But also, the cutout abstraction in the composition of this photograph also makes it look like a cover photograph. You can imagine the magazine title above her fingers; there is enough space on either side of the photo for smaller headlines, and other news.

Oh, wait a minute.

There she is

On the cover of Newsweek from its 24th October 1994 issue.

It’s her! look at her saree, her blouse, her bangled hand, and her mask. Here, she is burning ‘rubbish’ with other women workers in Surat.

But this picture was made by a different photographer, a man named Raveendran.

So the scene was teeming with photographers. There was a fire raging, and there were many workers, particularly women, engaged in the labour of cleaning up after an epidemic.

Which Plague?

There was an outbreak of pneumonic and bubonic plague, largely in western India, between August and October 1994. Less than a thousand people overall were confirmed to have been infected and around 56 people died.

Of course, in 2023, an image like this, of a woman putting on a mask recalls only the Covid-19 pandemic. I wonder about images replacing others, sitting atop each other like a cake. We now have an almost infinite number of images of people wearing masks, of putting on masks, of taking off masks, of refusing to wear masks, of desperately seeking masks, and of dying in masks.

I found a paper claiming foreign journalists were invited to come to India to cover the situation in 1994, and their travel and hospitality were covered (by whom?) and still only a few came. Did John Moore get a free trip to photograph this?

This is a frustratingly insufficient image. I know nothing; except that this woman is wearing a cheaply printed synthetic sari with a cotton blouse. That she is wearing gold earrings and four bangles that might be of wood, or even metal (I doubt they are glass). She is most likely a Hindu woman, and she has abs.

This is the kind of photograph that can be cut and pasted into anything. It is an illustration. A good thumbnail image, or a cool album cover. Without its caption – Plague in Surat (1994) this photograph would lose its only connecting thread to the world and would float free. A floating signifier, an empty signifier even, yes all that.