The black and white vision of Jakarta's Galeri Antara

The black and white vision of Jakarta's Galeri Antara

By Jim Plouffe

JAKARTA (JP): Yudhi Soerjoatmodjo wasn't happy. He couldn't
picture himself as a salesman or a businessman.

"That's what my parents wanted," he now says with some guilt.

That was 1985, when Yudhi was studying economics at the
American University in Paris and the pressure was keeping him
awake at night. His doctor told him to find a hobby. It was near
Christmas so he bought himself a cheap Pentax and used a spare
block in his university timetable to enroll in a photography
course.

"I was 21 years old and had never owned a camera," he says,
pausing to comprehend how strange that seems now.

"The first day I went out taking photographs, I knew I was
going in the right direction. That night I slept like a baby,"
Yudhi recalls.

With the encouragement of an excellent teacher, he graduated
to a Nikkon and then to a Leica. Nine years later he was
appointed curator of the Galeri Foto Jurnalistik Antara in the
crumbling Antara news building in Pasar Baru, Central Jakarta.

Like his clear-cut revelation of career path, Yudhi's favorite
photography medium is black and white. He sees it and color
photography as two separate languages and means of expressing an
idea. But, says the 31-year-old, certain subjects must be shot in
black and white.

To illustrate his point, Yudhi explains why he spent months
working on a black and white photo-essay of a Welsh
slaughterhouse while on scholarship at the School of Photography
in Wales in 1990.

"To shoot it in color would make it vulgar," he says of the
bloody images of entrails washing around on the floor. "Black and
white leaves more to the imagination. It doesn't distract from
the story or the dignity of the butchers," he explains.

Black and white photography isn't highly regarded in Indonesia
simply because it was "the only thing for many years", Yudhi
says. Once color film was introduced (DATE), many photographers
in the developing country refused to use the older medium.

Even editors have become anti-black-and-white, Yudhi insists,
citing a time when an editor refused to print his photos because
it was "a waste of money to print black and white pictures on
expensive art paper." Another time, his color photographs were
chosen over his black and white photos even though he felt they
weren't as good.

He was working for the now banned Tempo magazine as a
correspondent in eastern Europe just before the collapse of the
Soviet Union. His color photo-essay on Hungary was printed the
next day, but his black and white shots of Rumania were debated
for two or three weeks.

The Indonesian aversion to black and white photography may
have deeper roots than the advent of color film.

"When photography came here(DATE) with the Dutch, it was used
as part of the colonial instrument to make inventories of
whatever they owned: the plantations, the temples, the kings, the
population, whatever," Yudhi explains.

Photography was, and sometimes still is, beyond the means of
average Indonesians. "The natives were always the passive ones...
the ones crouching down in front in the photographs. The Dutch
made a lot of images, but photography never gained popularity
among the natives," says Yudhi.

Popularizing photography is now the mission of the gallery.
According to Oscar Motuloh, who oversees the gallery for Antara,
Yudhi was hired as the gallery's curator to make this mission a
reality.

Yudhi had left Tempo in 1992, and had proved his suitability
for the curator position with a solo exhibition featuring his
black and white photographs of the Paris subway. "Paris Metro"
was a success and taught Yudhi some of the skills needed to run
the gallery.

Galeri Antara was opened in December 1992, and operated
without a curator for its first year. Once Oscar hired Yudhi at
the end of 1993, they increased the number of exhibits from one
to nine and boosted visitor numbers from 45 in the first year to
400 a month in 1994. Last year Yudhi brought in more than 900
visitors a month.

He was able to increase the number of visitors by asking
himself the simple question: What kind of photo gallery would I
like as a visitor, not as a curator? His answer was a friendly
and informative gallery, something that Indonesians would not be
afraid to visit.

"Indonesians are afraid to go to galleries because most of the
galleries here are commercial. That means you have to dress
right. You have to have the smell of money," Yudhi points out.

Through exhibitions like "Padi", an interactive display in
which actual rice complemented 200 slide images being flashed on
the walls, Yudhi has built up a following among local young
people and photographers. He boasts that the gallery now has a
membership of over 200 and very close relationships with many
cultural centers in Jakarta, especially the German Goethe
Institute.

"I want to cater to people who are thirsty for this kind of
experience," Yudhi stresses. "Living in the West, going to a
gallery is like going to the supermarket, people just jump on the
bus and go."

Yudhi sees the gallery as a "new infrastructure" where people
can learn while interacting with photographers. The visitors "can
even criticize them," he adds.

Besides staging exhibitions, Yudhi also plans to increase the
gallery's collection of 250 images and publish at least one book
a year.

He and his staff of three organize workshops and talks to
encourage young photographers. For example, immediately after
taking charge of the gallery, Yudhi had eight students explore
"Old Jakarta" and present photo-essays on what they discovered.
Their work -- everything from a graveyard to the Kota railroad
station -- took on a melancholy tone, especially in the photos of
the six students who chose to work in black and white.

Oscar says a fresh batch of students will resume exploring
Jakarta in June for an exhibition called "Our City". With plans
underway for a major renovation of the historic building housing
Galeri Antara, Yudhi's vision of a user-friendly gallery is
taking shape -- something new to keep him awake at night.