Jakarta is a dream
destination. It always attracts visitors, although it is far from kind for
everyone. They who can't fight against the gleam of the city must accept the
fact that they are left alone in the corners for the city. Holding on with
their life or even living in idle spaces around. All that, left a contrasting
scene between the classes living together in a city who arrogantly call itself
the metropolitan.
The growth of the
upper middle class in Jakarta is increasing as indicated by the increasing
number of luxurious apartment and housing complex which comes with their
assorted facilities to fulfill their needs. The congestions of traffic with
numbers of private vehicles, is another scene. Their lifestyles and self esteem
driven them to become a consumptive class and forgetting their functional
needs. Is this the group of people who Bre
Redana, a senior journalist from Kompas said as the mindless consumer? "a brainless, passive and easily
maniputaled consumer" and often used by the merchants of dreams to
sell the luxury.
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This merchants of
consumerism often use the language of advertising which seduce , hypnotyze and
blinding the eyes, the consciousness of how expensive and important the items
are. Property developer, are one of this merchants, they arrogantly mount their
wallpaper in the middle of the city. Unwittingly persuade people from all
classes to see the luxury that they offer. They transfor empty patch of
lands-potentially a park, to malls, luxurious apartments and other skyscraper.
A product which can only be claimed by the upper classes.
Photography and city
can't be separated, even photographs regarding a city are the ones that
massively produced. The role of photography is to record the life of this
urbanites which happens when the photographer appear as a spectacle who peeps
through the viewfinder. Not only peeps, the photographer often appears on the
scene as well, by involving his subjectivity like what Alex Supartono said "On
a city, photography not only records and disclose, it is more than that.
Photography has become an instrument to construct the image of a city. From
outside or inside, the people living or the place itself”.
This is what Dhemas Reviyanto, student and freelance photgrapher, born in Palembang, South Sumatra 26 May 1987 does. Dhemas live not far from Jakarta and his day to day activities are done in this city, thus this place is no stranger to him. He interested in creating a photographic essay for this city, because he enjoys the process of collecting photographs, which feels like connecting the dots from the daily drama in the city. From the countless phenomenon in Jakarta, he chooses to photograph the walls who seemingly telling a visual story to him.
Dhemas would think
this as a way for those arrogant construction towers to seduce the people. And
in the end for most people (him included) this would act like a dream and dream
only. With the contrast this photographs wanted to compare between the dream
that is being sold by the developer and the reality available in the streets.
This collection of images were exhibited in Ruang
Rupa for the Jakarta 32°
exhibition on December 2010 and becomes one of the top 5 photography work
during the exhibition.
As a comparison,
Dhemas work is similar to the work of David Gibson. On 8 May 2010, David Gibson
a street photographer in London, took a photograph titled “Safe seat...in a hung parliament.” David in this case took it in a
public spaces where activity took place. However photograph did not presented
as a series, because in the beginning he did not wanted to create those. This
is how Dhemas differ than David, because not only he presented it as a series
but also he deliberately creating the juxtaposition for the subejct passing
through the object which forms the background.
During the
photographic process, Dhemas has proven that he is really serious in capturing
the visual languange of Jakarta's wall. These series has been taken for a
period of a year and it is still continuing until today. Another point, even
though Dhemas had seen similar picture, he admitted that he did not get
influenced from another photographer.
Dhemas uses color
photography because he believe with it he can show the contrast that he see in
the road. With the help of colour photography as well, the luxury of the
buildings and the athmosphere of the city within the wallpaper could be felt.
The placing of solid
colour as a subject which juxtaposed with the walls, give an extra point in the
aesthethic in the Dhemas' photograph. For example, the photograph shows the
contrasting of the walls which contain the picture of a building with pink
and green coloured buckets in front of it. That particular photograph
shows symbols of what is happening in the place resulting in a colour exotiscm.
Another example which we can felt satire element, can be seen on the photograph
of a man with a suit who lifted a phone. This might make some people smile, but
it can also perform as a social criticism against the condition in Jakarta,
apart from our awareness of the message or whether we understand it at
all.
From Dhemas'
phorograph, we kind of make a conclusion that Jakarta society is a
"dreamers' society". When the walls pictured the lavish lifestyle,
one can argue that the luxury is something that people chase all the time. If
there are other member of society whose lifes did not encouter such entraching
reality, maybe they are the ones who fill the idle spaces on the corner of the
city. Everyday, the roar of the engine or the shouting of the car horns which
crawling and marking that morning had come. All of that forced them to wake up
from the dream and realize that the cold hard trut. Then without much
choice they keep doing their cycle of life, until the city lights sings the
lullaby to keep dreaming.
