By: Alannah C Gee
April 2020 - Reflections on Bhopal Gas Tragedy
Seeing the world through a camera can distance a photographer from the pain they are capturing. In the moment, we can hide behind our industrial box, perfectly designed for capturing and sharing moments. We try to hide, try to throw ourselves into the process of creation.
No amount of mechanical distance could allow photographers to hide from the pain of their subject on December 3rd, 1984. Tragedies often do this; overwhelming pain surrounding the camera seeps through the lens and infuses photographs with the deep sorrow felt by the people affected by them. The gas leak in Bhopal was one such pain infused tragedy and photographs resulting from the aftermath hold such deep heartfelt pain, even today.
On the morning of December 3rd, photographers arrived in the city of Bhopal India, one of the most notable being Raghu Rai, ready to walk among the people whose lungs had accumulated pieces of the massive, around 40 ton, cloud of toxic gases released from a neglected, unsafe pesticide plant the night before [1]. What these photographers witnessed and captured gave a visual face to the harsh neglect of the large industrial company responsible for the leak, Union Carbide. These photographs are hard to even look at and must have been much harder to take as they capture scenes of children being buried and husbands carrying their dead wives across the now desolate city [2]. They also captured victims of the tragedy, suffering from injuries like blindness. One powerful image taken by Rai shows the Union Carbide plant surrounded by lingering gas and shows the proximity of the lower caste housing whose residents were all greatly affected by this gas leak. The photographs by Rai go on to chronicle the processes of cremation and later entire bags full of skulls [2]. He shows just a piece of the immensity of this tragedy but yet is able to so directly capture the gut-wrenching pain in fixed images.
It is hard to imagine what being a photographer in this tragedy would have been like, but I imagine it would have been strikingly similar to ones capturing other historical tragedies enshrouded in human based pain, like 911 or various wars. Rai’s photographs give me a strikingly similar feel as the ones taken in the Vietnam War of children running naked away from napalm bombs [3]. The intentionality of these situations is vastly different, but both involve helpless citizens running from pain that is descending from the sky, running from poison threatening to fill their lungs and bring them to their knees or even their graves.
Walking through the streets of the areas around this plant in the days after the tragedy must have been difficult. Being surrounded by confused, uninformed, dying people with no resources to cope and then looking up at a massive industrial plant that existed in this town simply to take advantage of the developing economy and cheap labor must have been sickening. Learning that this happened because the company essentially gave up on the plant and stopped caring about safety measures must have felt like they had given up on the people surrounding it too. If it is still so infuriating to consider the predatory negligence of Union Carbide, it must have been completely depressing walking the streets among the victims in pain knowing how they had been hurt by greedy industry. And then picking up a camera and fixing these images in time must have been impossible. Struggling to capture the truth and authenticity of the pain, struggling to give the unheard victims a voice, these photographers were doing important work. It is easy to look at the statistics of a tragedy and understand the lack of appropriate monetary reparations after the tragedy but without looking at the faces of the people affected, it is impossible to understand the core of the pain. It is impossible to feel the deep cut to the community without hearing the victim's stories and hearing what they have to say. Photography has become an incredible tool for these stories to become widely shared and allow the emotion to be conveyed to all. It also becomes a visual historical record so that now, 32 years after the tragedy, people like me can go back and look at these photographs and understand another small sliver of the drastic effects on the community that this industrial negligence had.
Sources:
[1] The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Bhopal Disaster.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 10 Jan. 2020. Link
[2] BHOPAL. Raghu Rai Foundation, Szuveren Media, 22 Mar. 2019. Link
[3] Stockton, Richard. “The Widely Misunderstood Story Behind The Iconic Image Of ‘Napalm Girl.’” All That's Interesting, All That's Interesting, 23 Sept. 2019. Link
April 2020 - Reflections on Bhopal Gas Tragedy
Seeing the world through a camera can distance a photographer from the pain they are capturing. In the moment, we can hide behind our industrial box, perfectly designed for capturing and sharing moments. We try to hide, try to throw ourselves into the process of creation.
| Background information NBC News Report (1984) The Economist's Review (2014) |
|---|
On the morning of December 3rd, photographers arrived in the city of Bhopal India, one of the most notable being Raghu Rai, ready to walk among the people whose lungs had accumulated pieces of the massive, around 40 ton, cloud of toxic gases released from a neglected, unsafe pesticide plant the night before [1]. What these photographers witnessed and captured gave a visual face to the harsh neglect of the large industrial company responsible for the leak, Union Carbide. These photographs are hard to even look at and must have been much harder to take as they capture scenes of children being buried and husbands carrying their dead wives across the now desolate city [2]. They also captured victims of the tragedy, suffering from injuries like blindness. One powerful image taken by Rai shows the Union Carbide plant surrounded by lingering gas and shows the proximity of the lower caste housing whose residents were all greatly affected by this gas leak. The photographs by Rai go on to chronicle the processes of cremation and later entire bags full of skulls [2]. He shows just a piece of the immensity of this tragedy but yet is able to so directly capture the gut-wrenching pain in fixed images.
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| Source: https://bit.ly/2FUiaOv |
It is hard to imagine what being a photographer in this tragedy would have been like, but I imagine it would have been strikingly similar to ones capturing other historical tragedies enshrouded in human based pain, like 911 or various wars. Rai’s photographs give me a strikingly similar feel as the ones taken in the Vietnam War of children running naked away from napalm bombs [3]. The intentionality of these situations is vastly different, but both involve helpless citizens running from pain that is descending from the sky, running from poison threatening to fill their lungs and bring them to their knees or even their graves.
Walking through the streets of the areas around this plant in the days after the tragedy must have been difficult. Being surrounded by confused, uninformed, dying people with no resources to cope and then looking up at a massive industrial plant that existed in this town simply to take advantage of the developing economy and cheap labor must have been sickening. Learning that this happened because the company essentially gave up on the plant and stopped caring about safety measures must have felt like they had given up on the people surrounding it too. If it is still so infuriating to consider the predatory negligence of Union Carbide, it must have been completely depressing walking the streets among the victims in pain knowing how they had been hurt by greedy industry. And then picking up a camera and fixing these images in time must have been impossible. Struggling to capture the truth and authenticity of the pain, struggling to give the unheard victims a voice, these photographers were doing important work. It is easy to look at the statistics of a tragedy and understand the lack of appropriate monetary reparations after the tragedy but without looking at the faces of the people affected, it is impossible to understand the core of the pain. It is impossible to feel the deep cut to the community without hearing the victim's stories and hearing what they have to say. Photography has become an incredible tool for these stories to become widely shared and allow the emotion to be conveyed to all. It also becomes a visual historical record so that now, 32 years after the tragedy, people like me can go back and look at these photographs and understand another small sliver of the drastic effects on the community that this industrial negligence had.
Sources:
[1] The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Bhopal Disaster.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 10 Jan. 2020. Link
[2] BHOPAL. Raghu Rai Foundation, Szuveren Media, 22 Mar. 2019. Link
[3] Stockton, Richard. “The Widely Misunderstood Story Behind The Iconic Image Of ‘Napalm Girl.’” All That's Interesting, All That's Interesting, 23 Sept. 2019. Link
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