Bikram Vohra condemns the photographer Raj Shetye’s Delhi Bus Rape Backdrop
Remember the Nirbhaya assault on a Delhi bus that woke a nation to its sordid record of rape in the millionth degree. Well, someone has taken that ugly scenario and made it the basis of a fashion spread so you have the rape victim in leather designer clothes sprawled on the ground and the rapists are wearing jackets without any vests and it is all stylized. To cap it all the shoot is titled The Wrong Turn. They shoved a steel pipe into her, you cretin, it was not a wrong turn.
Awesome crap. The photographer, a guy called Shetye denies it has anything to do with the gruesome incident in which the victim died. Yeah, sure. You have a bus, a woman lying on the floor and four men like hoods standing over her making those suggestive, leering gestures in the shots and you are telling me there is no connection.
Talk about absolute bad taste. You really have to be out to lunch to think that glamourising pain and agony will resonate with any decent thinking person. You could have taken a bus and made it into a shrine as warning sign for the future nascent rapist and one might have understood the concept. But a photo shoot. That makes one want to puke. Just look at the clothes and the make up and the way the men are projected.
Did this lot for one moment not say, hey what are we doing. Was there not one person in the crew and the models and the support staff who had the courage to stand up and say, you know what this is not done, I am out of here.
How did these models agree to even take part, how did they not think they would offend everyone’s sensibilities and generate outrage and contempt for this cheap shot. This is not pseudo clever, this is not intellectual expression, this is not some new trail blazed, this is pure drive.
You can see the pictures. They are contemptible and the denial that they are unconnected from that horrible night cuts no ice.
I would think this is exploitation of the first order and there is nothing either inspirational or salutary about a fashion show based on a rape tableau. Sorry, even it sounds righteous and I hate being righteous, if I had a bucket I would puke.