Images of Kalimantan: A travel document<\/p>\n
By Peter Kerr<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): A craggy pillar of rock spears skywards out of
\nthe vast Central Kalimantan jungle. Elsewhere a cloud shaped like
\nan angry jinn makes its way across the evening sky.<\/p>\n
In the land below the treetops, a Dayak woman and her children
\nstand at the doorway of their wooden home. A woman breast-feeding
\nher young child outside smiles toward the camera, and inside
\nanother house a dukun (shaman) seems suspended in mid-air,
\nsurrounded by enthralled onlookers.<\/p>\n
These are some of the images photographed over 20 years by
\nMansur Geiger, an Australian-born geologist with an unmistakable
\nlove of the Dayak people and Kalimantan's natural beauty.<\/p>\n
Geiger, now living in Jakarta with his wife Utami and their
\nthree daughters, came to Indonesia in 1972 at the age of 20.<\/p>\n
In 1981 he began exploring for minerals in a remote part of
\nCentral Kalimantan, at the headwaters of the Kahayan River in the
\nSchwaner-Muller ranges.<\/p>\n
Fifty-five of the hundreds of photographs he has taken since
\nthen are on display at the Textile Museum in Central Jakarta,
\nunder the JakArt umbrella.<\/p>\n
Geiger himself was unable to attend the exhibition opening on
\nWednesday, being on another trip to Kalimantan.<\/p>\n
His photographs document travels in long, narrow canoes up the
\nrivers and rapids that allow access to Central Kalimantan, but
\nwhere \"life's hardships become one's joys\", as one image is
\ncaptioned.<\/p>\n
Geiger's work shows the variety of flora and fauna in one of
\nthe world's areas of greatest ecological diversity, from a huge
\niridescent beetle, to a giant python that has just swallowed a
\npig, to the rich red heart of a rare rafflesia plant.<\/p>\n
But central to the exhibition are his images of the Dayak
\npeople, at ease in their forest home.<\/p>\n
Proceeds from the sale of the photographs, for US$150 each, go
\nto Yayasan Tambuhak Sinta, a foundation for developing the upper
\nKahayan community.<\/p>\n
At the same venue are two other small exhibitions, by visual
\nartist Daniel Dick and Irish oil painter Donna Coogan.<\/p>\n
Dick received his arts education in San Francisco but spent
\nhis teenage years in Jakarta and now lives in Denpasar, Bali.<\/p>\n
He works mostly with silkscreen, linocut and collagraph. The
\nlatter involves building a relief plate out of cardboard and glue
\nonto a cardboard background, which is then printed on paper to
\ncreate a reverse image.<\/p>\n
Dick's highly symbolic works are impressions of places he has
\nlived and traveled, including the United States, Morocco, Hawaii
\nand Spain.<\/p>\n
Coogan's works are in thickly painted blues, reds and black --
\nblurs of color glimpsed through a deep sea.<\/p>\n
Images of Kalimantan by Mansur Geiger is showing at the
\nTextile Museum, Jl K.S. Tubun, Central Jakarta, until June 30.<\/p>",
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