Batak photographer searches for roots through pictures
By Johannes Simbolon
JAKARTA (JP): A Batak ethnic photographer, in his bid to search for his cultural roots, has produced a collection of pictures highlighting his people's life and destiny. Unfortunately, the collection is far from a complete documentation of the entire experience of the ethnic group.
Poriaman Sitanggang's, an Asia Week free lance photographer, Portraits of Indonesia held in February last year at the World Trade Center scored a success. This time, however, his four-day solo exhibition, Portraits of Batak, which began yesterday at the same hall, mainly illustrates that the Indonesian nation is far more easy to understand than each of its diverse age-old cultures.
Many visitors might look at his 96 black-and-white works in wonderment, but those who are well versed in the tribe's history will surely sense that Poriaman missed a number of essential parts to the story.
Born in 1965 in Medan, the capital of North Sumatra, Poriaman quickly lost his intimate bond with his ethnic culture. He was reared on the Java and Sulawesi islands, living in the so-called "modern Indonesian culture" and lost his ability to speak Batak, as did most of the Batak children nurtured in diaspora. His first adult encounter with his ancestors' land was in July 1993 when a celebrated local poet, Sitor Situmorang, took him there on a sentimental journey.
An excited Poriaman went on a week long picture shooting spree and then resumed it for another week last May.
Half of his exhibition consists of portraits of nameless subjects and some noted individuals. The collection vividly displays Poriaman's distinct flair for depicting lonely people. By no means, however, does he always treat his subjects in a melancholic way. There is sometimes a curious blend of sadness and joy in the pictures.
Human beings
There is, for example, a humorous photograph of an old woman pondering over her toothache while waiting her turn in a clinic's lobby. Another beautiful picture, in this same mood, is of an old, bearded man and a boy. The man, who has only half a left hand, strangely puts his wristwatch around his imperfect hand, while the boy standing beside him is wearing a conspicuously oversized shirt -- an apt expression of both misfortune and poverty. However, looking at their serene countenances gives the viewer more a sense of peace than bleakness.
The gloomiest picture of Poriaman's collection is of a blind, pock-marked man who is helplessly groping for something in the bushes atop a hill with misty paddy fields in the background. The frame of the picture is black to create the impression that hopelessness has entirely encompassed him.
All these pictures, though impressive, portray the fate of human beings in general rather than the Batak people in specific. After looking at them, one question remains. Why are the Batak people unique?
Poriaman tries to answer this question with tens of other photos which feature people in traditional attire at cultural festivals, as if to say it is the garments that make them different from other ethnic groups. Pictures of Catholic nuns and Moslem children, the Batak people are not only Christians and a portrait of a Batak Protestant Congregation church with a leafless tree in the foreground, "Religion is now falling" Poriaman says, hinting at the church's current internal dispute, are some of the more memorable photos.
We can sense Poriaman's attempt to touch the inner part of Batak life. Unfortunately, there are a number of essential scenes of the tribe's social life that his lens misses. He leaves out the singing, chess playing Batak males at Tuak pubs which are commonplace in the community. He is also less than successful in finding models of what has become the stereotypical tough Batak people.
Above all, Poriaman's photos of Batak poverty lose their poignancy because he does not seem to realize the greatest tragedy, and irony, of all. Many Batak descendants have had success outside the region but have let their native home remain barren and poor.