Ong's photographs a visual homage to Malang

Ong's photographs a visual homage to Malang

By Myra Sidharta

JAKARTA (JP): Long before World War II, during the era when
painters toured Indonesia capturing the country's beautiful
sights on canvas, a young man was taking photographs of these
same scenes.

His name was Ong Kian Bie. Born in Malang, East Java, on March
1, 1907, the youngest of two boys, Ong's father passed away when
he was two weeks old but his mother raised her two sons and gave
them the opportunity to be educated in Malang's best Chinese
school.

Unfortunately this opportunity was cut short, and when Ong
Kian Bie was 15 years old and he was forced to find a job to make
a living. One of his uncles gave him a Kodak brownie camera, a
new invention in those days. His first project was to take
pictures of a speeding train. Ong's success was honored by his
uncle and he became an apprentice in this man's photo studio.

His portraits became well-known in Malang and he took
photographs of most of the weddings that took place in the city
at the time. His baby photos also became famous and during a
visit to Europe decades later he met many of his former baby
models, by then in their fifties and sixties, who proudly showed
him their photographs which were still in beautiful condition and
in some cases had even survived concentration camps!

But Ong did not limit himself to studio photographs. He
ventured out into the mountainous areas around Malang, and also
went to Bali and Lombok to capture images of the nature and
people there. He would pay great attention to small details, the
harmony of the subject against the background and also the
chiaroscuro, so often found in European paintings.

Many of Ong's photographs were published in the Malay-language
magazines, such as the Sin Po and Keng Po. However, Dutch
language magazines such as Java Express and d' Orient also
bought his nature photographs.

He was honored by Malang's city council with a commission to
take all the photographs for a book commemorating its 25th
anniversary in 1939.

During the Japanese occupation Ong was not allowed to practice
photography. This was not surprising because the Japanese
government had sent photographers to Southeast Asia to spy for
them. He had to make a living by making and painting name boards
for schools, offices, shops and hospitals.

His wife, who he married in 1931 helped by taking in lodgers
to earn extra money. His only daughter, born in 1938, often
accompanied him on his trips to find painting jobs or to deliver
the finished boards to the clients.

During this time, Malang became a sanctuary for many poets and
writers who were also robbed of their livelihood by the Japanese
because of the ban on newspapers, magazines and books. They,
together with musicians and painters, formed a circle and
gathered regularly for musical or literary evenings, but also to
discuss social and political problems. Ong was a regular
contributor with his own poetry.

I met Ong for the first time in 1993 when I went to Malang to
find data about a certain Nyoo Cheong Seng, whose biography I was
writing. Nyoo was a member of the cultural circle and I went to
interview Ong about him. He was 86 at the time, living alone in
Malang since his wife died, soon after their 60th wedding
anniversary.

He was very busy in his studio and impressed me with his
excellent memory. I believed him when he told me that he was 68;
in fact he was fooling me, he was 86!

I had known Ong's photographs from magazines that I read in my
childhood, so it was quite an experience for me to meet the
photographer in person. It was even more exciting when I was
asked to open his photo exhibition at Erasmus Huis in Jakarta in
August 1996. This exhibition featured his photographs of tempo
doeloe (past times) and recent works.

The exhibition was preceded by a lecture about Malang in the
past and present and the audience, mostly ex-Malang residents,
was thrilled to see the beautiful photographs and enjoyed
recognized places in their city.

Later that year Ong received another tribute for his lifetime
achievements. He was honored in the book Malang, beeld van een
stad (Malang, Image of a City), by A. van Schaik, a well-written
and well-illustrated history of the city of Malang. The writer
dedicated the book to Ong for contributing so many photos,
especially those showing the changes in the city over the last 70
years.

He had taken pictures of these changes and of the assault on
his city during the revolution, when hundreds of buildings were
destroyed. He did not take the pictures to show the beauty, but
as a silent, helpless observation of events. He also showed his
helplessness when, in recent times, old beautiful buildings, such
as the Concordia were considered obsolete and replaced with
shopping malls and other hideous structures.

Ong Kian Bie passed away in the small hours of Nov. 16 last
year in Dordtrecht the Netherlands where he had been living with
his daughter Ay-ling for more than a year. A long and active life
thus came to an end. He will never return to Malang to record
more changes in the coming years but his photographs will remain
forever.