City Daily Photo Portal and Blogs

Written by Eki Qushay Akhwan


Following the introduction of BANDUNG DAILY PHOTO (BDP) yesterday, let me now introduce you to the network that links the city daily photo blogs (of which BDP is a member), how it began, and some characteristics that its members share that are of note to those who are interested in discussions on photography and photography issues.

City Daily Photo, the portal that links blogs that meet the criteria of covering a single area/city and posting a picture a day about that area/city, began its existence with Eric Tenin’s PARIS – ONE PHOTO A DAY blog in 2005 (Source: Gerald). The blog attracted so many visitors who were interested in seeing or remembering Paris, that it soon began to inspire others to do the same about the place/city where they live. Thus what began as a single blog covering a single city has since brought about a sort of “movement” (if I may call that a movement) in the world of blogging, photography, and citizen journalism.

What’s interesting about this type of photo blog is not, in my opinion, the photographs’ quality. Although the name of the blogs aggregated at the portal has the label ‘photo’ in them, the emphasis is not on the photographs (read: quality photographs), but on the places which they cover and the blogs’ individual owners’ perspectives, of whom many are not photographers or even photography enthusiasts.

As expected, the pictures’ quality on these blogs is secondary. (I am not saying that none of them have good quality pictures; quite a number of them do have great and professional quality pictures and are managed by pro photographers/photo enthusiasts. But this lack of photo quality is, in my opinion, decently compensated by the theme (the place) and the owner’s perspective. Visiting these blogs is like taking a visual tour of a place with a personal guide who has intimate knowledge of it and, unlike taking a tour with a professional guide or travel agency, you will not only be shown of the usual tourist stuff but also the day-to-day ordinary life of the city as the owner experiences it.

In one way, what these city photo bloggers do, can be categorized as citizen journalism which involves a practice of documentary photography. (More on this on the next post. For now, check them out and see if you like them. You can begin here, if you like.)

Introducing BANDUNG DAILY PHOTO

Written by Eki Qushay Akhwan

My appology for having neglected you for quite some time. I know you’ve been waiting for the new postings and probably wondering if this blog is still alive. I’d like to assure you, it is. I still keep notes of what I want to write and share with you, and you are still on my thoughts. Busy schedules at work, however, have somehow prevented me from seriously setting aside time to write. There are also a couple of new blogging projects which have pretty much occupied my spare time (not much, but yes, I still do have spare time): The first one is BANDUNG DAILY PHOTO, and the second a virtual gallery of my own – which I’d rather not reveal at this time as I’m still working on and tweaking it, but you’ll be the first to know when I eventually launch it.

Honestly speaking, the BANDUNG DAILY PHOTO project was inspired first and mostly by Santy’s JAKARTA DAILY PHOTO (JDP) whose success in rating and consistency of publishing one photo per day over a long stretch of time really deserve a salute. Not many Indonesian photo bloggers I know can do that. Then I also found that JDP is part of an international network of daily city blog aggregated in a portal called citydailyphoto, where I found that there were only a handful of Indonesian cities that were represented: Semarang (Semarang Daily Photo), Yogyakarta (Jogja Portrait), Palembang (Palembang Daily Photo), Medan (Medan Daily Photo), Bogor (Bogor Daily Photo), Bali (2 blogs), Cibubur, Bekasi, and of course Bandung.

Bandung had actually had three daily photo blogs when I was considering to start mine: one seems to be dormant, and the other two were spasmodic (not posting regularly). Of these latter two, Bunyamin Najmi’s Bandung Raya blog was spasmodic, posting only about one or two photos a month, and the pictures posted were not consistently about Bandung (some of the pictures were about Jogja, for example). The other, Harry Makertia’s Imagi Bandung, had also seemed to be in a long slumber. I thought this was not good. As one of Indonesia’s biggest and most prominent cities, Bandung deserves a better representation within the international community of daily city photo bloggers, and as a photographer (well, self-proclaimed photographer) and resident of Bandung I naturally have a good number of Bandung-related photo collections. Armed with a conviction that I could post one decent picture a day for years ahead, I launched the the project.

The project is now almost one-month old and, I can confidently say, has had good reactions from other daily city photo bloggers around the world. (My great thanks to those who have stopped by my BANDUNG DAILY PHOTO, left encouraging comments, and provided generous links to their blogs.) There has also been some positive side effects of my blog’s presence. Imagi Bandung has since been reawakened and posting daily as it is supposed to be. Within this past month, I’ve also seen new citydaily photobloggers emerging from the other parts of the country: Hendrawan’s Riau Daily Photo is one of those that I think will be a serious new comer, having not missed a posting a day since it was launched.

I sincerely hope that more and more Indonesian cities will participate in the city daily photo blogs in the future. Big cities like Jakarta and Bandung certainly can have more than one blog representing them as many other cities do. Although there are already three active city daily photo bloggers covering Bandung, I believe each of us is unique in our perspectives and complement one another in giving a better overall picture of the city.

More story on city daily photo blog later.

Enjoy your day!

(Blog Review) Professional Procrastinator: A Statement of Artistic Challege

Written by: Eki Qushay Akhwan
© All rights reserved.

An artist is by nature rebellious. I forgot who said this. But I believe there is a logic in that. The true measure of an artist is his/her is creativity; and being creative means seeing things that others would otherwise fail to notice, create things that others have not possibly thought about. Being creative is exploratory – always testing the limits of what’s possible, what’s beyond the existing boundaries of the present. Hence, an artist often lives in a world very much ahead of his/her own time and this is why – in the eyes of the ordinary peole – he/she often looks eccentric, unconventional, or even outrightly rebellious!

There is one particular Indonesian photo blogger that in statements and his works could well fit what’s described above. “Professional Procrastinator” (http://kurniadiwidodo.blogspot.com/) – the name he gave his blog – is just a precursor to his unconventional point of view. Semantically, these words do not collocate: “Procrastinator” has a negative connotation that is very contrary to the word “professional,” which is imbued with positive imagery. Putting these words together is agaist convention. Hence, it can be considered as a statement of rebellion.

The rebellion that’s being touted in this particular blog, however, is not of the kind that carries the negative undertone of annihilating the status quo, but rather one that is questioning the blind adherence to a set of practices and challenging everybody to step outside the walls that have limited their views to the same things over and again and made them afraid of taking the path least travelled. About this, Kurniadi Widodo (Wid), the owner of the blog, is particularly clear. Another statement (or rather, question) posted on his account profile at FN (www.fotografer.net) asked this: “gee, don’t you guys ever tired of making and seeing the same kind of photographs over and over again?”

Translated, the statement could well mean: I’m tired of making and seeing the same kind of photographs – why aren’t you? Why don’t you try something different? And he means what he says. Restless in search of what’s possible beyond what has already existed and practiced, he goes on his own journey to explore the aesthetic limits photography could offer. The results are quite a unique point of view that is his own. A look at the themes and the photographs he displays at his photo blog immediately confirms this. Just take a look at two of his most recent postings: “150408” and “Familiar Faces, the Book”.

“140408” is a set of pictures which, as he wrote, was taken at a photo-shooting session dubbed “Photographed Like Celebrities” – a marketing program held by one of Indonesia’s largest cosmetic producers – where ordinary people were made over and photographed like celebrities. He was invited there by some photographer friends who were assigned to do the shooting. It was indeed “a serious stuff,” as he said. The photographs produced for the event were essential to the company’s image-making. Instead of flowing with the others and use the chance to hone his fashion photography skills, however, he took pictures of his own liking – a defiance that once again exerted his own unique point of view. The results were an amazing array of back-stage and on-stage dynamic views of the event – shot in black and white, no less, for an event whose theme was “color trends of 2008”!

Unlike the images in “140408” which were especially made at a photo session, the posting entitled “Familiar Faces, the Book” consists of pictures taken over quite a long period of time – his college years – of subjects that were close and dear to him: his college friends. Here too, we can find his unique perspective. Thanks to his unique approach and way of seeing, the “familiar faces” turned out to be not too familiar at all, in style at least.

The pictures in “140408” may look relaxed, candid, and unpremeditated. In this, at least, they show what they are supposed to show: The emotional intimacy that exists between friends. Yet, the way this bond is visually represented takes a surprising turn. There are almost no clearly identifiable, much less familiar, faces. Instead, all we can see is the “symbolisms” of that intimacy: Look at the figure leaving the tennis table whose face is hidden in the shadow (picture #1), for example. At glance, this is not what we expect to see in an album entitled “Familiar Faces”. Yet upon closer observation there is no denying that the visual moment, the relaxness of the atmosphere, and the angle could only come from uninhibited emotional intimacy that exists between close friends. Another proof of his twist, a statement and a lesson from a “rebel”: Look, your subjects may be familiar, but the point of view should be uniquely yours. The massege is a resounding “explore!” “explore!” “explore!”

Among Indonesian photo bloggers, Kurniadi Widodo and his “Professional Procrastinator” banner could well be a rarity. His consistent take on the opposite of what’s accepted, I think, is the tell tale sign of his artistry. His blog is the blog you may want to check out if you feel that the walls of the ordinary have somewhat suffocated your aesthetic taste and photographic expressions and need to have a fresh look at your photographic subjects.

(Blog Review) Billitone: A Photography Enthusiast's Spiritual Maturity

Written by: Eki Qushay Akhwan

There’s one blog on photography that I’ve been watching and visiting every now and then. It belongs to a friend. I got to know him through his works at http://www.fotografer.net/ (FN) (Indonesia’s most popular photo website) back in 2004. We’ve only met once and only for a few hours on my one-day visit to Singapore in September 2005. His name’s Andri Irawan.

The first thing that truck me about his pictures was that they were so well composed and executed that I think they were among the few best pictures at FN. The pictures were landscapes (not the kind of pictures I do well myself, but always admire others'). They were of Bangka and Belitung islands. The pristine and beautiful beaches. On a few fleeting cyber “conversations” that we exchanged from comments we made about each other’s pictures, I learned that he was from Belitung (Andri, correct me on this if I’m wrong); hence, the name of his blog (http://www.billitone.net/). It's a fitting choice! And a beautifully sounding name that’s easy to remember!

He’d had another blog, of course. Ricohgrd or something, which I never did know he had until he introduced Billitone. Never mind about the other blog. It’s Billitone that matters. Unlike any other personal photo web logs that I have seen, Billitone is not only an expression of a photo enthusiast's personal voices and show case for his works. More than that, I see in it intelligence and intellectual and spiritual maturity that could only be the results of a long trail of his exploration of photography (and of life!).

His photos that got us introduced to each other in the first place have evolved in style and subject matter. He no longer takes landscapes, as far as I know. His pictures now are so candid, lucid, almost without the stringent geometrical lines of composition I used to find in his landscapes. But candid-ness and lucidity and the apparent absence of geometrical lines should not have us believe that he has digressed into and joined the ranks of the undisciplined, ignorant, and careless hordes of photography enthusiasts. On the contrary, his lucidity shows that he has finally been able to free himself from the rigidity of procedures, the mechanical way of seeing and taking pictures; for now – despite the geometrically “chaotic” look of his pictures – the subjects are alive and thick with the spirituality and emotion that define LIFE!. This, I believe, can only be the tell tale signs of spiritually-and-intellectually guided maturity gained though a very rich and enriching life experiences.

I love Billitone not only for the pictures it displays. The visuals might look superficial and fleeting to the undiscerning eyes; but the words would have us anchor those images to the deeper reality of visual representation and interpretation. Without verbosity, these words provide a pathway that links the outward appearance (“the window”) to the substance (“the house” and whoever lives in it). Just look at the blog description: “THERE IS MORE TO SEE THAN MEETS THE EYES”. A very catchy hint indeed! And it keeps its promise: you’ll see more of (the wealth of human's inner) life than just the mere keep of appearances.

Here are some of my favorite lines:

There I was on the street again, with a voracious appetite for the usual and unusual, to take ordinary photographs. I have nothing to give meaning to the world yet, to feel myself involved in what I frame through the viewfinder.

And this:

It is my understanding that everything has a purpose, that's why everyone of us is on our own path.

You are sure going to find a lot more of this stuff in the blog. Candid and humble as these words may sound (I have nothing …, it is my understanding …), accompanied with the “right” images, they could tickle your senses - at the very least -; or could even get you carried away to a level of experience higher than the ordinary if you happen to be travelling on the same wave length.

If you are a restless soul always seeking that plane higher than meets your eyes in your photographic exploration, this is the blog to go and visit every now and then. It's going to open your eyes and get you inspired!