Although photography first came to Indonesia in the last decades of nineteenth century, following its introduction by some European travellers in Java around the 1870s, the study of its influences on Indonesian society are still quite rare. It is no exaggeration to say that to date this book under review is the only extensive study of popular photography in Indonesia. This text was originally Strassler's Ph.D. thesis defended at the University of Michigan in 2003 and entitled, ‘Refracted visions: Popular photography and the Indonesian culture of documentation in postcolonial Java’.
This book examines how popular photographs recast national iconographies in an intimate register and how they convey the longings of Indonesian national modernity. The text is printed on acid-free paper and illustrated with 127 photographs, including black-and-white and coloured pictures, that capture Indonesia's natural environment, its socio-political settings, as well as individual and family pictures. In Refracted visions Strassler thoroughly observes the cultural significance of popular photography in contemporary Indonesia.
The book consists of eight chapters including an Introduction and an Epilogue. In the Introduction (‘Popular photography and Indonesian national modernity’, pp. 1–28), Strassler defines the theoretical considerations of her study. She contends that popular photographic genres have cultivated distinctive ways of seeing and positioning oneself and others within the affective, ideological and temporal terrain of Indonesia. She argues that popular photographic practices have played a crucial role in creating modern national subjects in postcolonial Java by connecting personal sentiments and memories with public iconographies, thereby binding individual people to broader historical trajectories and narratives of national modernity (p. 28).
In chapter one (‘Amateur vision’, pp. 29–71), Strassler traces the history of amateur photography in Indonesia and its contemporary development. She points out that the majority of the amateur photographers were upper-middle-class urban Chinese Indonesians who adopted this kind of amusement as a kind of hobby throughout the postcolonial period (p. 36). She shows how these amateur Indonesian photographers have produced a remarkably consistent iconography of idyllic tropical landscapes and picturesque ‘traditional’ people from the end of the colonial period until the recent Reformation (Reformasi) era.
In chapter two (‘Landscape of imagination’, pp. 73–122), Strassler looks at the backdrops and decorations used in photography studios. By tracing the shifting trends in studio backdrops, she shows how these types of photograph have played an integral part in the creation of national subjects who project themselves into the picture of national modernity (p. 79). In contrast to the visual images made by amateur photographers, portraits made in studios tend to place the subject with the picture of an anticipated national modernity and make the desired contact with various images of ‘elsewhere’ gathered from the global media. Studio photographers, the author contends, provided a space for their customers to realise their own cosmopolitan longings and transcend the limits of the here and now. Strassler also describes the involvement of Chinese Indonesians in the emergence and development of this genre. She points out that cosmopolitan Chinese Indonesian photographers have played a key role as cultural mediators by translating globally circulating imageries into ‘Indonesian’ idioms. However, the role of Chinese descendents in Indonesian media has not just been limited to only photography. As I have shown in some of my own publications, Chinese descendents in Indonesia, such as Tan Hoe Lo and Tio Tek Hong, also played an important role since the late nineteenth century in the marketing of the gramophone in the Netherlands East Indies and were strong competitors with their European counterparts. Moreover, descendents of Chinese Indonesians were also pioneers in producing early Indonesian films.
Chapter three (‘Identifying citizens’, pp. 123–63) examines the genre of identity photographs (pasfoto). The author describes the use of pasfotos not only as proof of identity (bukti diri), but also mentions some of Indonesia's other socio-political contexts in which they are used. One important thing discussed by Strassler in this chapter is the use by the New Order Regime of identity photographs to distinguish between asli (‘indigenous’) and non-asli (descendants of Chinese) citizens. She discusses how identity photography is rooted in the state's faith in the camera's powers of indexical transcription and its own ability to map appearances reliably onto ‘identity’. Unfortunately, the author does not take a closer look at the use of identity photographs in Indonesia in various kinds of letters of application (surat lamaran) and their cultural meanings. She also does not examine why all over Indonesia many owners of Padang restaurants, including those situated in Yogyakarta, display their identity photographs along with pictures of military figures on the walls of their restaurants.
Chapter four (‘Family documentation’, pp. 165–206) examines how Indonesian families are represented in popular photographs. Strassler analyses not only wedding photography, which is very popular in Indonesia, but also the new trend in funeral photography, which has become the subject of debate among Indonesian Muslims.
Chapter five (‘Witnessing history’, pp. 207–49) looks at the photography of political events in Indonesia. The author particularly focuses on photographs which picture the political oppression of Suharto's repressive New Order Regime (1967–98) and document the counter-movements against them. However, these photographs denote political acts and, like other genres of photography, are mediated entities. They are representations of reality captured with specific angles of the camera lens taken by individuals (photographers) who are themselves not immune to particular ideologies. Strassler explores in detail the significance of these ‘photographic “witnesses” [of] history’ – to borrow her own terms – as the recognised official historical record and collective memories of political accounts in Indonesia, but she does not investigate how this genre of photography has contributed to shaping an orientalist image of Indonesia, as if it is a country that seems to have a genetic culture for violence (budaya kekerasan) spiced with political unrest.
In chapter six (‘Revelatory sign’, pp. 251–93), Strassler discusses how photographs are used to create a counter-history. Strassler investigates the unique collection of photographs, posters and printed slogans owned by Noorman in Yogyakarta. He is a retired veteran of the Indonesian revolution and an ardent supporter of Indonesia's former first President Soekarno. The author shows how Noorman uses photographs and other technologies including mechanical productions such as prints and photocopying to question the validity of the New Order historical narratives which treated former President Soekarno, his political idol, cruelly. ‘Noorman exploits photocopying and photography to collect texts and images circulating in the public sphere and transform them into new kinds of documents for his alternative history.’ (p. 255)
In the Epilogue (‘Beyond the paper’, pp. 295–300) Strassler examines significant developments in the technology of photography because of the invention of the digital camera. As has occurred in other parts of the world, the new technology of the digital camera has transformed the practice of photography in Indonesia, sweeping aside the ‘traditional’ film and paper-based photography. Strassler discusses how this elemental change has created a new digitally based ‘discourse network’ that includes new forms of photograph production and storage, new modes of circulation and fundamentally altered relationships between the visual image and materiality (p. 300), as among other things manifested on the Internet site Facebook.
The Indonesian state, with its distinctive bureaucracy and inimitable political logic, has characterised the way its citizens employ and consume various kinds of media technologies, crossing over ethnic and geographic boundaries. The Afdruk Kilat (‘Express printing’) stand, for example, can be found in Yogyakarta, as well as in Padang. Moreover, photography at wedding ceremonies is found not only in Yogyakarta, but also all over Indonesia. Furthermore, the widespread distribution of printed copies of local politicians' identity photographs in the public sphere can be found all over the country during pilkada (pemilihan kepala daerah, ‘Direct elections for local leaders’). However, Strassler unfortunately does not investigate the use of identity photographs in this manner by local leaders. Although this is intended to be a study of photography on Java, it seems to me that it actually represents the wider study of the world of photography in a multi-ethnic and archipelagic country called Indonesia.
