Batak photographer searches for roots through pictures

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.