Turning the lens on people at a cultural crossroads

Turning the lens on people at a cultural crossroads

By Dini S. Djalal

JAKARTA (JP): It's lunch hour at the Regent Hotel, and
assorted professionals are milling about looking important, or at
least trying to.

Among them is a young man in a particularly bright shade of
orange pants. Passing a portrait of a Dani woman, her bare torso
rubbed with earth and a bag woven out of bark hanging from her
head, he hisses to his friends, "Can you believe people in Irian
still run around like that! They're so weird!"

Photographer Poriaman Sitanggang, whose works comprise this
exhibit called "The people we forget", has probably heard
comments like that all too often. Poriaman knows the Dani, an
ethnic group living in the Baliem Valley of Irian Jaya, is off
the beaten track for the ultra-hip.

But he doesn't care because he feels it is his duty to
persevere. "Do the elite who frequent these fancy hotels know
about all the peoples in Indonesia? My task is to let them know.
Even if the pictures have no impact on them, I still want to show
them."

Poriaman has no need to be overly pessimistic for his
photographs are ravishing.

Some are excellent on technique alone. The indoor portrait,
Man of Irianese, is a brilliant canvas of natural light; save for
the man's musing visage, dramatic shadows dominate the photo.
Smile You are on Camera is also lit in sunny rays, in sync with
the portrait's sunny laughter.

The studio-like portraits, set outside against a stark white
background and taken with 4 by 5 inch Toyo negatives, also use
natural light but with the help of a reflector (Poriaman's method
is revealed in a photo showing him setting up his work kit in a
village). The resulting images are unsettling -- the eyes clear,
the expressions unadulterated, the gestures honest.

Poriaman said the decision to go stark was intentional. In
color, he said, the photos would not be as approachable. "Colors
really affect people's emotions, they trigger meanings instantly.

"Also, in color, some of the images, like the kotekas (penis
sheaths), can be harsh, even rude. Then the photos would almost
be attacking, whereas I want people to come away thinking the
Dani are our brothers."

Poriaman is right. In black and white, the unfamiliar images
are rendered more sympathetic, perhaps partly because the
esthetics of this format are easy to relate to. As extreme as the
physical contrasts can be -- and some shades are so severe that
white feathers disappear into the background -- the countenance
captured always achieves a middle, humane ground.

The photos' emotive strengths are offset by balanced
compositions. In The Three Young Ladies Posed for Thousands of
Rupiah, the girl at right has her torso painted with white spots
while her friends wear white bark skirts. The Old Man of the Dani
shows feathers and ornaments in perfect symmetry with each other.

The Tough Lady also has a symmetrical feel as the pile of
leaves balanced on the woman's head crowns a pole-like body. It's
a great photograph, and perhaps even a great fashion photograph
-- wearing only a bark-weave skirt, the tough lady's striking
stance is potentially inspirational for the likes of John
Galliano and Jean-Paul Gaultier.

The links to fashion images aren't so obscure. Poriaman
admitted he was influenced by famed portrait and fashion
photographer Richard Avedon.

"I thought Avedon's approach would be good for Irian," said
Poriaman, who says the empty background brings out the details,
imbuing the photos with drama. "I wanted to take the symbolic
route, so the photos become meaningful. This approach is simple,
but dramatic."

Dramatic as the archetypal images undoubtedly are, equally
engaging are scenes of daily life seized by a sensitive eye.

Quaint photos

There are quaint photos of kids walking to school and playing
volleyball dressed in the same clothes as children in Java.
Strip away the "exotic" accessories and the Irianese, observers
may reflect, are not so much different from other Indonesians.

Photographs of the Kurulu market reveal a community as
comfortable in cotton as in grass cloth, and some denizens
substitute Javanese-made sarongs for traditional headdresses.

Cowries and the Symbol of Wealth shows a herd plodding down a
lonely road, their bulk dwarfed by the weight of a vast, brooding
sky. Nature is king, the photo reminds, despite man's efforts to
rule the land.

Poriaman doesn't forget that the Dani no longer live in
isolation, at least not since 1938 when they were first
"discovered". They may have nestled for the last 2000 years in
the Baliem's awe-inspiring expanse, but now they rest in T-shirts
and shorts, contemplating the arrival of another radio or other
emblems of industrial life.

The New View of the Dani illustrates such inroads of
modernity: austere wooden shacks with tin roofs, not to mention
the satellite dish sticking out of the tall grass, seem
incongruous in the verdant valley. Poriaman, who shot the photos
over a 10-day period in February, does not assume that modernity
is what the people do or do not want, but he acknowledges that a
cash economy is overpowering the Dani's customary barter society.

It is at the markets, he said, that the conflict between
tradition and modernity comes into clear view.

"You can see that concept of markets and competition is
distressing the Dani. They take their goods to the market, but
they don't sell anything because nobody is buying, the market is
full of other traders. In the end, they eat the food themselves."

Yet if the market doesn't serve an economic purpose as it does
in other societies, Poriaman said it helped channel a community
spirit among the Dani. "The market is a place where the
community can gather again, where they can function as a society
again. Perhaps before they used to meet for ceremonies and
rituals, now they meet at the market."

Hints that ancient societal norms are fraying at the edges are
also evident in the photographs taken beyond the rustic villages.
Becak has Entered their World is a quixotic, Cartier-Bresson-
esque picture of youth playing with the three-wheeled pedicab.
That these imports from Java have traveled so far -- Irian Jaya
is 2,500 kilometers, or a seven-hour flight, from Jakarta --
signifies the government's determined efforts to assimilate the
Dani into contemporary Indonesian society.

But the modernization taking place in Irian Jaya is best
captured in the photos taken at Jayapura's harbor. Here Irianese
jostle with each other to board the one ship that takes them out
and around the province. The bustling scenes, reminiscent of the
immigrant rushes at New York's Ellis Island, may look quaint, but
the truth underlying the chaos is less so. There are only two
practical ways of traveling in Irian Jaya -- by airplane or by
boat -- and most Irianese are too poor to afford the former.

Poverty is what moves Poriaman. And teaching the public about
this remote province's dire straits, exacerbated by the long
drought, remains his goal. The 33-year-old said the Dani now
struggle for survival because "we forgot them".

"We find it very easy to forget anyone who has no economic
power or if they are useless in terms of mainstream society,"
Poriaman wrote in the exhibit's catalog.

His theme of "the forgotten people" applies not only to the
Dani, but to other Indonesians ironically waylaid by the same
development and modernization schemes that are supposed to help
them.