation that we have been sort of talking about how do we capture, how do we understand images? How do we capture notions or practices of the everyday? And in fact, we've had this conversation earlier also and I talked about, I was asking you this and I asked you to think about around this idea of how do we arrive at this world system of photography? I think Christopher Pined talks about this because there are so many local specificities to images, reading images. How do we call out for a world system of reading images or how can we arrive at a method that grasps historical interconnectedness of practices across cultures? Is it even possible to read photograph in that? So I think we can start the conversation and we'll open up for Q and A as well, but that is just one point that I wanted you to highlight as well. Now, when we open up just one point before you answer and when you ask your questions, you can unmute your microphone, introduce yourself and ask your questions or you can even post the questions in the chat box. I see that there is already a question there, we will take that also. But perhaps, yeah, Toshafiq, yeah. Yeah, see, world systems in the sense that, so the idea of world systems is that the world can be divided into a center, a semi-periphery and a periphery. So the flow happens from the center to the periphery. So towards the semi-periphery and then the periphery. The periphery is so peripheral at times that it never reaches there. I mean, that is the point. Now, if you look at how the study of literature is done, now Franco Moretti, Franco Moretti has this, I mean, he is the one who introduced this in the reading of literature, the idea of world systems. It's actually economic. I mean, it comes from economics, this idea of world systems. Okay. But he says that, you know, if you look at the novel form, the novel form comes from the West. It's a Western European phenomenon. But you will see that towards the end of 19th century, more or less, I mean, it runs all over the world, not in every country. For example, in Eastern Europe, it comes only much later, only in the mid 20th century or something. But, you know, most of the world witness some kind of novel form towards the end of 19th century. Now, he says that, so the king, the novel form, the idea of a novel comes from the West. But that does not mean that the novel itself is Western. It has, so he says, there are three things. It has a foreign plot. When the novels first came to India, it has a foreign plot, local characters and local narrative voice. So the world systems theory actually allows for quite a diverse form of reading. In the sense that once you know, so how does, what is the Western thing in photography? Which is that it was actually photography according to Christopher Pini. And he says this in his book, The Coming of Photography, which invoked the idea of an individual in India. See, camera can capture everything that is put. So when the British, for example, when they needed identification, for example, it was even, you know, I mean, we know that even now, in many ways, we are not treated as individuals. We are rather treated as people who belong to certain communities. The kind of rule which exists in India is usually the indirect rule. Like, you know, we are ruled through our communities rather than through the state in itself. But at the same time, the camera could imagine an individual without any of his other bearings. I mean, this is what we speak about realism, right? In the sense that in the late 18th and in the 19th century, when people started painting farmers, for example. We did not know who they were. I mean, they were nameless individuals who existed only as individuals. Like, you know, they would depict scenes from everyday life. Until then, it was not the case. For example, if you look at renaissance painting, each of the saints there, for example, one saint will have a key, one saint will have a sword. Each of these are symbols, right? So they are not supposed to be any human being. They are supposed to be a specific individual. Similarly, every individual will have a marker to show that what is his social position. But you don't see it when with the coming of realism because there you depict human being as human being, not as already belonging to a particular association. Now, photographs brought this technology to India. So this is the coming from the West. But as to, so we have, obviously, all take photographs which are of ourselves, which are of individuals. But as to how to read it, the form of the photography, as to how we will stylize it, that is really local. So this is the world systems involved. Okay. There are two questions that have come in and one I think you have sort of touched upon it. So the first is Yavisa has, she's an MA student from the college and she's asked this question, how can we determine if an image is a staged or a real capturing of the moment? Isn't it difficult for the meaning to be interpreted? Along with that, we have sort of a related question. This is by Akila and she asked this, how do we read selfies and would it be possible to read them as feminist projects? Okay, all right, yes. I think we can take those two questions. So see the question should not arise in the sense that it doesn't matter whether a photograph is staged or real. I mean, that is precisely the point. I mean, most of our photographs are staged. Our selfies are staged. The point is that you should not think that photographs actually capture reality. I mean, that is the point. So why does it matter whether it was staged or if it is real? Because I mean, when we look at amateur photography, they are usually staged, but what does it say about the culture which stages it? I mean, that is the question. I mean, as long as we are not doing some kind of journalistic photography, it shouldn't really matter. I mean, in the sense that, you know, when these awards happen at times, there are accusations of person who getting the award have actually staged the photograph and things of that sort. But other than on such occasions, it doesn't really matter because even the way we stage a photograph, like, you know, I mean, lots of people doing this and this and whatever is actually a cultural code, you know? So you cannot, even the stage photograph shows a lot of reality in it because staging, all kinds of stagings are possible. Like, you know, it's, but if you look at all the selfies, they all belong to a very small range. Like, you know, how, how, for example, how is artificial intelligence able to detect, okay, this is this kind of photography, this is some other kind of photography. Very simply, because, I mean, if you come to Manipal, I know that, okay, which are the places you will photograph. Or, you know, I mean, so the idea of staged doesn't really exist because mostly even staging is like, you know, I mean, just like even though the number of sentences possible in a language is infinite, we all know that the actual number of sentences that we use mostly belong to a particular small range. That is the case with photographs also. Yeah, so about the feminist projects, see the thing is it can be used for all kinds of projects in the sense that how do you read it? How do you understand what kind of selfies is it? That is the only question, you know. So it actually, it is a concrete thing to do. It's a real concrete study to do. I mean, one cannot have an abstract answer to it. In theory, yes. Okay, I see that there are two more questions. We can take those two together. One is Yavisa, again, she asked this question. The photographs, I think it's because you touched on the topic of painting. So, photographs are often considered as a visual art and show various events in history and give us an idea on various communities or people. But so do paintings. So can paintings be considered as early form of photography? We have another question from Matse, an image student. And owing to the advancement in technology, what we see is an increase in the use of editing software and camera filters. So my question to you, sir, is does it do justice for the image being captured? And is the authentic city or the natural state of the image being lost according to you? Because in current times, a lot of misinterpretation of false news are just as easily spread due to edited photos. Okay, great. Yeah. Can paintings be considered as early form of photography? No, because the painting is a painting. One, someone has to, like, you know, I mean, it is the, it is the, like, you know, someone has to, there is an unmediated relation between the painter and the painting. The thing about photography is that it is not really subsumed. It is not really framed by the intention of the photographer. Because it is a machine, because it is not really under your control. I mean, we know that we take seven selfies and post one of them to Instagram. What happens to the other six is that everything was ready, but then the photo came out, it didn't look nice. Obviously, it was not in your control. That is precisely, I mean, even the seventh one which you actually posted was not really, but, you know, given the range that was the best. So this is the, this idea of mediation is what makes photography different and what makes photography, you know, I mean, for example, how did films come about? Films came about because someone want to really know how do horses, when they run, do they lift both all four of their legs or you know, how to work them on the ground? I mean, it was actually a means of ascertaining a reality. Now, the thing is, you cannot have this with painting, right? In the sense that there it is a mechanical process. Here you have to intend, you have to have that intention onto the thing. Now, fake news, false news, obviously these are not good things. But the thing is, does it do justice? See, if photography is our record of aesthetics, then I think editing should also be our record of aesthetics. On the other hand, you know, I mean, if it is used to see these are things of ethics, matters of ethics, in the sense that in a world where you cannot really know what is the truth, the only reality that you can go by is that you cannot, you have to be, you have to let the other person live. I mean, this is the idea of ethics. And it comes about precisely because of these technological changes. Because if you look at it, this idea of being ethics first rather than epistemology first. Like, you know, ethics as the first philosophy happened to me in the second half of 2008 century. And it is precisely because of technologies and how we do not have, I mean, how we understood that we do not really have this access, unmediated access to reality. So, yeah, I mean, there is no point in us saying that whether it is justified or not justified, yeah. Okay, all right. So, Eljo, ask this question. Would you like to comment on the visual text and its connection with a culture of emotions? Yes, like actually this is how anthropology has mostly used photographs. So, photographs for a long time, even in India, maybe even today, is used to capture the soul of a person, which is that. So, Christopher Pinnick gives this example, like, you know, someone dies in this village in which he is doing field work. Before they do anything to the body, they will ask the photographer to come because this guy did not have a photograph and he was alive, I mean, of this. So, before they do the other rituals, they have this family, like, you know, this son's and father, the father is dead. But, you know, sitting as if he's alive and taking a photograph, because at that moment of time, the photograph is supposed to capture his soul intact. So, a photograph is obviously connected to the life of the soul. I mean, it's culturally connected to the life of the soul. You also can study the culture of emotions by looking at the kind of photographs that are taken. Like, you know, for example, some cultures have photographs associated with funeral. Some cultures do not have photographs. Some cultures, for example, does not allow dead people's photographs to be put anywhere in public. So, yes, but, you know, I mean, we cannot make any general statement, of course. This requires the description in order to study, yeah. Okay, we have this question from Maitili Sagara. But the camera is a tool, and like the paintbrush or typewriter or a pen. So, how is one art form more mediated from the, than the other? This is in relation to the question that you had answered earlier. Let's follow up question. See, in the sense that, of course, you know, I mean, it's actually a matter of degree. In the sense that we know that, I mean, we know that we make spelling mistakes, even though we know the correct spelling. And then Freud would say that, you know, it is connected to your unconscious. So, all of these, there are tools in between, yes, but a camera is a much more complicated tool. In the sense that if you look at all the early discussions on camera, it is about what is the correct chemical process to use, what is the correct physical angle to use. So, it is not, in the sense that it is actually a matter of degree. In the sense that a camera can offer, is a much more complicated mediation than, you know, a brush or a pen. Of course, it is possible that, it is possible that, you know, a painter painted something and there was one brush stroke, which he did not intend. But, you know, it is very different from developing a photograph and then seeing that actually in this photograph, you can see a person who was not supposed to be there. You know, I mean, these are two qualitatively very different kinds of things. But, yes, theoretically, even a brush is a tool which comes in between. Okay. We have one question and I think after this, we can take one more question, all right. So, we have this question from Grishma. And Grishma, she asked this, is there really a drastic difference between truth in journalistic photographs as opposed to other photographs? Can journalistic photographs be taken as more authentic sources of facts? Okay. Here, the question is, you would have often noticed that some of your friends or even people at your home have suddenly started speaking like people in television series. The point is that, you know, in the sense that it is not as if there is reality and then there is photograph of reality. It is also the case that reality often follows how a photograph is, for example, how a photograph looks like. Like in the sense that we often, the reality that we see around us is usually even otherwise mediated by through the other kinds of things that we see around us. So, it's not as if that, you know, I mean, it's not as if you turn away your face from the screen and then you see a completely different reality. Actually, both of these are, they generate the same kind of pattern because they are, you know, they are mutually influencing each other. So, yes, no, I mean, journalistic photographs cannot be more authentic sources of facts. Like, you know, in the reality itself is often a photograph. Yeah. Okay. I guess it has to be directed back to you, Shafiq, because I will have to pose this question. How real are you now, right? As you are talking, because we are also capturing your image, right? Okay, anyway, we have one more question from Jaya and she asked this, can you explain the civil contract of photography, particularly the part where you suggested that the camera has its own agency or a way of functionality that goes beyond that of the photographer and the subject in the photo? With an example, I guess this would be more clear. Okay. Okay, see if you, that last slide that we had is the figure of a Palestinian mother holding her child in her lap. Now, aesthetically, one could read it as an example of this mother Mary carrying this. Like, Peter, they're quite famous. I mean, there are so many fallen soldiers are represented as that. This, what happens in reality is that this woman's house has just been bombed by these Israeli forces. Okay. Now, but if you look at the, how the photograph is taken, it is completely staged. So the cover of her book, the civil imagination, not the civil contract of photography, she has a book which came before that. It's called the civil imagination on the ontology of photography. The cover of that book actually shows that the photograph is taken in a studio. So you should not imagine that, you know, I mean, her house was destroyed behind her and she's sitting in front of the house with her child in her lap. No, it is completely staged. But does that make the sorrow any less real? That is the question that she is asking. Now, the thing is, each of these people, now the photo is taken by a very famous photographer. She has her own audience in mind. The Palestinian woman who is sitting there has her own audience in mind. But the thing is a very simple fact that it has to be staged in a photo is because between these two people, there is the camera. The camera cannot just capture photography anywhere. Like, you know, I mean, in order to have a photo, for example, if your purpose of having a photo is to actually bring out truths which you otherwise overlook, then it has to be at times staged. And why does it have to be staged? Because the reality is inadequate for the camera. So that is the idiosyncrasy of the camera, which is that the camera does not find the real good enough that it wants it to be staged. So yeah, so this is an example, for example. Like, you know, this is an example of how camera plays this important role. Because if the camera was all right, I mean, if the camera can capture a picture anywhere, then it could have been right when her, you know, I mean, when her house was destroyed. But that is not the case. Yeah. Okay. I think we can take one last question. If anybody would like to ask the question, then you can unmute your microphone and ask the question. We'll just open it up for a few seconds before we close. Okay? Nothing, yeah. Yeah, okay. Yes. Yeah. Hi, if I can. Hi, Shafiq. Absolutely. This is Marmato. Hi, from Rome, Italy. So since you mentioned Michelangelo and La Pietà, so I've been called into intervening. No, I don't have any question. Just want to congratulate you and say just that, I'm very happy for the way you brought forward the relation between the ethics and the aesthetics of the visual narratives. I think it came across very well. And my, it's not really a question that I have, but more a kind of a comment in the sense that even today, we are seeing how difficult it is to actually unpack and to describe what it means to talk about what is real and what is true. So not this kind of a slippery territory in between reality and truth that I think you have commented very well upon the last picture. You know, the sorrow is real, although the picture is not true. It's staged. So I asked some of my students to attend as well. And I just wanted to thank you very much for this great lecture. Mara, actually Mara and I both work on my visual. Yeah, so thank you actually. Yeah, for the comment. I hope you're doing all right. Thanks Mara. Thank you, better. Okay. All right, so it's been great having you all. Our time is also up, but we will be having these sessions again, definitely. I think we're moving into exciting ways of having conversations across borders. So thank you everyone for being part of the session. And yeah, have a great day ahead. Cheers everyone. Take care. Stay safe. Thank you. All right, bye. Bye.