Budi N.D. Dharmawan: Ketoprak (Javanese Theatre)

Photo © Budi N.D. Dharmawan-All Rights Reserved

Ketoprak is a theatrical genre of Java in Indonesia which features actors and performers who sing to the accompaniment of the gamelan. It draws its stories from Javanese history and romances, and in that respect is different from the wayang kulit (shadow puppets) which are based on stories from the Hindu epics.

Ketoprak was created by a Surakarta court official in 1914, evolved into a spoken drama of Javanese and Islamic history but with the modernisation brought along with television and videos, it has lost much of its popularity, and the younger generation has lost interest in traditional folk/cultural arts.

Budi N.D. Dharmawan is is an Indonesian documentary photographer, with interest in social, humanitarian, and cultural issues. His Staged Life gallery documents a ketroprak troupe which he followed.

He describes this experience very eloquently: 

"It is a story of poverty, which is widespread across Indonesia, a country that has been celebrating economic growth in the past decade. It is unimaginable that these people can live on less than USD 10 a month, but yet it is very real. It is a story of people practicing a form of art that younger generation no longer cares about, not necessarily in order to preserve it, but because it is their way to make ends meet. It is a story of life, both on-stage and also off-stage, which somehow feels like it is just another stage to perform."

I haven't attended a ketoprak performance, but i did photograph an Arja performance in Bali. Arja enacts old stories mainly based on the Panji Romances (11-14th centuries) and uses dialogue understood only by Balinese-speaking audiences. Many of the stories derived from Balinese tales, Chinese and Arabic, and from the Mahabharata and Ramayana.

Matthew Oldfield: Kecak!

Photo © Matthew Oldfield-All Rights Reserved

"Kecak dance involves a chorus of chanting men dressed in checked cloth, who build a percussive vocal rhythm that has its roots in the Sanghyang trance-inducing exorcism dance."

Matthew Oldfield  tells us he attended a unique Kecak performance in Bali led by Pak Reno who has been developing his own version of the Kecak dance over several decades, and his chorus performs a much looser version of the typical, choreographed story. No two performances are alike and guests are never sure what will happen.

The Kecak music performance is not accompanied by any music instruments, but by a chorus of around 50 to 100 men. Kecak has roots in sanghyang, a trance-inducing exorcism dance.

I've been to Bali a handful of times, and attended Kecak performances in different spots on the island, notably in Ubud and Nusa Dua, however these were performances designed for tourists. The one attended by Matthew seemed to have been non commercial, and only 7 spectators attended it.

Kecak is a form of Balinese dance and music drama, originated in Bali and is performed primarily by men,  A German painter and musician got interested in the ritual while living in Bali in the 1930s and worked to recreate it into a drama, based on the Hindu Ramayana.

Matthew is a freelance photographer based in South East Asia, specialising in editorial and documentary images. He's been involved in both photography and the environment since 1993. He's had articles published in Asian Geographic, Asian Diver, Scuba Diver Australasia, FiNS Magazine and Scuba Globe, and photo credits in a huge variety of publications.

Tom Bourdon, a fellow travel photographer, referred Matthew's work to me and we both agree that these high quality photographs would have been enhanced had it been accompanied by the incredible music and sounds of the Kecak in a simple multimedia photo essay.

Stephen Dupont: A Tale of Two Slums

Photo © Stephen Dupont-All Rights Reserved

I really liked these two photographic essays of Polaroids made in the Mumbai slum Dharavi and the Senen slum of Jakarta by Stephen Dupont, an Australian photographer.

Dharavi is one of the world's largest slum and lies on prime real estate in the middle of India's financial capital, Mumbai and has a population estimated to be 1 million. Many businesses flourish in this slum, such as traditional pottery and textiles, a recycling industry, which generate an estimated $650 million turnover a year.

As for the Senen slum, it's a trackside slum in central Jakarta. It's also a center for recycling, and its inhabitants live cheek to jowl with the thundering trains.

Stephen Dupont has produced a photographs of fragile cultures and marginalized peoples, which capture the human dignity of his subjects, and do so with great intimacy and often in some of the world’s most dangerous regions. His work has earned him prestigious prizes, including a Robert Capa Gold Medal citation from the Overseas Press Club of America; a Bayeux War Correspondent’s Prize; and first places in the World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year International, the Australian Walkleys, and Leica/CCP Documentary Award.

His work has been featured in The New Yorker, Aperture, Newsweek, Time, GQ, Esquire, French and German GEO, Le Figaro, Liberation, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Independent, The Guardian, The New York Times Magazine, Stern, The Australian Financial Review Magazine, and Vanity Fair.

He has held major exhibitions in London, Paris, New York, Sydney, Canberra, Tokyo, and Shanghai, and at Perpignan’s Visa Pour L’Image, China’s Ping Yao and Holland’s Noorderlicht festivals.

Andrew Newey: Papua New Guinea

Photo © Andrew Newey-All Rights Reserved

Andrew Newey has been virtually everywhere. He is a documentary travel photographer based in England, and started travelling the world in his early 20′s, and went to college to study the craft, after which he went on a round the world trip to put the theory work into practice. He began his photographic career supplying landscape and travel imagery to the stock photography industry and now focuses on commissions, workshops and personal projects documenting traditional cultures around the world.

He was exhibited at the Royal Geographical Society in London for the 2010 Travellers’ Tales Festival. Some of his clients include Microsoft, Qantas, Bauer Media, Wanderlust, Thai Airways, The Sunday Times, Lonely Planet, P&O Cruises, Rough Guides, AA Media, Imagine Publishing, and Tesco.

Andrew has divided his website portfolio over three main galleries, and the images (although smaller in size than what I love to see) are extraordinarily colorful, and are unadulterated travel photographs. These range from Mongolia to the Mentawai Islands, from Laos to Nepal, from Morocco to Malaysia, from China to India, and from Tibet to Thailand.

Asit: Indonesian Photography

Photo © Asit-All Rights Reserved

Another instance of a talented photographer who neglects to provide full background information on his or her website is Asit. It's a shame because I am certain that photo buyers may want to get in contact with Asit. Having a contact form is insufficient, since a biography provides background information to the buyers and editors. A pseudonym is fine (if warranted) but having no background information signals a disinterest in marketing.

Most of Asit's photographs appear to have been set up very carefully, with meticulous attention and effort given to details, lighting and, in some cases, make up. It's more akin to fashion photography than travel photography.

Photo © Asit-All Rights Reserved

Francisco de Souza: Travel Photography

Photo © Francisco de Souza-All Rights Reserved

The website of Francisco de Souza is populated with galleries of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand and Vietnam...large images which grab viewers the way images should. None of this silly small photographs to "protect my work" from Francisco. He wants to show his images, and he does.

His biography tells us he was born and raised in Zimbabwe, where he started to photograph his Shona tribal neighbours since he was eleven. Subsequently displaced from his Zimbabwean home, he travelled to many developing countries in Africa, the Indian Subcontinent, and South East Asia. It is there he started to actively work with and support Non Government Organisations in Indonesia, India and Zimbabwe.

Francisco's work has been shortlisted in the Digital Photographer of the Year competition in 2009, and he received a Diploma in Photography from The Photography Institute of New Zealand in 2010.

In his India gallery, Francisco features an elderly woman in a red sari, possibly a Gujarati or Rajasthani tribal judging from her tattoos, being helped unto the back of a truck...a perfect capture in time and motion.

Tom Bourdon: Dayakan Dance

Tom Bourdon was recently in Java, Indonesia where he photographed a traditional Dayak dance near Borobodur. He captured the ambient sound with the new and popular Zoom H1, and put together this audio slideshow. You can also view it here.

The Dayak are the native people of Borneo, who live principally in the interior of Borneo, each with its own dialect, customs, laws, territory and culture. Dayaks also live in Indonesia, and have their distinct culture as Tom Bourdon documented.

The Dayak were animist in belief, however many converted to Christianity, and more recently to Islam. Estimates for the Dayak population range from 2 to 4 million.

Tom is a documentary travel photographer specializing in recording cultural festivals & celebrations across the globe. His work has been published in the national & international press as well as guide books & numerous online locations.

I thought I'd add this review of the Zoom H1. It's by B&H, and while it's short and to the point, it gives a reasonable appraisal of the device.

Diego Verges: Ludruk

Photo © Diego Verges-All Rights Reserved

Ludruk is a theatrical genres of East Java in Indonesia. It's a form of traditional performance presented by a troupe of actors on a stage, re-telling the life stories of everyday people and their struggles. Most of the characters were performed by male actors who take the roles of women, but more recently, the sketches and farces feature mostly contemporary domestic stories, and have become commercial entertainment popular with urban and rural working-class audiences.

Diego Verges (featured many times of The Travel photographer blog and one of its Favorite 2011 Photographers) has produced a comprehensive photo essay on the Ludruk, with black & white (and color) facial portraits, and as well as environmental portraits and scenes of these performers.

Ludruk is a must-see for my readers as it merges portraiture, documentary and travel-ethnography photography, and also visually documents an art for that could well vanish in the years to come.

Note: I encountered a similar kind of performance in Bali where it's called Arja. This type of performance enacts old stories in a farcical manner and uses dialogue understood only by Balinese-speaking audiences.

Vincent Prévost: West Papua

Photo © Vincent Prévost-All Rights Reserved

 I occasionally receive emails from photographers such as the one from Vincent Prévost that make the work of maintaining The Travel Photographer blog feel really worthwhile.

Vincent tells me he's been a regular reader of The Travel Photographer blog for about 2 years, and that it has been a source of inspiration to him. He cites my two posts on Grenville Charles and Diego Verges, who documented tribes of West Papua,  as triggering his own photo expedition "Highlands Encounters" to this remote part of the world.

That's what this blog is all about...to inspire photographers to explore other unfamiliar areas, to try new techniques and to document endangered cultures.

He has been teaching French in South Korea since 2002 and is also a freelance editorial photographer who fuses fine art and journalism. While most of his work is in color, he also enjoys black & white photography, and travels with compact audio equipment to add a further dimension to his visual work.

West Papua is an Indonesian province that borders the independent nation of Papua New Guinea and forms the western half of the world's second largest island. The indigenous people of West Papua are of the same ethnic origin as those in the eastern half of the island of New Guinea. Ethnically and culturally, they are also related to other Melanesian peoples of the Pacific.

James Morgan: People of the Coral Triangle

James Morgan features the People of the Coral Triangle, a well made documentary on the Bajau Laut, on his website, along with other multimedia projects such as the Eagle Hunters (previously featured on TTP), and fast-paced documentaries of Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo.

As he explains, the Coral Triangle refers to a triangular shaped area of the tropical marine waters of Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste. It is there that 3,000 species of fish live, including the largest fish - the whale shark, and the coelacanth. It also provides habitat to six out of the world’s of seven marine turtle species.

The Bajau Laut are an indigenous ethnic group of the southern Philippines, who have migrated to neighboring Malaysia over the course of the past 50 years. They depend directly in the natural resources of the Coral Triangle, and are the last nomadic marine communities of the world. Mostly Muslims, some also worship local sea spirits.

The Big Picture: National Geo Contest 2010

Photo © Ario Wibisono-All Rights Reserved

The Boston Globe's photo blog The Big Picture is showing off some of the submissions to The National Geographic annual  photo contest. The deadline for the submissions is November 30. The Big Picture editor chose 47 images from the three categories of People, Places and Nature.

No one asked me for my opinion, but I'll give it anyway. My favorite of those shown is the one of the two Indonesian boys playing with roosters in the village of Suradita, near Serpong in West Java. The photographer is Ario Wibisono who's based in Jakarta.

Ario's caption informs us that this was not a real cockfight. I'm confused by their dress as I took them to be Balinese children, but they're not...they're Javanese.

I also liked another one (#5) also by Ario Wibisono of the musician in Tenganan Village in Bali, playing the bamboo flute to a disabled child. I spent a couple of hours with this man during my Bali: Island of Odalan Photo~Expedition ™, photographing him playing his various instruments (including a sort of didgeridoo) and recording some of the pieces he played.