A window into another world

Spike Mountjoy ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Sat, 08/23/2008 10:01 AM  |  Entertainment

An exhibition of black and white photographs portraying the island of Nias last century, which is currently showing at Rumah Darmint in South Jakarta, may help shed light on another world.

The photos depict village life, traditional dress and the architecture and landscape of the area -- and show how little had changed between the 1920s and the 1980s.

For some, the North Sumatran region is now synonymous with the devastating earthquake that struck there in 2005.

The photos were brought to Indonesia by the Museum der Kulturen in Switzerland to commemorate the victims of the disaster.

The Swiss museum gifted a selection of the old images to Museum Pusaka in Nias, after holding an exhibition there earlier this year.

Acting Swiss Charge de Affairs Roman Busch said the exhibition was an opportunity to develop the relationship between Switzerland and Indonesia.

"What we took away many, many years ago we can now give back.

"The relationship first developed at the grassroots level. It was a very quiet form of globalization -- it was very unobtrusive," Busch said.

Of course, the photos also tell less visible stories the Swiss adventurers took home with them.

Busch said these men were not looking for power or money.

"People were looking for little things ... They traveled around the globe simply because they were curious. Nowadays, globalization often means uniformity, homogeneity.

"They were amazed at the wealth of different cultures which, step-by-step, got in touch with each other and became interlinked.

"I think the pictures tell that the photographer had respect for the people that he was taking the picture of, and for the culture," Busch added.

The cultural assistant from the Swiss embassy, Melinda Djohansjah, who played a lead role in setting up the exhibit, told The Jakarta Post it was great to see a part of the Swiss collection. She added she would like to see Indonesians value their artifacts more.

Englishman LP Hartley wrote, "The past is a foreign country", but if he had been alive to view this exhibition he might also have said the past is a dream.

Most of the characters staring out from the light-filled images on the walls of Rumah Darmint would have died before the earthquake -- or the tsunami a year earlier.

There is something otherworldly about the photos; the way light softens the background, the expressions on the faces, and the knowledge that these peoples' lives carried on from that brief moment frozen in time.

The information about the pictures is not detailed and certainly more is known about the photographers than their subjects.

The photos of anthropologist and researcher Paul Wirz comprise half the exhibition. Wirz took his photos between 1925 and 1927.

His focus on people over landscape or architecture makes his photographs a special contribution to the exhibition.

Wirz traveled extensively in Indonesia and spent the last seven years of his life in Papua, where he died in 1955.

Some of the images were purchased from professional photographers and gifted to the Swiss Museum on the buyers' return home. Less is known about those contributors.

Anthropologist Paramita Utami from the University of Indonesia said she thought is was really important for young people to come and see the exhibition.

"Many young people only know about pop culture and everything in a very commercial way -- the Internet and globalization -- but they don't even know about their neighbors," Paramita said.

The exhibition is part of the JakArts Festival. It runs until Aug. 28 and admission is free.

The writer is an intern with The Jakarta Post.

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