Reality bites: Two photos that Stefano Romano finds too hard to forget.

Italian photographer Stefano Romano captures Indonesia’s heart and soul — its people — through his lens.

Smiling people, children running around playing, farmers going to the field in the morning, a mother seen sleeping soundly with her child through her house’s open door may be familiar scenes in the country’s many corners.

But those scenes may not be around forever. Change is the only constant thing, and Italian photographer Stefano Romano knows that.

In the spirit of capturing Indonesia’s true spirit, the people, he went around from one kampong to another and took pictures of the people.

The result, a mesmerizing photo book simply titled My Own Private Indonesia, was showcased at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where there was also a discussion with the author.

Romano said his first touch with Indonesia was 10 years back when he visited a bazaar at the Indonesian Embassy in his home country. The bazaar is also where he met his Indonesian wife, whom he has been married to for eight years.

He first came to Indonesia in 2010 for two months, then for another month in 2014, when he traveled to many kampongs and took pictures.

The first time he came to a kampong people would say“bule masuk kampung” (a foreigner is in the kampong) and children or even their family members would surround him and ask for his autograph, which, he remembers with a smile, made him feel like American pop sensation Justin Bieber.

But in the process, he also saw there was more than meets the eye — when he was greeted with warm and friendly smiles or the time when he had to rely on body language more than on verbal communication.

“If you can’t talk, you can smile, and there you can see the connection. People are always happy to tell their stories. So it’s not just about taking photos. Photography is this — you put the lens on people, [and] there’s the light. That’s the concept of photography. So it’s not important to talk, but there is a connection. Now its easy for me,” said Romano, referring to his improved Indonesian language.

And the photo book shows just that — the people — in their daily routine, divided into four chapters, one focuses on the daily activities in a village from morning to evening, another on children, yet another on faith and Islam and the last one on the love between mother and child.

Romano recalls that in many kampongs he mostly saw women with their children.

“So I call Indonesia motherland, not in the real sense, but more like the land of mothers. They do everything, from raising children to various chores. I have much respect for women, especially mothers,” said the 42-year-old, who now lives with his family in Rome.

He said that for him, there was nothing more beautiful than looking into people’s eyes when taking the picture. “Every person, for me, is like a book that you can read. If you want to know the story of Indonesia, you must read from the people, not from Wikipedia or even social media,” Romano says.

Stefano Romano

With their narrow alleys and crowded houses, the kampongs made it hard to avoid looking into peoples eyes and homes. Just by walking through the alleys, he could see people talking or eating, making him feel like being inside their homes.

Walking through the alleys also made him witness the closeness within the neighborhood, where it is hard to set apart family, friends and neighbors, which means everyone is family.

The change of environment when moving from a slum into an apartment changed the people too, he said, as they no longer left their doors open like in their kampong, but locked their places up.

“The village may be gone someday, but we can’t lose trust in people,” said Romano, who started out as a freelance photographer in 2009 focusing his work on migrant communities, especially from Asia.

Referring to two of the photos in the book, which took four months to create and is now in stores, he said he could not forget the time when he saw two boys in a Jakarta slum area looking over a wall. When he inched closer, he saw the skyscrapers marking the city’s skyline on the other side.

He also remembers the children that, with their carefree attitude, turned a flooded area in their Bekasi neighborhood into a “swimming pool”.

“Whenever there’s a flood, you just wait a moment, and in no time, the children will come out and play,” he said.

Throughout his trip, he said he had learned a lot from children, how everything was full of surprises and how they always saw the beauty in everything.

He was also fascinated that in a kampong people live happily doing the same old routine — waking up in the morning and leaving home to work in the field. By noon they were home, would rest and go to bed at dusk. The next morning, the routine would start again.

When asked about that routine, they would fire back a question at him, asking whether he preferred the traffic jam to their peaceful, simple life.

Romano is aware that some may consider his photos overly simple, but he said they appeared simple only because many people took such routine for granted and forgot to actually look.

“Through photos, we can see it again and again, because everything is changing very fast; with that change, some things may disappear and you will not be aware of that, because it’s always in front of you,” he said.

One person in the audience of the discussion on the book, publisher A’watif Ahmad of Malaysia Science University (USM) publishing house, said she broke into tears when browsing through the photo book, recalling her childhood in a town outside Penang, which she could no longer experience today due to the rapid change. “My children do not have the same childhood as me,” she said.

Romano said his book may highlight Indonesia’s heart and soul — its people, but it may also touch the souls of people in many other countries.

“There is a problem of loss of tradition, memory, in other countries too. And this is the power of photography; it can keep the memory alive.”

— Photos by JP/Stevie Emilia

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