Firman sizes up the culture gap in photos

David Kennedy, Contributor, Jakarta, d_kenn@yahoo.com

When Firman Ichsan laughs and says that photography is about manipulation, you can be pretty sure that he is not joking.

Although the 50-year-old photographer, who heads Jakarta Arts Institute's photography department, appears light-hearted and jovial he takes his work seriously, aware of the power of pictures to capture the imagination and tell a story.

A pioneer of fashion photography in the heyday of Indonesian fashion during in the 1980s, Firman Ichsan's glamorous pictures illustrated the creations of a new, adventurous generation of designers.

With an uncanny sense of timing and after two decades of rubbing shoulders with top models -- he was married to two them -- the Jakarta-born photographer turned to teaching and to painting not long before the industry went into decline following the Asian financial crisis of 1998.

Today, as an academic and a curator he looks more deeply into the role photography plays in society.

"Photography had to do with manipulating from its very beginnings," he said, explaining that down through history the cost of the equipment made it a medium reserved for kings and nobles, one which told the stories of those who could afford it.

Describing photography as a medium of expression as well as a means of recording events, he warns that there is a lack of understanding of how it works. When he speaks of a culture gap in Indonesian society, Firman's voice takes on a conspiring tone as if he's inviting you to look into his world of photographs.

"When you see a photo you need the ability to read it and understand it but the culture gap often makes that difficult. So a particular photo might be considered pornography by one person and be just another picture for someone else," he told The Jakarta Post.

This perceived gap in cultural understanding is, he argues, even more dangerous than the gap between rich and poor in the country as the two groups constantly intimidate each other.

He describes the artistic community in Jakarta as a liberal "island", often cut off from the rest of the country and from various groups in society. However, he believes it's important for people to select the photos they look at just as they select newspapers to read.

Concern about the cultural divide led Firman into teaching. A lecturer at the Jakarta Arts Institute since 1995, he sees teaching as a way of bridging the gap between communities.

"You can see that the younger generation is more eager to express themselves," he said with real enthusiasm. "Photos can help to include them ... especially in urban areas where they don't want to be isolated."

As curator of Galeri Oktagon in Central Jakarta, Firman has attempted to widen access to what has traditionally been a male- dominated occupation and he held an exhibition last June of female photographers, who he laments have been virtually absent from the business in this country.

He recently supported an exhibition by gay artists, to the disdain of some elements of the press which, he regrets, were more interested in the artists' sexual orientation than the photographs.

Firman has also acted as artistic director for the Buddhist youth group Budha Dharma Indonesia which promotes understanding between youths from different socioeconomic backgrounds through cultural activities.

After almost 20 years as a professional photographer, Firman says he began to feel that the medium was limited as a means of expression. As a printed matter it was strictly regulated by the authorities but he was also aware that people put up barriers to hide their emotions from the camera.

Painting provided an additional artistic outlet allowing him to explore subjects deeper. In 1990, under the watchful eye of painter friend Maarti Djorghi, Firman began to paint scenes depicting the relationships between people he saw around him. He held his first solo exhibition in 1994.

Looking around his living room, dotted with paintings of people with weirdly shaped heads, some of them locked in embraces and others sitting alone, their eyes peering out from strange one-sided faces, you get a sense of the alienation Firman is trying to capture.

A family photo on the cabinet shows his mother, who was an accomplished amateur painter herself, displaying paintings which bear a striking resemblance to those on the walls. His mother was heavily influenced by the Italian painter Modigliani, and Firman was clearly influenced by her.

Many of his paintings describe the relationships of androgynous looking people engaged in the nocturnal activities of Jakarta's club scene, with its varied lifestyles and sexual orientations.

Perhaps it was the attractions of the liberal "island" of Jakarta which first drew Firman to the world of photography in the 1970s.

Laughing raucously at the allegation that he became a photographer so he could meet beautiful women, he does not deny the charge but adds that there were also other reasons.

"At that time it was one of the few places where you could talk openly and honestly because outside that world there was so much politics," he said, referring to the New Order regime of then president Soeharto.

Firman returned to Jakarta in 1976 after studying cultural anthropology in Amsterdam. It was a family tradition of sorts as his father Mohammad Ichsan, a civil servant who was a Secretary of State in the government of president Sukarno, studied there in the 1920s.

Taking photography classes alongside his cultural studies he eventually abandoned formal education to focus on taking pictures. Firman traveled often to Paris where his spouse, fashion model and later successful designer Poppy Dharsono, with whom he had a son, lived at the time.

It was there he studied photography more seriously and began to see fashion as a possible career when he returned to Jakarta.

"At that time fashion was just getting started here. By the 80s it was blooming. Fashion designers exposed themselves through us and we had the opportunity to play around and be creative," he says.

"That was, I think, the heyday and afterwards it became more commercial and more conservative."

Recently divorced from his second wife, well-known model Okky Asokawati, with whom he had a daughter, Firman shows all the signs of a man who is content with the road he has taken though he is modest about his achievements.

"I'm just one case and my work is personal. The important thing is that different groups, such as women, gays and the younger generation, have the chance to exhibit their work," he said.

Undeterred by talk of stricter censorship laws in the country, Firman is optimistic that teaching people about photography, perhaps even in schools, will eventually help defuse tensions over what images should be in the public domain.

"Photos do not represent reality," he said. "They are just a frame; photos are from someone's mind and go through a long process before being published. People need more knowledge to understand what is behind the pictures."