Oscar `speaks' through photos

Oscar `speaks' through photos

Zora Rahman, Contributor, Jakarta

Truth be told, it all happened for Oscar Motuloh by accident.

Oscar Motuloh never had plans to become a photographer. When
he started studying International Relations, he actually wanted
to become a diplomat -- "because they can go everywhere in the
world".

At least, he canceled this plan, after he realized how formal
and restricted a diplomat's life would be, and entered journalism
instead.

When he was 30 and already working for two years as a
writer/journalist at Antara news agency, a colleague fell ill and
Oscar had to take the pictures for a particular story.

This late start in 1990 was the beginning of a remarkable
career: Surabaya-born Oscar Motuloh today is not only chief photo
reporter of Antara and director of the news agency's photo-
journalistic gallery -- he is also one of Indonesia's most
recognized photo artists.

His exhibition titled The Art of Dying, which runs until Jan.
26 at Bentara Budaya building in Central Jakarta, has been a
success at an exhibition in Washington D.C. last year. It is the
photographer's second solo exhibition in Jakarta in the last
three months.

Both exhibitions, The Art of Dying and Nyanyian Periferal
(presented by the French Cultural Center in Jakarta last
November) have been the result of a journey to France in the
beginning of 2002. Participating at a meeting with French
photographers, Oscar planned to do a photo-report about the
minority groups living on the outskirts of Paris. He also wanted
to complete his documentation about graves -- both themes have
long interested him. He has spent time photographing the people
of East Timor and Cambodia.

These experiences provided abundant material. While the
pictures showing the daily life of fringe groups living in Paris
were exhibited in Nyanyian Periferal, the famous cemetaries of
the French capital offered enough material to justify a single
exhibition.

"Graves tell more about the life than about the death of
people," Oscar said. "They document the history and the culture
of a society, especially in Paris, where the cemeteries are
bigger, the architecture is more expressive and the context wider
than in most other cities of the world. And maybe we are just
more interested, because there are so many famous people buried
there."

In The Art of Dying, Oscar proves his eye for detail and a
clearness of expression that makes a difference between a
craftsman and an artist. His pictures show love by a CD on The
Doors frontman Jim Morrison's tomb stone, oppression by a simple
wall mosaic, higher power by a stone hand that seems to hover
above Napoleon's Mausoleum and the wish for equality by the
statue of French industrialist Charles Pigeon and his wife lying
in bed.

"I always try to read and to make a visual outlet of what I
see," the photographer says. "Afterwards I can revise it again -
let's call it a kind of visual re-interpretation."

Not everybody has the extraordinary skill to switch between
photo-journalism and art photography -- or even to combine both
of them as Oscar does. But as he says, it was a long learning
process from shooting his first press pictures to entering the
art world, or what he calls "more personal photography".

"Although elements of photography can be part of photo-
journalistic work, they have to be closer to the problems of the
society -- with a more documenting character. And otherwise,
although the idea, the angle and the composition of pure
photographic works are different from a journalistic perspective,
the picture still has to transmit a strong message."

Oscar is convinced that everybody can learn these techniques,
with proper training.

"The basics that every photo-journalist or artist has to
master is to assess the strength and the sharpness of a picture",
he says. But he admits that there has at least a little talent to
begin with -- the eye to see the right angle and the best details
of a scene and the feeling for the right moment to release the
camera.

Facilitating the training of younger photographers has became
almost an obsession for the 43-year-old single man, who is
teaching at the Jakarta Arts Institute's School of Film and
Television and presenting photo-journalistic workshops at Antara.

"In my time, we had no books, there was no formal education
for photographers (in Indonesia) yet. We had to take the journey
of discovery all by ourselves", Oscar recalled. "Who else than us
should now build something such as a new school of Indonesian
photography?"

Oscar sees his photography as another medium for the messages
he wants to convey. About the violence and the social injustice
that people suffer in this world, but also about the joy of life
and the hope for freedom and democracy.

"As long as photography is the witness for what happens in
this world and is able to record the people's heartbeat that
expresses the conditions of their life and their history, we can
optically break through the jungle of borders and freedom is
still possible."