Whenever we take a photo—for school, family or some other official purpose—the photographer will say: “Look here, look towards the camera.” I’m never allowed to decide if I want my face and body to be captured. It’s a given, necessary for identification. What to show, what not to show, where to look, how to look—all these particulars are controlled by the (usually male) photographer. In Kashmir, army or police officers will stop you at checkpoints, ask for your identity card, scrutinise your facial features and tally them with the photo on the card. When it comes to family photos or selfies, Kashmiri women are expected to either be absent—because “good girls from respectable households don’t have their pictures clicked and shown”—or only present in a ‘decent’, ‘modest’ manner. Anything that fails to satisfy the patrolling gazes of Kashmiri society opens the photographed up to vile and threatening comments.

To some degree, we all ‘act’ when we pose for photos. But we are also, at the same time, ‘acted on’—by the photographer, the camera’s eye, the photo’s setting and even the gazes of future viewers. I’m not suggesting that we’re thoroughly drained of agentic potential every time we’re in front of a camera. The acts of taking a photo and being photographed happen at the same time, cutting both ways. In a context where women are ‘acted on’ in every way and don’t usually have sufficient control over how they appear in photos, the very act of deciding what to expose (or not expose) in front of a camera paves the way for resistance.

• Tags: India, Issue 38, Sabahat Ali Wani