ABSTRACT
In April 2014, an oversized photograph of an unnamed girl holding a small stone, eyes squarely trained on the lens of the camera, began a new life of internet transit. Carrying the evocative hashtag #NotABugSplat, the photograph, 90 feet by 60 feet and printed on white tarpaulin, was displayed in a small undisclosed village in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region of Pakistan. #NotABugSplat provides an evocative example of the contemporary visual culture of human rights. It crystallizes the assemblage of production, circulation, and reception that utilizes the visual to advance human rights claims, and in so doing, it reveals the rhetorical and aesthetic ambiguity of practices. On the formal level, the central portrait used for #NotABugSplat crops out the young girl's two siblings, leaving an individual face of innocence, determination, and trauma to greet the gaze of the spectator. #NotABugSplat was circulated via BBDO Pakistan, an advertising agency launched in Lahore in 2012 as a subsidiary of the New York-based BBDO.
