My 8-month old Photo: More than just a Memory!

     Photography is my passion, not profession!

 Yes, I take many photos almost every day, maybe because my eyes are too greedy for every ordinary object in my surroundings or maybe I just like to fill my memory space, hoping that I'll be stopping to click more. I don’t know if it is my good or bad fortune, but neither has my tiny camera lens ever asked for rest, nor the modern devices have put any narrow limitation of memory space so far. Rather, my attachment with the images changed into a never-ending relationship, it feels. Sometimes, I also like to invest a couple of minutes to generate some random either informative or entertaining stories. But my photo gallery is much bigger than the storylines because I always agree that every picture can offer several stories. And undoubtedly, there is a reason why many others like me are very much into admiring the strength of the images. Because, no matter if we extract their stories into texts or just let themselves to be expressed, “every single picture affords more than 1000 words!” 

Of course, it's a mess when I need to spend 5 min scrolling my mobile just to find a single picture from last week, but for some reason, even that messiness offers a special kind of happiness by pleasing my mind and memories. I guess it's because of my addiction and affection towards photos and the stories behind. Only very few of the images are uploaded on social media so far but plenty of them have gladly been occupying my mobile and laptop memory space for a very long time. And scrolling all the collections and recalling the moments have become my favorite free time activity ever since I fell in love with the sound-less but nonetheless story-full random framings.

 It might sound funny to mention here that I do not remember properly how to handle a professional camera any longer because I haven't been using DSLR besides a short training and field practices in my college time in 2004 and 2010 respectively. But still, I'm not embarrassed to say that I do some off-seasonal personal photography using either mobile or SLR lenses. At the beginning of my photography, I was using a Sony compact camera to take mostly street life photos in Nepal. Slowly the smartphone camera quality replaced my old compact lens. Since the last 8/9 years, I have been taking photos with my mobile camera, but last Christmas I was lucky to get my all-time favorite gift; a better-quality SLR, with various lens options. Thus, I have been able to make higher quality images while playing with different lenses according to my comfort and conveniences these days. 

As a photo lover, I do believe every image has its own natural beauty and story. Therefore, I personally do not prefer any special edit to increase look or quality regardless of image types and sizes. Despite my messy schedule, I never get tired of framing and collecting images especially of natural movements and daily life which often holds some special moments. It's more than a decade by now, still, I ‘m very excited to capture random ordinary images, not planned shots, rather just natural objects, acts or sceneries whatever comes to cross my path or gets encountered with my eyes every now and then. Thus, the number of collections is increasing every day whereas memory space is decreasing at the same speed just like a DSLR shutter-speed. It makes me happy to know the fact I’m always going to have more pleasing images even inside my messy collections, but on the other hand, I'm also afraid what if one day both overly used lens and screwed-data space also blamed and accused me as their murderer before being completely dysfunctional?

 Well, let's hope technology at least will not let itself to be controlled by some culprit mind to spread misleading information to the society in the name of power, politics or profession unlike a recent case of #tvjournalistsalikrampudasainisuicide (https://thehimalayantimes.com/kathmandu/shalik-ram-pudasaini-death-mysterytv-host-rabi-lamichhane-among-three-arrested/ ) in Nepali media. 

Ordinary Photos as a Medium, Message and the Memory

 I do think that God has gifted an amazingly demanding mind to every humankind which is well-skilled to make us relentless through different emotional fluctuations. And how could I simply stay untouched from that emotional dominance since many issues around seems either painful or just too bothering whether that is about my study or ongoing Nepali media stories. For me, photos are like a therapy, it may kill my time, but It often helps healing and cooling down the mind whenever some random thoughts travel by. After month-long summer holidays, the university has started and so does my study. Meanwhile, my still on vacation mood was trying to escape from the study stress for a moment simply by scrolling my random collection, suddenly, my eyes spotted an image which didn’t leave my screen any soon rather seemed questioning me unknowingly. And that image was none other than my very own 8-month-old photo from the same messy gallery which was just a random click on my mobile once. Surprisingly today, the same photo seemed full of stories which ultimately motivated me to extract these lines into text just to express my thoughts about an ongoing conflict and politics over Media, Medium and the Message in general based on a recent incident in Nepali Journalism.

The picture has captured an ongoing awareness campaign about animal rights by the “Anonymous” movement at The National Theater(front) and the logo of one of the leading Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten in the background (back). This mobile-clicked photo is from 5th Jan 2019 in Oslo, Norway.

 If I recall the time when this photo was taken, there are many other memories which come together with it. It was my second winter in Norway outside Nepal's dry but still warm winter days. The cold days, gray sky, leafless trees, quiet and white streets on the way to my weekend job was not that exciting anymore since that had been my regular weekend route. But suddenly that day, these masked people were standing in the public which made me very curious and amazed with their silent protest even to spread out that deep message. How could I let my hands stay warm inside the pocket just because the weather was too cold outside? That campaign in front of me was too interesting just to leave for work without collecting them in my galleries. Finally, I managed to capture this image after waiting a bit, but by that time I was already missing my bus to Tjuvholmen and so I had to run late at work on that day. In the photo, the key focus was to frame these masked anonymous people who were raising awareness without being loud for the sake of animal rights in many public stations in Oslo, the capital city of Norway. I was so fascinated by this priceless act of their silent campaign for the voiceless animals unlike many different noisy but often less witty protests in Nepal in the name of politics, power or pride. My eyes encountered this masked group standing in a row and holding a laptop which shows a small pig farm video where many pigs are struggling to find hardly enough space for two of their legs. The human act was interesting but unfortunately, the animal activity in the video was very unpleasant to see. I'm very thankful to those human souls who have at least started to think about animal rights while many of us are still blind to torture them in the name of modern day’s excessively commercialized farmhouses.

This story about the animal right protest also reminded me of my photography museum visit in Stockholm, Sweden during my summer trip. “Fotografiska”- one of the popular photo exhibition halls in the heart of Stockholm was well decorated with hundreds of photos having millions of stories each. The hall was filled with serious themes, covered various images including, war, conflict, natural disasters and environment such as the Earthquake in 2015 in Nepal, plastic pollution in the ocean and its consequence to the sea animals (“Sea of Artifacts” by Mandy Barker) and many more. No doubt, every photo holds a special power of reviving the memories, and often it gives you a bunch of excitement. But it’s a universal fact that everything has both bright and dark sides and that applies well with the photos too. If millions of photos carry happy moments, thousands of them may happen to be of some bad moments too. While saying so, I also found many images carrying deep painful meaning from different time and location. And unfortunately, none of the photos hold the ability to filter the good and bad moments in order to stop our mind and memory from the bad ones, the only downside so far I can admit about the images. There were only three photos from Nepal earthquake 2015, but the amount of emotion and pain was beyond any measurement which left me shaking and almost screaming just by reminding of that scary devastating moments. On Saturday,25^th of April 2015, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake did not only kill nearly 9 thousand leaving 22 thousand injured behind but also offered an unforgettable, fearful and painful life-long memory for every Nepali.  

By convincing myself, I try to be less emotional about the past rather more thankful and optimistic for my granted life in that disaster. Somehow, I managed to keep walking and then I entered a hall having several tiny images hanging on the wall. Although images were all colorful, I felt like they were shamefully presenting the dark reality of today’s “highly literate but hardly aware” modern civilization. It was very painful to continue looking at those photos including all the plastic in the ocean which is killing several sea animals every year and leaving many innocent animals to suffer a slow death. That images were even more emotional than recalling the earthquake moments for me, for some reason. I was ashamed to see those animals suffering for their life in the ocean especially not knowing until when today’s modern development will get less destructive for nature. But looking at this 8-month old picture from my gallery today gave a tiny hope that humans at least have taken some initiatives in respecting every animal’s right. The only thing which makes me afraid sometimes is what if society already lacks an authentic media /medium to circulate and promote such kind of awareness campaign across the globe?

                      Media and Message Today: "Highly digital but hardly credible"

Coming back to the image details, the photo location is Oslo, a beautiful green city and bigger than Kathmandu – the capital city of Nepal – but much less crowded, where everyone seems very willing to follow the rules and regulations in a fully safe environment unlike many other Asian cities including Kathmandu. The country, Norway belongs to the Nordic Countries including Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. Having more independent media houses, equality in socio-economic access and the social welfare model in development have made these countries renowned in the global arena. Among many other special features of the Nordic model, Norway is also widely renowned for its uniquely unusual weather circle of the “sun-full summer” and the “snow-full winter” which is truly a miracle adventure offered by nature itself.

During my visa processing for Norway, I heard and read many interesting stories about this country as it was renowned as a "land of the midnight sun" in Asia. Some of them were related to Norwegian life standard, happiness, development and equality and most interesting was, of course, these adventurous weather differences from “midnight sun” in summer to “mid-day darkness” in winter. After I experienced both summer and winter in Norway for 2 years, I did find many similarities between the heard/read stories through various medium and reality. It is very impressive to know that some word of mouth stories and the old medium contents were more credible and effective to deliver a message without many exaggerations and made-up stories – unlike today's plenty of “highly digital but hardly professional” media channels in this global village.

                                Describing the Photo Objects

AFTENPOSTEN (The Evening Post): One of the leading newspapers for the last 159 years and the publication house is fully operated under the private ownership of the public company called Schibsted ASA. Despite having a direct private funding system as a media subsidy, it's so impressive to see their strong independence in terms of both the editorial policies and journalistic ethics so far. Therefore, based on my understanding of the Nordic media model, I can at least mention here that Aftenposten may stand as strong proof that not all the media is controlled by power, politics, and money in the world.

'TRUTH' &' MEDIA' are supposed to be complementary to each other in every "professional" Journalism, based on many existing media theories. Nonetheless, most of the media across the globe including Nepal are failing to maintain a pure journalistic motto for many reasons at the recent phenomena regardless of their nature and features.

And the Nepali “by law-free” Media

Despite many political and social transition, Nepali media are contributing, either way, to make a noticeable change in Nepali society since its establishment. I have read some articles about censorship and direct control in media contents during the Rana Dynasty, Monarchy and even during the10-years Maoist armed conflict. But, it’s a great achievement for the whole Nepali media that the constitutional guarantee of free and the independent press is still safe and protected by law till today. Talking about the recent media status, many of us seemed excited to keep our nose high knowing the legal provision of free press and right to information and speech act in Nepali journalism.  

BUT, it’s so miserable to see how desperate today’s media and politics in Nepal just to get control over each other simply by misusing the power of the “free” media. Therefore, I would like to bring the recent issue from Nepal to make my concern contextual about Nepali media. In this regards, a week old mysterious suicide case of  the TV-Journalist Salikram Pudasaini, and its controversial video contents recorded by himself before his death, the ethical loopholes of making that video available in the mainstream media, credibility issues behind the edited video contents, the process of investigative actions taken by the authorized government bodies, the fragmented public supporters and protestors of the accused one (based on video content) and the several fact-missing debates and opinions on  mainstream and  on social Media – all that is just beyond any journalistic objective which many others  like me might never have expected in Nepali media, where the free and independent press is constitutionally guaranteed.

Sadly, this "unexpected and unforgettable" incident is now impossible to be undone.  Instead, this case has left aside several serious questions to the whole Nepali media industry itself. Despite my passive media involvement and fewer updates of ongoing media politics, I can at least assume that many out of plenty in Nepal seemed in search of public attention and self-promotion through their opinions and actions in the public and social media in the name of dying clarification over the departed soul.

As a media student, I have been reading several scholarly articles about the media as a 'fourth estate’ which theoretically holds the power of a positive change in a nation. It’s a shame to know that the media, once served as a 'Watchdog' of the society is now no longer able to stay independent due to many increasing external dominances in both the local and global market today. After reading some of the follow-up news about this suicide case, clues and investigations, it's very scary just to think about “whether the media profession is getting excessively monetized or power and politics are getting highly mediatized in Nepali Journalism?” 

 And it is both painful and shameful to mention here that just like a year-long still mysterious #nirmalapantrapecase investigation(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_and_murder_of_Nirmala_Panta), my question and concern about the Nepali media may remain forever unknown :( 

This piece of writing is purely personal, and all the contents do not hold any bad or biased thoughts towards any particular person or media rather just a random thought about ongoing issues in the local and global media market.