A fashion shoot series called “The Wrong Turn”, which depicted a woman in different outfits being sexually assaulted on a bus, had to be removed by the photographer after it caused widespread outrage.
The series stirred memories of the infamous Delhi gang rape, wherein a young woman died from severe organ failure caused by the brutal gang-rape committed against her by several men on a bus in December 2012.
Although the photos may have appeared ‘creative’ to some, generally it generated widespread national and international coverage and was widely condemned, both in India and abroad where subsequent public protests against the state took place in New Delhi for its failure to provide adequate security for women.
Fast forward to today, the glossy shoot which was posted earlier in August on the photography site Behance, appears to be inspired by the Nirbhaya case.
The shoot produced a series of images released by Mumbai-based fashion photographer Raj Sheyte which portrayed a female model dressed as an upper class wearing high-end designer clothes who appears to fend off sexual advances from men on a bus.
However, it did not go well on social media.
Twitter netizens express their comments of horror at the same photoshoot:
Some of the tweets pointed out the similarities of the images to the Nirbhaya case:
Photographer Raj Sheyte denied basing “The Wrong Turn” photo shoot on the Nirbhaya case. He told Buzzfeed that his images were “in no way meant to glamourize the act which was very bad, but a way of throwing light on it.”
Such social media outrage of netizens on twitter lead to the images being withdrawn as the photographer has now removed the images from his “Behance page”–a network of sites and services which is owned by Adobe specializing in self-promotion, including consulting and online portfolio sites.
An interview with Amibath Kumar of Indian’s Women’s Rights Organization, Centre for Social Research, revealed her unequivocal view on the images and stated that “it shows the lowest level of moral degradation where we are using a brutal crime such as rape for commercial purposes.
At one end the whole country was united against this brutality in December 2012 and today we have a glamorous depiction of this crime. I believe it should be boycotted and strongly criticized (as is being done). There is no glamour in rape, it’s a brutal crime and should be depicted in that manner only.”
Sheyte have definitely made a wrong turn in his career, but at least, ‘The Wrong Turn’ made him famous, as insinuated by a commenter Nigel Britto, who posted: “If until yesterday you haven’t heard of Raj Sheyte, but you know of him today, the object of his Nirbhaya photoshoot has been fulfilled.”