Vilks

This is a translation of a bloggery post I made in Swedish last year. I've been intending to translate it for a long time but never got around to it. I hope it's better than the google translator and any babelfish attempts... 

In July of 2005, I was with family in Skåne, down in the south of Sweden and we had a field trip to Kullaberg. It was quite hot, the water flasks we carried were all gone by the time we got back. There were plenty of people down at Nimis and after a while we spotted the artist himself, Lars Vilks coming down the path to the building site carrying tools and with some planks on his shoulder. He climbed about nailing wood to the sculpture and after a while took up a position on a rock where he sold books and stamps while conversing the ladies.

Burnings in Kuala Lumpur

My first edits on Wikipedia were made sometime in 2002. I kept editing mostly because I like to write. With time, English Wikipedia became a little too crowded and the articles started to fill up. When starting to write in an article that was up until now almost empty or didn't exist at all, just about everything you do adds something, but as the articles improve it gets harder to add and more like work. I tired of English Wikipedia and moved on to the Swedish version. While I was relatively early on the English wikipedia, on the Swedish Wikipedia I was among the first. I was user #42. Around that time I also started adding images. Pictures  differ from articles in that the space for items doesn't fill up, there's always room for one more picture if something.

By the time of our visit to Kullaberg in 2005 I brought a decent camera and had already planned to get some pictures of Nimis since I knew there weren't any good ones. I was never fanatical about Wikipedia but I was going there and I had a camera so I thought I'd get some pictures, no more than that to it.

So, when Vilks appeared on site, I waited until he was free, introduced myself and asked if he would mind posing for a portrait for Wikipedia. Vilks didn't mind. If I had to guess, I think he had a rather fuzzy idea of what Wikipedia was and its impact, or what drives Wikipedians - not that I mind, I'm a layman if anything when it comes to his field. I felt there was a certain symmetry to it. Vilks asked if I wanted to get a portrait with him brandishing his trusty hammer. I said no thanks, that wasn't quite the portrait I had in mind.

"The picture"

Once I got home, the Nimis pictures ended up on my computer but I didn't get around to uploading them until two years later. By then, Vilks' roundabout dogs drawings had been published which made me realize there were still no portrait on Wikipedia. I chose a couple pictures and uploaded them and they were at least good enough to be the main pictorial material on the articles about Vilks on both English and Swedish Wikipedia, and probably some other languages as well.

In 2010, Jihad Jane appeared in the news. Media reported that the woman had done research about Vilks online and I wondered about how much there might be to find. It seemed likely that she had at the very least seen my pictures. Back when I added the pictures there hadn't been that many other images to find. So I looked around again and it seemed reasonable to assume that Jihad Jane had got her fundamental knowledge and image of Vilks from the article and the image I had added about 4 years earlier (if I understand correctly, Jihad Jane was apprehended in 2009),

It didn't stop there. "My picture" was also present in articles about Jihad Jane, roundabout dogs and various other topics. Considering search engine behaviour and the high ranking Wikipedia material gets, it seemed reasonable to assume anyone who had been reading about Vilks, Jihad Jane, roundabout dogs, had also seen "my picture."

You'll note I call it "my picture." It is still mine. I'm the only one who can sell the picture. What I cannot do is to stop someone from redistributing it under the terms laid down by Wikipedia. I can't prevent anyone from publishing it or from printing and posting it on a wall - or burn it. The history of the file is available to anybody and the creator (me) is readily visible. It is farily easy to track down individual Wikipedia contributors and I never made any attempts to hide my identity on Wikipedia.

In March-April of 2010, fundamentalist muslims carried out a number of manifestations at Swedish embassies in - if memory server me right - Lahore and Kuala Lumpur. In Lahore they burned a horrbly misshapen effigy of the Swedish flag, in shades of green and pink, but in Kula Lumpur they had a proper regulation flag for the burning. Apparently, it was stolen from the embassy's flag pole. Someone had also made other preparations: along with the flag, a bunch of print-outs of Vilks' portrait from Wikipedia were burned. I.e., the photo I took.

The picture continued to turn up in various contexts. In May 2010 Vilks was set to appear in Uppsala (my hometown) which was heralded in one of the free newspapers in town in a nearly full-page article illustrated with the portrait I took, covering a lot of the page. I thought about attending the event but eventually it didn't happen. By now, enough had happened that I thought I had some relevant questions for Vilks and I thought there was some discussion to be had around it, for instance regarding the publishing of the portrait.

I didn't make it to the event, which with hindsight was a disappointment as well as a blessing. Since then there have been assaults and attacks on Vilks. Debate seems mostly to have calmed down but mention of the roundabout dogs keeps reappearing all the time, for instance in the messages left by the Swedish suicide bomber just before holiday season 2010.

Taken a step back to ponder it all: Do I think it was right to publish the portrait? Would I do it again?

My thoughts are mainly these: First, Vilks is by his own choice a public persona. Pictures of him continue to be published in media, including after Jihad Jane's arrest was made public. If anything, they increased in number. I'm not aware of any attempts by Vilks to limit these publishings. His mission is, if I understand it correctly, to reach as many as possible with his discussion and with his debate. So I don't think I let him down by publishing the portrait.

Granted, I didn't immediately publish the portrait when I had taken it but only after the first round of publicity. I'd probably do it again today if I had the choice. Given the choice now, I'd say it's not we who follow clear ethical rules that need to align with those following a shakier compass.

Finally, there is one thing that I'm very thankful for in all this: Saying "No, thanks" to the portrait of Vilks brandishing his hammer. If anything, it would have looked really awful being burned along with the flag in Kuala Lumpur.