A Lawyer's Argument

From the New York Times

Most of the image is obscured by clouds of thick white smoke. In the fore of the picture is a lawyer, clad in a suit and jacket, winding his arm all the way back in preparation to throw a smoke grenade back at the police, who lobbed the said grenade only moments before.

This image is an effective tool to convey the argument of pro-democracy and anti-police state as imposed by the current President of Pakistan Musharraf, because of the way the visual elements work together. Lawyers have a stigma of being soul sucking fiends, who only care about the highest bidder, but that is not the case in Pakistan. There, Lawyers are literally marching in the streets to protest the dissolution of the Pakistani Constitution and Supreme Courts. The image of a single man, fighting tooth and nail to defend democracy, in conjunction with the destruction as caused by the imposing regime, casts a righteous light on the lawyer’s cause.