{"id":19630,"date":"2010-01-29T10:07:49","date_gmt":"2010-01-29T15:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=19630"},"modified":"2017-09-16T19:16:14","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T00:16:14","slug":"photographer-tried-for-defamation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/01\/29\/photographer-tried-for-defamation\/","title":{"rendered":"Uzbek Photographer Tried for Defamation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carl G.\u00a0alerted us to a controversy<\/a> starring photographer, Umida Akhmedova<\/a>.\u00a0 Akhmedova’s pictures of her native Uzbekistan have incited the country to try her for defamation.\u00a0 If found guilty, she could\u00a0be sentenced to\u00a0six months in prison or three years of forced labor.\u00a0 Here are some of her photographs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The state argues that Akhmedova has defamed and slandered Uzbekistan, making it seem as if the country is impoverished and backward.\u00a0Photographers are defending Akhmedova, arguing that if anything makes Uzbekistan look backward, it’s their desire to censor artists<\/a>. Frankly, I can see both points.<\/p>\n

First, I do think that Akhmedova should be able to capture what she likes and disseminate her images.\u00a0 The problem is not her representation.\u00a0 The problem is that Akhmedova’s photographs may be the only<\/em> representations of Uzbekistan that\u00a0some people\u00a0ever see.\u00a0 That is, the problem isn’t Akhmedova’s pictures, it’s that there aren’t more photographs, of varying parts of Uzbek life, by more photographers noticed outside of the state.<\/p>\n

Whenever there is a limited number of representations (or when those that are available converge), those that are disseminated tend to overdetermine<\/em> perceptions of that place or those peoples.\u00a0 That is, that one representation comes to stand for the whole.\u00a0 We in the U.S. would likely not image a similar controversy over one photographers images of say, celebrities (to take an extreme example), because there are thousands of counter-representations.\u00a0 Uzbekistan, however, does not have the luxury of not caring how the state is represented in Akhmedova’s photos.<\/p>\n

So, to conclude, I don’t think Akhmedova should be in trouble, but I do understand why Uzbekistan might be so sensitive.<\/p>\n

We’ve seen the same phenomenon with photos of the Middle East<\/a>, Appalachia<\/a>,\u00a0American Indian art<\/a>, Africa (see both here<\/a> and here<\/a>) and, I’ve argued, the TV show Jersey Shore<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 We could make the same argument about the preponderance of images of just one type of beauty.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carl G.\u00a0alerted us to a controversy starring photographer, Umida Akhmedova.\u00a0 Akhmedova’s pictures of her native Uzbekistan have incited the country to try her for defamation.\u00a0 If found guilty, she could\u00a0be sentenced to\u00a0six months in prison or three years of forced labor.\u00a0 Here are some of her photographs.   The state argues that Akhmedova has defamed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8070,2056,3895,23622],"class_list":["post-19630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-artliterature","tag-crimelaw","tag-nation-uzbekistan","tag-social-construction-symbols"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19630"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71185,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19630\/revisions\/71185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}