Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
You are on page 1of 36

Wk 7 Photography

Zhuang Wubin 2016


Themes

• Colonial photography
• Local photographers
• Photo studios and photo clubs

• Concepts/genres of photography
• Concepts of the photographer

• Photo journalism
• Commercial photography
• Contemporary art photography and urban culture in Indonesia
Daguerreotype
http://www.novacon.com.br/odditycameras/giroux_arquivos/image006.jpg
The colonial roots of photography
• 1839: the French government presented the daguerreotype
• as a ‘free gift’ to the world

• The Dutch colonisers used photography to further trade and colonisation

• Health officer Jurriaan Munnich (b. 1817-1865)


• 1840: commissioned to photograph views, plants and natural objects in Java
• including the ninth-century Buddhist complex of Borobudur

• German photographer Adolph Schaefer


• 1844: photographs to the Dutch in exchange for a free passage to Batavia
Local photographers
• Kassian Cephas (1845-1912, b. Yogyakarta)
• Learnt photography in the 1860s
• The first Javanese photographer of note
• Catering to different clientele and moving across various practices

• Became the court painter and photographer in Yogyakarta (ca. 1871)


• Archaeological commissions, court ceremonies and other rituals
• His work was printed in Dutch monographs and circulated in souvenir albums
• Also had a studio at his residence
Borobudur (1872) by Kassian Cephas
http://www.novacon.com.br/odditycameras/giroux_arquivos/image006.jpg
Business: Photo studios
• Late 19th century: photo studios owned by Chinese immigrants
• By the 1920s, dominating the business in Java
• Opening studios in smaller cities and catering to people from various classes

• Further increase during the 1950s and 60s

• Fulfilling the desire of their customers


• To be fashioned as participants of national modernity
• To see themselves as modern Indonesians
• Through pose, costume and backdrop
Concepts of the photographer
• Different interpretations of the concept of photographer (tukang potret) in Indonesia

• For the purpose of mechanical reproduction (see Alex Supartono):


• Unskilled manual labour
• Class-related
• Taking away human involvement in photographic reproduction

• For the purpose of business (see Karen Strassler):


• Skilled labour
• Commercial studio photography
• Profession dominated by Cantonese immigrants in Indonesia since the 1920s
• Great woodworking skills to construct cameras / with imported German lenses
• Also travelling photographers serving customers outside urbanised areas

• For the purpose of art (see Yudhi Soerjoatmodjo):


• Salon photographers / ‘Pictorialists’
• Not about showing the ‘truth’ as such
• Also fantasy and confirming the status and position of their patrons
Art: Salon photography in Java
• Salon photography defined photography as ‘art’

• 1924: Preanger Amateur Fotografen Vereniging (PAF) in Bandung


• Founded by chemistry professor Schermerhorn and architect Wolff Schoemaker (1882- 1949)
from the Technical College of Bandung
• In 1954 renamed Perhimpunan Amatir Fotografie
• 1969 – 1986: published national photography magazine Foto Indonesia
• 1948: a photography club under the auspices of the Jakarta-based social organisation Sin
Ming Hui
• To protect the rights of the Chinese during the early years of independence
• 1953: the Semarang Camera Club in Central Java opened its first exhibition
• 1953: Association for Amateur Art Photography (HISFA) in Yogyakarta
• Founded by Javanese aristocrat R. Soemardi (b. 1910, Yogyakarta) and Chinese-Indonesian Sim
Gwan Jauw and Tjan Gwan Bie
Kamera (1956)
‘a magazine for photo enthusiasts’
https://static.cambridge.org/resource/id/urn:cambridge.org:id:binary-alt:20160714022354-72279-mediumThumb-S002191180800065X_fig3g.jpg?pub-status=live
Photography and visual art
• 1947: a training centre for drawing teachers was
established at the Technical College of Bandung
• Since 1959, the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB)
• 2003: Department of Fine Art renamed Visual Art
Study Program

• Acclaimed painter Mochtar Apin (1923-1994)


taught at ITB since 1958
• Encouraging the usage of photography in fine art
practices
• His nude paintings used photos and pornographic
materials as references

• http://senirupapura.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/pengaruh-kubisme-di-indonesia.html
Painter-critic Kusnadi (1921-1997)

• Kusnadi notes that there are different kinds of photographic practices


• Divide between applied art and pure art

• Photography as pure art originates from the artist's intense observations of people
and nature
• Not a copy of realities or events
• Unpredictable and unique
Journalism and nationalism
• Photo journalism in Dutch publications of the 1920s

• Role of ethnicity, religion and nationalism

• Involving Minahasan Christians from North Sulawesi

• Anton Najoan (1896-1933)


• Started in a photo studio at Batavia and in 1927
• Shooting for the daily newspapers of Java Bode and Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad
• Considered critical towards the colonial order

• Brothers Alex Mendur (1907-1984) and Frans Mendur (1913-1971)


• The only photographers and the first Indonesian citizens to witness Sukarno's proclamation of
independence on 17 August 1945
Indonesian Proclamation of
Independence by Frans Mendur (1945)
https://www.merdeka.com/peristiwa/tiga-foto-proklamasi-legendaris-karya-frans-mendur.html
News, war and propaganda

• WW 2: the Indonesian news agency Antara (founded in 1937) was absorbed into the
Japanese Domei news agency

• The Mendur brothers were forced to produce propaganda for Domei

• Mohamad Sayuti (1926-98), Abdoel Kadir Said (1998) and Abdoel Wahab Saleh (1923-82)
emerged as pro-independence photographers for the Antara news agency
• The Antara archive was decimated by Dutch soldiers during the second ‘police action’ in
December 1948
• 1965: its photo bureau was shut down and would not be revived until 1976
Different concepts of photography
• Commercial practices like fashion, advertising and journalism
• Focus on technical competency
• Photography merely as documentation or accompaniment of journalistic work

• Salon photography
• Borrowed from the aesthetic framework of painting  

• Mid-70s: shift away from studio portraiture


• Automatic colour developing and printing
• Interdisciplinary ideas and practices: photographers are also writers, curators, fashion
designers or teachers
Professionalisation of photography
• Newspapers and magazines in the 1970s hire full-time staff photographers
• Kompas newspaper
• The leading daily (founded in 1965)
• Kartono Ryadi (1945-2005) entered Kompas in 1971 and was its first photo editor from 1980 to 1996
• Sinar Harapan newspaper
• Writer-photographer Don Hasman (b. 1940) in the 1970s
• Known for his ethnographic documentation of ethnic minorities
• His work on the Badui tribe in West Java spans over 30 years
• Tempo magazine (investigative journalism)
• Founded in 1971 by poets, student activists and artists
• Photographer Ed Zoelverdi (1943-2012) worked for Tempo from 1971 to 1994
• Femina magazine
• The first women's magazine started by Indonesian women in 1972
Femina and Tempo
http://images.fashionmodeldirectory.com/images/magazines/covers/2534/femina-indonesia-2015-may-01-profile.jpg
https://images.apps-foundry.com/magazine_static/images/1/355/big_covers/ID_TEMAR2015MTH10ED159_B.jpg
Amateur photography during Suharto’s
authoritarian New Order (1967-98)
• Images began circulating beyond the elite club milieu
• Chinese-Indonesian amateurs became the producers of a visual discourse of
‘authentic Indonesia’
• Ironically, the same discourse excluded them from full membership in the nation
• Forced to self-censorship

• Amateur practice important for imagining the nation


• For promoting national tourism and cultural heritage
Photography and radical experimentation
• Arrival of ‘postmodernism’ in Indonesia
• Crossing the boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art, between design and art, between everyday life and
elite culture
• New Visual Art Movement (GSRB) in the mid-1970s
• Away from the aesthetic framework of salon photography
• Photography as part of other visual mediums and strategies
• Including installations, ready-mades and found objects
• Challenging the established art forms of painting and sculpture in Indonesia

• 1987: New Visual Arts Project I: Fantasy World Supermarket


• A collaborative work involving artists, graphic designers, photographers, filmmakers and fashion designers
• Incorporating various mass culture/’low art’ objects

• Focusing on urban culture


• Parodies of advertisements
‘New Visual Arts Project I: Fantasy World
Supermarket’ (1987)
http://inghaminindonesia.com/pages/excerpt.html
Photography and modern design
• ‘Design Center Association’ (Decenta)
• Founded in 1973 by A.D. Pirous and other artists
• A commercial counterpart to the GSRB
• For the professionalisation of artists in Bandung
and Jakarta

• A studio and gallery receiving governmental and


corporate commissions
• Providing artwork and shaping tastes for an elite
clientele

• Sustaining discussion about directions in


Indonesian art

• http://i1.wp.com/dgi.or.id/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Personal-Decenta.jpg?
resize=460%2C345
Modern art photography

• Bandung Photography Forum (FFB)


• Founded in Bandung, 1981
• Photo-based art collective
• Radically different from the early photo clubs

• Not only focusing on photography, but also opening up to other disciplines


• Journalism, art, music
• First exhibition: Alternative Forum, 1986
Mohammad Firman lchsan (b. 1953)
• Studied "non-western-sociology" in the
Netherlands
• Worked briefly as a photojournalist after returning
to Jakarta
• Late '70s: fashion as personal work

• Fashion photography
• Reflecting the urbanity of Jakarta
• A kind of documentary practice to explore issues of
identity from a cultural or political standpoint

• 1980s: mobility and movement in his shoots


• Reflecting the rise of the salaried man/woman in
Jakarta
• ‘Mohammad and me: three views of life within Indonesian muslim society’ (2005)
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/t/tapic/x-7977573.0001.103-00000011/1?subview=detail;view=entry
Henrycus Napit Sunargo (b. 1974)
• Studied architecture and worked as an architect
• Since 2002, focus on photography
• The best medium for his diverse interests in politics, drawing, architecture and urban
issues

• Nobody’s Home (2006-08)


• Buildings and structures caught between existence and destruction in Bandung
• Conscious-Unconscious: A Personal Landscape (2006-11)
• A longitudinal study of an open-air stall at a second-hand market
• The place was photographed on an annual basis
• The range of products on offer expanded
• Visuals and composition based on how the owner arranged his discarded bathroom goods
‘Conscious-Unconscious: A Personal Landscape’ (2006/2009)
http://invisiblephotographer.asia/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/cluster4-2009lo.jpg
Deden Hendan Durahman (b. 1974)
• Graduate in printmaking from ITB in 1997
• 2002 - 2006: Fine Art at the Braunschweig University of Art in Germany
• Experiencing the digitisation of photography
• Deden tampers with our expectations of reality
• Urging viewers to reconsider their perceptions
• For instance, to rediscover the human body
• which has become masked by desire and fashion in daily life
• CORPUS; Mandala (2003-04)
• Images of human bodies to create geometrical patterns that evoke the mandala (cosmos)
• CORPUS; Up & Down (2007)
• The beauty of the human body from a wide-angle lens
‘Amorphous Armours III’ (2014)
https://indoartnow.com/uploads/artwork/image/14436/artwork-1406098186.jpg
Photography and memory
• Photograph as artefacts of history / memories

• After the War (2010)


• Series of ‘archival’ images of bombed Germany in World War Two
• However, there is always something ‘wrong’ in the highly crafted visuals
• Shops and brands that did not exist carefully placed in the images
• Meant to show that historic buildings in Germany are now also threatened by
redevelopment
• Inner Memories (2011-2013)
• Returning to the origin of photography
• Moving away from digital manipulation
• Re-using analogue photography and the technique of multiple-exposure
• The human body as source material
‘Nachkrieg/After the war’ (2011-12)
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4SdE89T6lSM/UO-RWWXxU1I/AAAAAAAAACw/AFOnG6eKZbE/s1600/nachkrieg+%233.jpg
Prilla Tania (b. 1979)
• Majored in sculpture and joined an experimental theatre group
• Mix of drawing, photography, performance, paper-cutting and video
• She now primarily focuses on stop-motion videos
• After attending the workshop of Japanese animation artist Chikara Matsumoto (b. 1967)
• Starts with a storyboard in which she sets out all the details of the storyline
• Then using chalk to draw the backdrop onto a darkened wall
• After that, she performs the narrative by interacting with the backdrop

• With a Leica in Hand One Traverses the Entire Land (2006)


• Photographs taken by her grandpa and her father's narration to personalise the history of the city of Bandung
• Ruang Dalam Waktu #9 (2011)
• About consumerism
• The mobile phone has become a necessity
• even for poor people
• Prilla's video highlights the ludicrous situation in a subtle and comical way
‘Space within time #8 Ini Ibu Budi’ (2010)
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4SdE89T6lSM/UO-RWWXxU1I/AAAAAAAAACw/AFOnG6eKZbE/s1600/nachkrieg+%233.jpg
Ruang mes (Yogyakarta)
• Officially established in 2002
• Info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eD9Md9KazE
• Against the conservatism of photography in Yogyakarta
• Also an implicit rebellion against class structure
• Informed by the idea of ‘anti-photography’
• For instance, cutting up photo negatives, sticking them to a surface and then printing
them
• Resistance to photography that only engages in technical aspects and does not talk about
ideas
• The collective privileges discussions in their creative process
• Angki Purbandono (b. 1971)
• Best known for collecting and reworking old vernacular photographs
• Also use of the scanner to create imageries, or ‘scanography’
Urban culture: ‘The City Codes’ and ‘Yoga
in Hong Kong’ (2012)
http://www.artprojectsasia.com/artworks/Angki-Purbandono/
Modern ‘salon’ photography
• Fotografer.net (Yogyakarta)

• An online photography forum


• Founded in 2002 by Kristupa Saragih (b. 1976) and Valens Riyadi (b. 1975)

• The largest photo community in Southeast Asia


• over 460,000 members in 2014

• One of the key mediators of salon photography in Indonesia


• An online platform to learn photography, upload images, share ideas and trade equipment
• Also offline workshops and photo ‘hunting’ trips
Questions
• How is colonialism related to the spread of photography in Southeast Asia?
• Which concepts and practices of photography emerged in the Dutch East Indies
(Indonesia) under Dutch colonialism?
• Which concepts and practices became dominant after Independence in 1945?
• Which types of photography were published in newspapers and magazines?
• What was the role of amateur photography during the totalitarian New Order
regime?
• When and how did photography develop as a form of art?
• Mention some examples of contemporary art photography ideas and practices by
Indonesian urban artists and art collectives
• Which urban issues are represented in contemporary Indonesian photography?
• How have new technology and media affected photography?

You might also like