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In the wake of disaster
Ars Longavita Brevis by Oscar Motuloh: JP/Anissa S
Ars Longavita Brevis by Oscar Motuloh: JP/Anissa S.Febrina
After the disaster, nothing remains but silence — silence that speaks of despair, silence that shouts of sorrow.
Taking his camera through several different sites of catastrophic disaster, seasoned photojournalist Oscar Motuloh expresses the cliché in an unusual way, as shown in a series of photographs at the “Soulscape Road” exhibition at Galeri Salihara, South Jakarta.
A photograph of an airplane taking off in Off Air Seulawah, showing only the plane’s rear under an infinite sky prepares us to join Oscar on his journey through tsunami-devastated Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, earthquake-shattered Pangandaran and Yogyakarta and the mud-swamped Lapindo site in Sidoarjo.
Prepare to be disappointed if you seek only tearful faces, hysterical screams or other expressions of human sorrow. Humanity serves as Oscar’s protagonist only through the inanimate objects it leaves behind after a disaster’s havoc.
Speaking in silence has long been Oscar’s style.
Through the lens of this photographer, subtlety and quiet portrayal of a certain place or event speak louder than images capturing the more clichéd sorrow and despair left in a disaster’s wake. He points his camera not at grieving faces or expressions of loss.
A signpost marking a village border becomes the lead actor in Infiniti Inferno, in which the distant background contains only the debris of swamped houses. The image seems to say that humans can set borders, but Mother Nature will swiftly and brutally make those borders irrelevant. After all, natural disasters know no boundaries. The giant tsunami that swept the area wiped the land clean, leaving only traces of lifeless artifacts.
Despair reverberates through the broken loudspeaker from a mosque in Lhoknga, Aceh, in Sound of Silence.
And unlike more conventional portrayals, signs of loss are read not only in survivors’ tearful faces: The solitary white high-heeled slipper in Aceh’s Peucut Dutch cemetery in Beauty in the Beast conveys the same message just as effectively.
In Samsara and Via Dolorosa, broken statues of Buddhist monks in their solemn meditation and Jesus on the cross appeared partly buried under the debris of homes in Yogyakarta after the 2006 earthquake.
Such is how Oscar chooses to capture the feeling of disastrous events, both natural and manmade.
“A panorama of the far-reaching view in this matter is essentially an adventure of the eyes from every
angle. When we can observe every sign of nature virtually from the elements that show its rage, then nature itself becomes a sign and metaphor to our civilization,” Oscar said of his works.
“As far as the eye could see, the scene was screaming sorrow at the top of its lungs, like a tragedy that implies the origins of grief. From behind the reporting lens, we witness the ruthlessness of natural phenomena.”
It is through such visualization that man can see himself. The viewfinder creates a distance that leaves space for reflection.
“We can’t help but think of it as a mirror of life,” Oscar added. “A mirror that reflects our own selves.
The cruelty of nature that we see through the viewfinder, is us.”
This view is apparent in the series Atlantis van Java, portraying the ruined villages submerged under the Lapindo mudflow.
The images, which show nothing but the broken roofs and free-standing walls that once housed life, make us think of how destructive humans can be.
After having traveled through various disasters sites, the 50-year-old photographer sees the big picture, even through the narrow frame of his lens.
“The far-reaching view of grief later becomes a vision that is more than just visualization. It connects the dots, the latitude and longitude on the map of Earth,” he explained.
Oscar, who oversees Antara Photojournalist Gallery, once said that photography allows a passionate photographer to give the observer an opportunity to go beyond the imagination.
“A photograph is a bridge between the mind and the heart. It highlights the atmosphere of life instantly and is not something made up,” he said.
His ultimate aim for his pictures of the aftermath of disaster in this exhibition — also contained in a book of the same title — is to touch the heart.
“Its tone is the sound of the musical score freely singing the symphony of the far-reaching view of the soul,” he said. “A composition that divulges how meaningful appreciation is for life.”
— Photos by Anissa Febrina
Soulscape Road
Photography exhibition by Oscar Motuloh
Until Oct. 9
Galeri Salihara
South Jakarta
Discussion of the book Soulscape Road
Oct. 10 at 4 p.m.
Serambi Salihara, South Jakarta
