I have an outstanding promise to Erik Prasetya: to write an essay on his (then) newly published photo book Women on Street. I have written a rough draft and note sketches on my journal. However, I never follow it through.
I am fan of Erik’s works (I took his Street Photography Course). I just don’t have the same interests to Jakarta as him.
This is a sprawling kampung. It hasthe worst traffic jam in the world. It’s orthodox and homogenic. It’s superficial and a starkly inequal society. It worships anything Western (Hollywood, Louis Vuitton bags, Panerai watches, Supreme anything, and recently Taco Bell) but glorifies the so-called Eastern (Islamic) values; so sexual but laden with religious guilts. A society claiming to value individualism, yet imposes so much emphasis on social gatherings and, therefore, camps.
The aspiring metropolis is bearable to me only because of my close personal relationships and relative career success. In normal times (the pre-pandemic world), I could escape this city. To spend that money made here for travels. But the pandemic forces me to stay. Even worse, it even barred me from meeting my friends. Those video calls help, but not a substitute for in person meetings where we can just be silent in each other’s company.
However, as a knowledge worker, I can now work from home with little frictions. Being spared of Jakarta’s traffic reduces a lot of stress.
I live in Jagakarsa. A very middle class neighbourhood. An ugly one, almost suburban. Potholed roads, cat shitted, suicidal mopeds. The local mosques engage in daily shouting matches with each other when reciting prayers—at dusk, evening, and dawn. One particular muezzin is so bad, I wonder if he’s the son of the mosque’s imam to be allowed near the microphone. Kiosks and food stalls with bland or unaesthetic designs with alay copywriting. There is Gudskul, a cultural oasis by Ruang Rupa, but other than that you have to buy your own shalimar.
We tried walking around the neighbourhood to be less sedentary during the semi-lockdown, PSBB. I tried to see the aesthetics in the banality as Erik does, but failed. With no foreseeable travel plan, I didn’t touch my cameras for almost a year.
I miss taking pictures. However, for me, photography is about the subjects and the environments. I have been living in Jakarta for more than 30 years, yet I cannot ‘see’ my home. But even Brandon Stanton of Humans of New York failed photographing Jakarta. Erik himself said that Jakarta is difficult to photograph, the weather is either sunlight overexposure or grey overcast—always with humidity, diffusing the ambient lights.
There is such thing as ugly beautiful, but most Jakarta is ugly ugly. Just look at the bathroom tiles used for the exterior of local mosques. Sterile luxury may not be charming, yet it is always better than vapid poverty. In Humans of New York, Jakartans’ life stories are always about the struggle of the sandwich generation. Despite an aspiring metropolis, Jakartans’ life aspirations seem to revolve only around family and religion. The uniformity make them banal subjects.
I do not say this out of spite or unkindness (self-depreciating reversed nationalism, maybe). Indonesia is a third world country which was under authoritarian regime for most of its existence. We are not used to diversity of thoughts and ideas or original self-expression (whatever it is, given our memetic psyche); we stand out to blend in. Thus our love for uniforms and matching clothes within our peer group—e.g. sarimbit. The clannish communal social structure is a safety net since the state has not been able to provide welfare security.
The absence of stimulating subjects and environments muted my interests in photography for a while. Until Instagram ads forwarded me Greg Williams’ Candid Photography Skills online course. With the downtime and restriction on practice from the isolation, I thought maybe it is time to catch up on theories. So I bought the course and was inspired with Greg’s concept of candid photography (which corrected my misunderstanding, ‘candid’ is not just discreet observer’s view but can also be participatory). I never really read the photo books I owned, to look at the pictures slowly. I reread Women on Street and also Mysterious Happiness by Mathias Heng and Anna Bärlund.
Then it came to me that Greg, Erik, and Mathias/Anna worked with different subjects from socio-economic backgrounds: the members of the high society (Hollywood celebrities), the middle class (of Jakarta), and the marginalised people (denizens of Manila’s slums). All of them work in human-interests genre.
When it comes to socio-economic division, the middle-class is the most vulnerable to banality— the least interesting class. The sufferings of poverty can be painted as revolutionary, reactionary, or at the very least, romantic. One can find life’s meaning in endurance, after all. The high society glamours are the aspirations, the Dream (American or elsewhere). Give a humane perspective on success; bring the elites down to earth and they become relatable.
Everyone loves glitter and grit. The upper and the lower classes are high stimuli.
The middle-class, with little or no cultural references and capital, are simply consumers—which experience is mediocre.
Seno Gumira Adjidarma, in his collection of essays Affair, described the middle-class experience of Jakarta. The superficiality, in which he coined the term ‘kibul-kibul’, of Jakartans who can look the part as cosmopolitans but subconsciously village people, e.g. smart professional suit and tie, but would change to sandals in the office. In Women on Street, a lady changing her stilettos to walk the streets of Jakarta after work—lest she’d trip from the potholes or easily elbowed and shoved away in Darwinian commutes.
The dreams of the mediocre, the basic, middle-class are simple: new mobile phones every year, new car every five years, weekend recreations at the malls, eating out at (not cheap but not so good) chain restaurants, and to pursue one or more trending hobbies (current pandemic trends: cycling, gardening, and Siamese fighting fishes).
How Erik see the aesthetics in such banality is impressive and puzzling.
Perhaps the answer can be found in his essays in Estetika Banal & Spiritualisme Kritis and his biography Cerita Cinta Enrico. Erik was not born in Jakarta. He came from Sumatra. He’s a perantau. For him, as other domestic migrants, Jakarta the capital is (or was) a metropolis. Yet, unlike most utusan daerah, he is privileged to have a mother with a good taste (despite she was a Jehovah Witness) and an intellect with vigorous activism (during his student years in ITB, he participated in many protests against the New Order).
Claiming to be a member of the middle-class, Erik could not nor wished to leverage the stimuli of his subjects with voyeurism or exoticism perspectives.
Maybe Erik loves Jakarta because the city gave him the chance to acquire cultural capital he could not have outside Java? He has travelled extensively, he has seen world great cities, but he became of an artist in Jakarta.
As a born and bred Jakartan, who climbed the socio-economic ladders both culturally and economically, I found Jakarta is easier to live now compared when I was younger. Erik’s anthropological visual records in Women on Street remind me that there have been improvements in infrastructures. Sudirman, the main boulevards, is more walkable now. The MRT, despite its limited reach, made the main business districts much more accessible. The advent of ride hailing apps make owning a car less of a necessity. E-wallets nudged Jakartans to be a more cashless society. While e-commerce platforms allows me to avoid shopping malls.
Perhaps one misrepresentation of Jakarta in Woman on Street is there are only few women in hijab. In Jakarta, the richer the area, the fewer the hijabi women (despite the Muslims are still the majority population). Inversely, in places where people from various socio-economic backgrounds rub shoulders—the bus stop and train stations and pedestrian walkways—and less affluent or suburban areas, the women cover themselves.
Maybe that’s why he titled a chapter ‘Looking for the faces of women who may disappear in the future.’ More and more women are covering themselves as a symbol of their faith. Glamorous and hedonistic lifestyle as portrayed by those artis ibukota is inaccessible to most people. Those who can afford them yet sensitive enough realised that the consumerist-exhibitionist pursuit of happiness is futile and spiritually barren. With little or no access to initiate oneself to philosophy and art, Jakartans mostly rely on organised religion as a panacea to their existential questions.
The hijabs have practical purpose of preventing sexual harassment, some say. Jakarta is a patriarchal city, women in public places are always subjected to the male gaze and catcalls. Jakarta women often wear jackets, shawls, or anything to cover their shoulders despite the heat and humidity; as well as earbuds to dampen those catcalls when walking. I, however, am skeptical the effectiveness of hijab as countermeasure to sexual harassment; a hijabi coworker said she is often catcalled by ‘Assalamualaikum, Bu Haji!’
In anyway, a photographer sees what he want to see and present what he want to present. Women of Street is intended to be a street photography project, not journalism. Erik wants a Jakarta that is more inclusive and female friendly. A less orthodox and, yes, more cosmopolitan, cultured, and liveable city.
Erik is among the few of Indonesian photographers who can write to explain his ‘art’. In fact, I don’t know any other Indonesian who does that. He posited that Indonesian photography scene is short on precedents. The Indonesian maestros rarely left literatures on their take to the art of photography. The younger generations have to start from scratch; no wonder most Indonesians stuck at craftsmen level. The artisan photographers are usually trained and educated overseas. Erik’s books, including Women on Street, are his dedication as an educator.
