The photo has the grain of silver. In the foreground, in a slight blur, two North African women of a certain age, in colorful clothes, doing a dinghy in a festive atmosphere. The photo was taken at a wedding. The photo illustrated, until Tuesday evening, the digital version of an article from the newspaper Marianne published in the morning titled “Volume racism”: getting annoyed by noise in public transport, is it racist?
Very soon after Marianne had tweeted the articlecritics, in particular on the choice of illustration, followed one another on social networks: “And the racism in the choice of images, Marianne ? Report public transport with a North African wedding? “‘Illustrative racism’: illustrating your articles with unrelated images of North Africans, is that racist?”
At the start of the evening, gymnast Samir Aït Saïd, member of the French Olympic team and bronze medalist at the 2019 worlds, expressed his indignation on the social network : “I’m shocked ! I’m not the person to argue, but the magazine @MarianneleMag used photos of my family without permission. Especially since these women are no longer of this world. 72 minutes later, the weekly post your answer : “Good evening, we immediately replaced it. This photo comes from an agency’s image bank. The iconography, in fact, is replaced by a photo taken in a metro, which already illustrated another article published in the evening on the site (relating to the possibility of the return of the mask in transport). Insufficient to bring down the controversy. “I don’t know if it’s theft or not. But where is the link between photography (at a party) and transport…! It’s crazy”, écrit the gymnast
“In my family, everyone is outraged”
Contacted by CheckNewsSamir Aït Saïd explains how he became aware of this shot. “One of my cousins saw this photo, and shared it with our family. He didn’t understand. And me too, I fell from the clouds. All the women in the photo are close family members of mine, and two of them died – including my grandmother last year in an accident. Seeing this stirs the knife… And above all, clearly, seeing a photo of my family members used for this subject… it’s incomprehensible. How can we go from problems of nuisances in transport to a photo of my grandmother, of my great-grandmother, of my aunts, during a wedding doing a dinghy? I am flabbergasted. And in my family, everyone is outraged. Nobody understands that, and everyone is pained, above all. What image do we give of our family? And in memory of these deceased people, it is inconceivable to see that.”
The reaction of Marianne to his post on Twitter does not alter his indignation. “In their message, they told me they were going to change the photo. But they did not apologize. And by the way, if the photo has been changed on the article, it is still on Twitter. In fact, the message published on Tuesday morning has still not been removed from the social network. “A person from Marianne called me, to tell me that they had bought the photo from Sipa Press, and gave me a contact at this agency – which I have not reached yet, due to my training. But even if they buy this photo from the Sipa agency, I don’t see what the connection is with noises in a bus and a woman in a wedding doing a dinghy! Why post this on this type of topic?
Referring to the photo credits of the published image, CheckNews contacted the author of the original photo. She discovers the controversy with our call and also expresses her indignation. “Wait… This is a photo taken from my reports on raï and parties, between the years 1990 and 2000. It’s… nonsense. I am frankly furious.” She confirms that it is indeed a photo taken when she was an employee of the Sipa Press agency.
Concerning the private nature of the photos, article 226-1 of the Penal Code considers that “when the fixation of the image of a person in a private place [a été accomplie] during a meeting in full view of the participants, their consent is presumed. Near CheckNewsSamir Aït Saïd nevertheless questions the fact that the consent for these photos was really given: “My grandmother and my great-grandmother, although they spoke French, could not read, and therefore could not sign anything. My aunt also confirmed to me that she had not signed anything.. He thus questions the fact that it was clear to everyone that the photographer present at the wedding was a press photographer, and that these photos were going to have a purpose other than private.
“Totally out of context”
But it is above all the question of the use of the cliché with regard to the title that angers the various protagonists questioned. Among which the author of the photograph, therefore, who does not mince words against Marianne : “They take a photo that is between twenty and thirty years old, they take it totally out of context… As the photographer and author of this photo, I find it really outrageous. We show North Africans, and we say that it makes noise? This is a message that I do not approve of. I find it racist, dishonest… Dishonest towards me, towards the readers, towards the people concerned. I really think it’s crazy that they went looking for that. It has nothing to do with transport, or even with noise! It’s not noise, it’s music!
Photos on the theme of parties and raï, and not rail… Joined by CheckNewsthe drafting of Marianne defends his initial iconographic choice: “This is a photo found on an image bank of which we are clients, Sipa Press. The paper is about how anti-racism activists consider pointing out that there is too much noise to be ‘volume racism’. The whole beginning of the paper concerns marriages. This is the most famous subject [de ceux abordés dans l’article], since political decisions had been taken and highly publicized in the past: Christian Estrosi, in Nice, thus estimated that the marriages of certain populations could cause noise pollution. The use of this photo is not a fault that commits Marianne, because it’s a photo taken in France and which appears when you do a search in particular on the keywords “wedding” and “singing” on the Sipa site. If the photo was removed and changed last night, it’s because someone told us that relatives of his appeared in the photo, that one of them had died and that it hurt him. It was therefore not to recognize a fault, but out of respect and precaution.
“The evil is already done”
On Wednesday morning, following discussions with Marianne, the photograph has been deleted from the iconographic database of Sipa Press. The agency tells us that before its deletion, the photo was captioned: “illustration of a North African wedding”without any other contextual elements, and was accompanied by the keywords “illustration, culture, Maghreb, song, atmosphere, marriage, and ceremony”.
Even if the photo has been deleted from the Sipa database, “The evil is already done”deplores Samir Aït Saïd. “When I saw this photo, frankly, I had tears in my eyes. Again, seeing the face of my grandmother who died tragically last year in an accident, but also seeing what we associate her with… It’s nonsense. There will be sequels, and I won’t give up. I can’t let people spit on my family’s memory. My grandmother arrived in France and the first thing she absolutely wanted to do was learn French. Even my great-grandmother at the time spoke French… In our family, we are all patriots, we love France, we work in France, we represent France… and we tarnish our image. It is maddening.”