The two girls have been kept in detention by the Australian government for most of their lives. But this photo travelled across Australia – and finally,itseems possible that the government will act. After all this time,what is it about this particular image that has changed things?
There have certainly been more graphic images during Australia’s long history of cruel detention policies. There was the video from 2016,of refugee Omid Masoumali running,flames rising from his body,having set himself alight. Even in relation to Tharnicaa herself,we have had more visible illustrations of harm. Two years ago,a photograph of her blackened,rotting teeth emerged,with suggestions they were a result of vitamin deficiencies. The teeth had to besurgically removed.
This last photo suggests one answer:that in relation to these two girls,what was needed was a sufficient accumulation of horrors. To gain our attention,one serious medical incident was not enough,too easily dismissed as chance;Tharnicaa had to suffer several times. And perhaps,too,a couple of years in detention had become too routine to really bother us. But that a girl who is aged four – herbirthday was on Saturday – has spent almost all her days in detention is absurdly cruel.
I wonder,too,if there was an odd,and horrible,kind of luck in the fact her sickness was,this time,largely invisible. A body rotting,flesh on fire – these words are horrible to write,horrible to read. An image can be worse still. Being directly confronted with the visible consequences of our actions can make us shut our eyes.
Because,of course,they are our actions,at least in part. Our politicians make these decisions;we vote for our politicians. The novelist and photographer Teju Cole,writing about America,has wondered if,rather than using single photographs to shock us into action,aseries of photos might be necessary,illustrating the sequence of events that led here. He suggests photos of elected representatives,judges in court – and voters,too.
Perhaps in Australia,to tell the full story of Tharnicaa’s illness,we would need alongside the photo of the two girls one of those routine photos of a voter gleefully chomping down on a “democracy sausage”. Or perhaps a series of photos of our politicians watching focus groups – which are made up of Australians like you and me.