As a visual medium, photographs are powerful and can always capture a moment through the photographer’s unique perspective. Photography is significant not only as a way to document events, but also as a bridge to other artistic forms. For example, the black-and-white depiction of a bustling night market embodies the essence of the Festival Film Dokumenter (FFD) 2024, which seeks to highlight the central interactions explored through the mediums of photography and film. Photography thus becomes a practice that blurs the boundaries between the real and the unreal, fact and fiction, as well as reality and narrative prose. It also creates an enigmatic space of interlocking temporalities.
FFD 2024 had the opportunity to present a photographer as the festival’s collaborating artist, Kurniadi Widodo. His photographic works were used as the basis of the festival’s design assets and displayed in the Exhibition program. To dissect the meaning behind the photographs, the creative process, and the reason for their selection as the festival’s official artwork, FFD presents the discussion in DOC Talk: Hustle and Bustle (7/11/2024). The discussion was hosted by Farida Novieti as FFD 2024’s DOC Talk Coordinator, with Kurniadi Widodo and Dito Yuwono as the respondent.
Kurniadi Widodo is part of the Arkademy Project collective, a collective established in 2019 that works on critical photography focusing on photography in community spaces. In his photographic work, he has never felt like an artist and is more comfortable with his identity as a photographer. Widodo also explained that in the landscape of his work, he has never photographed conceptually based on phenomenon research. Even when he was offered to be a collaborating artist in FFD 2024, he did not present and create new works as official festival works. He presented remnants of events that had been caught by his camera. These are photos that he has been working on intensely since 2009 to capture the hustle and bustle of public spaces, especially night markets. “I like coming to the night market because it presents the hustle and bustle,” he stated.
Widodo then explained the reason for choosing the night market as the object of his photography. For him, the night market is always interesting with the presence of spotlights shining brightly in the air, like Batman’s lights in Gotham City. The night market not only presents colorful visuals, but also presents a variety of food aromas, physical touch in the crowd, the sound of various rides, and creates excitement for anyone who comes. The crowd photos captured by Widodo are not works made for any particular intention. He likes crowds that are chaotic, full of movement, yet full of joy. The photos were never used for any works or exhibitions, but were collected in a dummy photobook. The memory corpus of the Sekaten Night Market is very much embedded in these photos. The same goes for the memory of the people of Jogja, who miss the euphoria of the night market that has been restored within the fence facade. In fact, the night market-like Sekaten-is an important space for people to meet without having to shop at shopping centers. There, they can find anything and have fun without any class boundaries that create distance.
Dito Yuwono shared that Widodo’s “Pasar Malam” photographs have been in his library for a dozen years. He appreciated the selection of photos chosen as the official works and the decision to choose Widodo as the collaborating artist of FFD 2024. In the past, FFD’s collaborating artists were designers or visual artists whose works could be broken down into design assets, in contrast to photographs which must be fully displayed and less fluid to be used as design assets. Widodo’s presence in FFD also connects the disconnected line of reasoning between documentary film and photography. Dito then shared a story that memory becomes lonely when defrosted, and so do photos. As a result, Widodo’s black and white photographs that have been sitting for some time create a visual reading that is full of loneliness rather than the excitement that the camera initially captured. The presence of photography in FFD 2024 stretches the discursive space across art disciplines. While in documentary photography and street photography, the photo presents its narrative through slide shows, in FFD 2024, the photo presents its narrative through various cross-media. Conversely, this event also opens up documentary space in the realm of fine art.
The rigid nature of photographs that are difficult to deconstruct as visual assets makes the process of assembling Widodo’s photographs into graphic form difficult. This feeling was also felt by Tehato, designer and program coordinator of FFD 2024 Exhibition. In his working process, Tehato tried to change the graphic elements and add visual graphics to bring the photos to the public space, but he admitted that he was afraid of altering and damaging the photographic works. In the end, he made the best of it by adding fonts and taking the visuals of the events in the photos as FFD 2024’s graphic elements. Even so, Widodo believes that photography is fluid and not bound by meaning. That is what makes the context of photography never fixed, which often makes him look at the narratives in his photo works during the editing stage.
FFD 2024’s photo coordinator, Herlangga, who is involved in photography on a daily basis, questioned the phenomenon of audiovisual onslaught on photography. This phenomenon was also agreed by Widodo, who felt that reels—Instagram’s audiovisual feature—could bring emotions instantly, but did not provide a lasting memory. Unlike photos, which can become visual works that are processed and presented in this medium other than just as content. He also never worried that photos would lose out to audiovisual content on social media. According to him, the fluidity of photos allows them to live long. As in the case of one of Widodo’s photos curated as an official work of FFD 2024, one of which—as well as the oldest—was recorded on January 15, 2015. This discourse led Dito to respond and reveal that concerns related to photos and audiovisual works on social media arise from the medium’s domain that has become vernacular—prevalent and common to all. Moreover, all social media users can upload a variety of photographic works, even those captured through their phone cameras. He then explained why art today plays at the level of discourse, no longer caring about the medium of its creation.
The DOC Talk that afternoon became more interesting and subtle when Alia Damaihati, Festival Director of FFD 2024, also explained the ins and outs of curating Widodo’s photographs presented in the exhibition program entitled “Ambiguity”. Initially, all of Widodo’s black and white “Pasar Malam” photographs were going to be used, but the visual reading became lonely in the middle of the crowd. She also challenged documentary films and their makers who are too loyal to the medium. As a result, FFD tries to test it against various changes in the medium, such as photography that is part of documentary. The presence of photography in this year’s festival proves that FFD is present as a space to test documentary with its various changes. Cross-disciplinary collaboration should be a collective work to create brand identity. Not just a one-sided claim. This was also agreed by Widodo, who felt that photography is also conservative as a medium. He also hopes that a variety of cross-disciplinary artworks––also cross-media––can be present in other festivals beyond the medium.
Every photographer has their own method of creating works and capturing events. For some, this may be a limitation, but others consider it a help. In capturing the night market, for example, Widodo takes it instantly. He feels that the meaning and story of a photo emerge in the editing process. That is also what makes photos have an interesting relationship with time, because the visual meaning of photos always evolves with the changing context of time. The development of this context of meaning unfortunately creates defects in thinking about visual works, especially photographs. Widodo then shared his experience in photographic works. He believes that we cannot be 100% unbiased when taking pictures. As a result, before taking pictures we must prepare and consider our mindset rather than just photo techniques. Dito added that a photographer must be fair and train that mindset continuously. He then quoted Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s legendary line in the romance Bumi Manusia (1975). “An educated person must be fair in thought, let alone in deed.”
Today, photographs have become a vernacular visual medium that can be used by anyone and for any reason. However, as a medium, photographs always hold the space to capture events and document them into a visual archive that holds various narratives. This kind of work is also the space presented by the medium of documentary film. Therefore, FFD, with the spirit of growing and transcending boundaries, presents this collaboration opportunity as an inclusive and explorative cultural event.
Covered by Ahmad Radhitya Alam on 7 November 2024. (Ed. Vanis/Trans. Naufal Shabri)
