TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
'The Jakarta Post' exhibition retraces RI’s hard-won democracy
The Jakarta Post’s 40-year anniversary photo exhibition features curated photos published in the newspaper over the past 40 years, presenting them in narratives that will help visitors to understand the country’s history.
Change Size
“Those who cannot remember the past,” the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana once said, “are condemned to repeat it.”
The famous saying reverberates throughout The Jakarta Post’s 40-year anniversary photo exhibition, where halls on the fifth floor of the newspaper company have been transformed into walls of photos showcasing 40 years of Indonesian history.
The exhibition runs from Aug. 6 to 19 as part of the Post’s anniversary celebrations, with its opening ceremony having taken place on Saturday, during which guests ranging from ambassadors and businessmen to journalists and old friends of the company filled the open-air space on the fifth floor.
It is the first time the Post has celebrated its anniversary in a big way, with multifaceted events from the Democracy Dialogue seminar today that will feature press and democracy leaders from across the region, including Nobel laureates veteran journalist Maria Ressa and Timor-Leste President José Ramos-Horta, to media literacy panel talks and workshops over the course of two weeks.
The newspaper is now entering its fifth decade in the business and a new election year after it has seen so many.
“This photo exhibition and dialogue are dedicated to Indonesia and our path forward toward a better democracy, and they are designed to celebrate our commitment as a media organization to drive transformative change in and for Indonesia," said Judistira Wanandi, CEO of the Post.
As guests walk through the red-and-black photo exhibition halls, they are expected to catch a glimpse of how journalism plays a part in safeguarding democracy and narratives that will help visitors to understand the country’s history – and act as a reminder of the dangers of repeating past mistakes.
Remember the past
Titled Portraits of a Nation: Indonesia’s Journey of Change and Resilience, the exhibition showcases curated photos that the Post has published throughout the years since its first edition in 1983.
“The idea is to give something different for our 40th anniversary [...] While we need to look back on our role in guarding democracy throughout the years, we’re also eyeing the election next year,” said Maggie Tiojakin, President and chief revenue officer of the Post.
“So this exhibition is to remind people where we came from so we know where we’re going next,” she added.
Pictures of the New Order regime to the Reform Era covered the walls, while the 2004-2013 gallery, which the exhibition calls “a new kind of democracy”, has people’s eyes glued to the photos.
“What we wanted to highlight are the pictures that show how much Indonesia has gone through to achieve a better democracy,” photographer Rony Zakaria, the exhibition’s curator, said on Saturday.
For the past five months, Rony and his team scoured through the paper’s archives, going over 100,000 photos from monochrome to color to seek which ones represented the most pivotal moments in Indonesia’s history.
The result is a set of photos that are both eye-opening and haunting, be it shots of a resident standing on piles of debris after the Aceh tsunami in 2004, people running away from the mobs during the bloody May 1998 riot, or former president Soeharto reclining in his seat months before his defeated resignation after 32 years of ruling.
“That’s what we want to say, that democracy is not given, but we earned it really hard,” Rony said.
That struggle is also felt directly by Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, cofounder of news website Rappler. Ressa worked in the Jakarta bureau of news channel CNN from 1995 to 2005, experiencing Indonesia’s monetary crisis and the fall of the New Order.
“I came of age as a journalist in Indonesia, and the Post [...] helped us translate what was going on in Indonesia to the rest of the world,” Ressa said in her speech during the opening ceremony.
Ressa, who covered news after the May ‘98 riot, was reminded of the violence that Indonesia had lived through in the exhibited photos.
Beware of future
The 2014-2021 photos in the exhibition, which covers President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s two-term presidency, are called “charting a new path”. This period saw the rise of information and communication technology, leading to unprecedented ways of governing, campaigning and media handling amid rampant hoaxes and misinformation on the internet.
“I think, strangely, this is the end of an era where the photo captures the reality that you can’t argue with. We’re walking into an age of generative artificial intelligence AI where photos can be made up,” Ressa said.
Which is why Ressa also saw the exhibited photos as a reminder of what the country needs to prepare as it is going into 2024.
“We’re watching Indonesia’s run-up to the election very closely because where Indonesia goes, especially for us in the Philippines, Southeast Asia goes,” she said.
