The moment I looked at the picture printed in the newspaper of June 29, 2014, I thought it was a painting. There was an aesthetic quality about the figure of a solitary agitator holding a protest placard jumping, rather sailing, through a screen of thick smoke emanating from tires burning on the roadside. Layers of fumes with varying shades of grey softly merged into each other as if an accomplished photographer had captured and enhanced the beauty of a faded film actress (by using a soft lens). The image looked like an art work.

Sitting comfortably at home and holding the paper, I could only appreciate the photographer’s skill. I wondered how in today’s world there is no distinction between an image produced by a painter using brush and paint or a layperson using some mechanical tool like camera and computer, as long as it stays in our memories.

But is it justified to call anybody who carries a camera in his mobile phone an artist? How is the impulse to photograph something that is happening in real time different from the desire to become a painter? And how is the photograph of a nearby street printed in paper or preserved on cell phone’s memory distinct in terms of aesthetic value from the works of art hanging in museums or galleries. On some level, both excite the viewer because of their composition, content, subject and formal aspects.

Although photography has become an acknowledged and accepted form of art, somehow the art public has not yet come close to admitting it as art. Should we then assume that the public is a better judge of art? Because once it is decided that photography is Art, then every person who uses his smart phone is destined to be an artist, if not a great artist. This reminds one of Garcia Marquez’s statement that no matter if it is not true today, it will become truth one day.

A person who is collecting images of his time and surroundings is not considered an artist but in the coming years may be regarded as one. And the future galleries and collections may comprise of images stored on personal commuters, hard drives, flash drives, and memory cards.

However, real life does not operate like this; we still have some parameters to distinguish the artists from others. May be we assume that art is not about showing the life as it is but offers something else too. The crudities of real life are experienced by everyone and if you narrate these you could be a good journalist or news anchor on television but you won’t be called an artist. Facts are not enough for fiction. Thus what took place in 1947 was sufficient for the archives of atrocities on both sides of the newly-carved border, but it required an artist like Saadat Hassan Manto who picked real life situations and transformed them into fiction or art.

What takes place in Manto’s stories is not merely a documentation of the bloodshed, rape and displacement during the partition of Indian subcontinent. He creates characters and conditions which are connected to those turbulent times but can be conceived in a myriad other ways. Thus, even if one is not familiar with the reports of riots in undivided Punjab, his short story Thanda Gosht about a man who once tried to make love to a beautiful dead woman during the communal riots and failed to do so can be transposed to every culture, society and epoch.

Apart from its grim atmosphere, it is the aesthetic aspect of the short story that captivates a reader. More than the details of communal riots and killings, it is about the sophistication of narrative -- literature at its most sublime stage, suspended between tension and tests.

So it is not the significance of an accident that requires it to reside in the collective memory but how it is transformed into Art that helps it to become a part of posterity. Thus the news of some riots in Lahore would have not merited many words if its photograph did not have that extraordinary visual quality. Actually the role of an artist (or photographer) is to take us away from our immediate background. But owing to the aesthetic quality of his work, a viewer is bound to respond to reality in a strong way.

Unlike the studios of great masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian or Mansur, with many artists working in one space to produce a work, in the present times an individual can come up with loads of images and be recognised as an important artist, even by using his camera or mobile phone (like the French writer Romain Puertolas, who wrote his novel, ‘The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir who do got Trapped in an IKEA Wardrobe’ on his cell phone!).

Our age is the epitome of the power of images which, despite their origin, fascinate a simple onlooker who opens his computer or newspaper to confirm if the world is moving in normal order. In that setup, an image that is both painful and pleasant affects and attracts him. In our times, it is the image that has taken over the text. Therefore, no matter how much you complain about the plight of a community, unless you produce an effective and heart-rending visual, no one will listen or react.

In that sense, image is the identity marker of the twenty-first century (remember 9/11 footage?). Thus whatever happens around the globe, unless it is translated into compelling visuals it won’t have any response or lasting memory. After the recent attacks on Gaza the pictures of dead children, devastated families, destructed houses and flames amid two mosque towers, have turned the world’s attention towards the situation of Palestinian Territories. Imagine if there were no pictures but plain text and talk, would there be any support for the Palestinian? Probably people are yearning for these visuals, so they can associate with them, without really knowing that a real world exists beyond this network of images in which there may be a solution for co-existence of Israeli and Palestinian population in two separate states -- a solution suggested by Hebrew writer Amos Oz.

Till those ideal times come, we are condemned to both criticise -- and appreciate -- the mournful images, which we come across every morning while negotiating between orange juice and raspberry jam on our breakfast tables.