Photos show a diverse, colorful urban landscape
Fritz Kuhlmann, Contributor, Jakarta
The transsexual in his shabby apartment stares at the observer, proud in his glamorous attire. A fisherman puts on a pair of dirty woolen gloves, preparing to dive into the dark ocean to prey upon the green mussel.
The multicolored stroboscope flashes at the dance floor, almost blinding in its intensity.
All that is Jakarta, seen by five young photographers. All that is on the borderline between documentary realism and artistic expression.
Urban Horizon: A Visual Opinion, an exhibition of the Galeri Foto Jurnalistik Antara at Erasmus Huis, also provides insight into the state of modern photography here.
"This kind of photography is only about to emerge in Indonesia," curator Oscar Matuloh from Antara news agency said.
"We are kind of late." `The exhibition, he hopes, will contribute to stimulate the development, but the pictures of the transsexual are already the result of five years of work.
Freelance photographer Mohamad Iqbal, 32, did a long-term investigation to obtain "a different view", he said. "Normally, the photographer has full power over the subject, he determines the picture of someone else."
Mohamad Iqbal gave the transvestites -- who are often looked upon by others as objects as sex workers in Menteng, South Jakarta -- the opportunity to alter this relationship. They selected the photographs to be exhibited, choosing how to pose. And he even posed for them.
Not all of Mohamad Iqbal's collaborators, however, seem to have gotten the idea.
"It was a great experience being a model," one transvestite said enthusiastically. "I'm a natural."
His work is a remarkable sociological experiment. Unfortunately, a lack of technical precision and skill disturbs the impression, which is a problem of some other pieces in the exhibition as well.
Done in a very classical style are the laconic black and white photographs of Arief Sunarya, 30, portraying the diver. Classical as well are the grim city-landscapes of the already well-known Kemal Jufri, a successful photojournalist for 10 years who has shot for magazines like U.S. Time, who emphasizes the contrast between glitzy skyscrapers and the urban poor scraping by on the dusty streets below.
It's almost too classical, Firman Ichsan, in charge of photography at the Jakarta Arts Institute, said. When one does pictures in the style of famous Frenchman Henri Cartier-Bresson, who also enjoyed his own Jakarta sojourn, it's hard to stand out.
"It's more interesting to try something completely new, something more experimental," he said.
Paul Kadarisman, 29, did just that. A woman in a shiny, tight red skirt delicately sits down on a cactus; through staged scenes like this, he gives comment on sexual taboos and the theme of pain. Whether deliberately provocative or just playful, the pictures are artificial to the extreme.
Photographs by Timur Angin of Jakarta youth dancing the night away in a discotheque most interestingly place themselves right between the documentary and the expressive.
The 25 year old succeeds in visualizing the wild sound of trance music in colorful flashes. The photographer seems not to be an observer but a participant in the scene.
"I make quite a lot of money by shooting advertisements," Timur said. "But the exhibition shows who I really am. This kind of photography is not a job -- it's a lifestyle."
Firman appreciates this, but the market of fine arts will not, he believes.
"The collectors just don't understand -- not yet," he said. "They just come from a certain part of society, a certain income and age."
Still, he thinks it's good that the young photographers are not overly market-orientated.
"Photography as an art form, although this medium comes from commercial use in the advertisement business, for instance, is ironically less commercial than the fine arts."
Nonetheless, it proves to be alive and kicking.
I-box
Urban Horizon: A Visual Opinion Erasmus Huis, Jl. H.R. Rasuna Said, Kav S-3, Kuningan, South Jakarta Tel. (021) 524-1069. Until June 12.