When the executive editor of a magazine has a design background, the least one expects is that the magazine cover is aesthetically pleasing and factually accurate. It has been a month since Outlook chose to do a story on Brahmins (June 4, 2007). But that is no reason to not wonder how it got a rather simple fact about these Brahmins wrong.
At most times the upanayan-wearing Brahmins wear the thread from their left shoulder to under the right arm. It is called savya or upaviti. Only when performing obsequies or when doing rituals that demand some discourse with what they consider the other world, do they change the pattern from the right shoulder to under the left arm. It is called apasavya or prachinaviti. The issue is not whether such wearing of a thread is terribly traditional or caste-ist or discriminatory. For a news magazine, the issue is simply whether this is a practice that is followed and is necessary for the accurate portrayal of elements in a story. And the rather simple answer is that an accurate and unambiguous pictorial portrayal of a Brahmin when specifically speaking about the caste would require the person to be seen wearing the thread. And certainly that is presumably what the executive editor, Mr Bishwadeep Moitra, had in mind when he designed the page.
What the reader got was a model wearing the thread in a way that is not normally the way it is worn. In fact, it is the way in which the thread is worn during funerary rituals. That some readers would find this offensive is not the only question. Considering that there are three other photographs of bare torsos in the story, the question is how does something this elementary escape the designers, copy editors, and in this case the executive editor who, presumably, has an eye for detail. The three photographs on pages 3, 39, and 45 show the persons wearing the thread on their left shoulder. The fact that there were no protests and no furore may belie the cover headline, Return of the Brahmin.
But there is another explanation that needs to be seriously considered and one that has ethical problems embedded in its regular practice in newsrooms. The flipping of the photograph. Designers and copy editors, who increasingly make pages, do not think much about changing the photograph if it helps the design. The use of photo touching, re-touching, correction software means that the photograph now can be ‘changed’ in aesthetically pleasing ways and done so effortlessly, and hence without forethought. Forget the distinction between a caught photograph and a posed photograph, or the inherent editing of reality that the shooting of a photograph entails, or that every cropping of a photograph changes reality. What we have now is the act of altering the photograph to give it the look that is needed. There are some photo corrections that need to be done to ensure accurate printing. And then there are the indulgences of the photographers (who increasingly correct their photographs even before submitting it to the desk), the copy desk, the designers, and the technical department that ensures that the photographs will be closely reproduced in the printing process.
The worst offence, however, is flipping. The left to right orientation of the object or event or process photographed is changed to the reverse orientation. The only place it is easy to catch such flipping is when there are letters or objects that appear ‘very’ obviously flipped. Since this happens but rarely, the easiest way to get the ‘look’ proper is to flip it to suit the demands of the page. Looking-in to the page when the photographed person is looking-out can be done. The only violence that may be done is to the parting of the hair, which may move from the person’s left to the right or vice-versa, or to the nose-ring, or watches on the wrong wrist, or such personal aesthetic choices. But it does no harm in getting the look right.
If there is a photo enhancement technique that should be banned in newsrooms it is this business of flipping. Not that adding a touch of black, brown, white, to the skin or hair, or clothes should be allowed, but changing orientations deserves design perdition because to the extent that journalism is a veridical discipline, changing the orientation alters a verifiable truth.
But then again, the choice of putting the thread the ‘wrong’ way may have been an editorial decision not born out of ignorance or lack of care or flipping, but to send a message of the Brahmins living in inauspicious times returning to alter the political landscape. If that were the case, a little elucidation would have helped the ignorant readers.
