What will you leave behind?

[sovay]

A fascinating effect: I am not actually comfortable looking at these portraits. The photographer frames them as an act of resistance (if he couldn't avoid taking the photos, he could at least make sure they weren't the tidy, compliant headshots the authorities wanted—frankly, I don't think he was the one making that choice) and points out that fifty years later the women were grateful for these records of themselves, but there was nothing willing about them at the time. It comes through. I do not want to see these women unveiled, because I don't have the right to: it is so clearly not how they wish to be seen. But they aren't hiding. They are staring back. They are making it as difficult as possible for the camera, for the viewer to look at them and feel it is a consenting act. That's not something I've seen in a lot of pictures. So I am linking these, but I couldn't look at more than five myself. I don't know if they should ever have been taken. That is a strange thing to say about art.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I like that they say Go to Hell with their eyes.

And thanks for giving these some context. I'd seen them on Tumblr, but without the explanation. (No doubt if I'd clicked through I would have come to it, but just as images, they floated by without my knowing what they meant.)

[samhenderson.livejournal.com]

Those are amazing and disturbing. The 4th one made me cry. the 6th one I would follow into Hell. I couldn't look at the rest.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

When I am home, I may look, if I have the courage.
I write that and I know I will. I cannot not.

[gwynnega]

I see what you mean. I can barely look at them.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Agreed. They're disturbing, but at the same time there's something luminous about them. I looked at one or two. Berber women in at least some communities traditionally didn't cover their faces, I'm told, but that's really no comfort here.

I'm reminded of an article about a famine in some part of what was then British-ruled India (modern Pakistan or Bangladesh, I think, but I don't remember exactly where) during the 1940s. The author referred to women whose only source of income was posing for photographs with soldiers, so that sometime* later some man in Liverpool or Birmingham or Sydney or Melbourne could show his mates a picture of himself looking dashing in his inspection-ready leave-neatened uniform with the exotic prop of a great-eyed starving-slender woman, her veil taken down or** her hair uncovered*** sat on his knee.

None of those pictures were shown, and I'd not have wanted to see them, but I'd wonder if some of their expressions might be remniscent of the ones shown here.

*Assuming he made it home, of course, which makes it easier to, not forgive, but to understand. That said, I'm thinking at least some of this continued after the middle of 1945.
**ETA: Looking back on this, I remembered that this was a time and a place where hijab was as or more likely than niqab.
***I've a bad feeling that in some cases it was said they were desperate enough that more than that was exposed.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Wait. These photographs were taken for identity cards. It's an invasion of privacy, because the women didn't want to be unveiled, or didn't want to be photographed at all--I understand that. I wonder how much of the obvious resentment is specific to the unveiling and how much more generally resentment of invasion and conquest. Did Garanger photograph the men of those destroyed villages, or was he just interested in the women?

I've been photographed for a passport and a driving license and other kinds of ID. My government does not treat me as an enemy, and I don't wear the veil, but I don't think those make a different to who keeps the pictures. The picture goes on the ID card, which I can (or must) carry around with me. Maybe the government office issuing the ID keeps a copy, but it would really give me the creeps if the photographer kept a copy of my photograph and used it for an art exhibit.

I see the transgression in republishing the pictures 50 years later, much more than in taking the pictures initially. If he had simply given the pictures to the women he photographed...they could have decided when/how/if to share them.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

I reblogged the first five of these recently, on Tumblr, and I agree--they're hard to look at. they should be. The woman who drives my son's bus wears a niqab these days, but over the first few weeks on the job, she only wore a hijab; it was like she was testing the waters, trying to ascertain if we'd trust her if she covered (most of) her face. I'm fine with it; it saddens me to think that others might not be. From my POV, I'm trusting her with Cal's safety, so I'd rather she does whatever she needs to in order to feel comfortable, secure and at the proper height of her abilities. When she says hello to me, or him, I don't need to see her mouth to know she's smiling.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

...yeah. Wow. They hate him.

[alankria.livejournal.com]

The anger and difficulty of these women's expressions is not something I'm likely to forget.