anātman — A Photography Exhibition
Without self, without core. Nothing is eternal, everything changes from moment to moment, and what stays is connection, gratitude, and a compassion that reaches the living and the non-living alike.
Photography
Photographs
I have always felt that I “fail” at storytelling through still images. A split-second photograph, especially a documentary or journalistic one, can speak more deeply than a film, or even a book, and I have not yet made one that powerful. But as a way of carrying feeling, photography never fails, especially when the feeling is not dramatised. Honest, and as it is.
Photography is not my profession. It is the practice I keep coming back to, the one I make with no brief but my own. That is also why there is so little of it here: the film work rarely stops, and these pictures are made in the gaps it leaves.
The portraits are made on medium format 120 film, 6×6. The other work is not.
Exhibitions & series
Rooting The Divine in Tuwed
Women with disabilities restore the mangrove forest of Tuwed, on the west coast of Bali. Sixteen photographs on 6×6 medium format film, about the bond between people, nature and the Divine.
Zine 01: Morning Dharma
One slow morning with my nephew and niece, Rio and Kirana, before school. Nineteen photographs and a short essay on dharma as reality, and on being present for mornings that never come back.
Batak: Perjalanan ke Tanah Leluhur
Seven weeks of fieldwork documenting birth, death and marriage rituals in Toba, Karo and Mandailing. My contribution to the exhibition was not photographs but a 40-minute documentary, screened inside the gallery.
The Kawah Ijen Warriors
Eighty-seven photographs on the daily life, labour and hopes of the sulphur miners of Kawah Ijen, Banyuwangi, made with Tim Tanah Air for International Labour Day.
unbreakable
My first exhibition: the graduating work of the twelfth GFJA photojournalism workshop, thirty-two photographers, opened by Asro Kamal Rokan.
images
to come
to come
Portraiture
Portraits of people, some close to me and some I met by chance, made on medium format 120 film, 6×6.