American Brian McCarty took a photo in the Gaza Strip in 2012 as part of a photography project. Three years later, Daesh (ISIS) transformed his image into something a little uglier.
McCarty's continuing project, "WAR-TOYS," is a photo essay meant to capture conflict through the eyes of the children. He visited the Gaza Strip in November 2012 and, finding direction through the kids he spoke to, took a series of photos meant to communicate children's fears in the war. McCarty's set involved a Cinderella toy he bought on location and miniature missiles.
In June 2015, Daesh doctored the photo into propaganda. As you can see in the back-to-back comparison, Daesh took the toy out of the image and replaced it with a bubble shielding a Daesh flag and a Quran book.
Other changes were trademarks of the extremist group: the lighting and the Arabic caption that says, "Under shelling ... The Islamic State." The message of the militants' survival is a far cry from the one McCarty intended.
“This photograph particularly was meant to be this girl’s fear of war, fear of dying and then ISIS took it and turned it into something promoting, more or less, that very thing — or at least the ideology behind that,” McCarty told Public Radio International.
By Hayat Norimine
