Bogor, the Story of a Flower: “My Indonesia” Photo Series (7)

“Take your attention off the thorns
and turn it to the flowers in the garden,
and forget the scorpions
when you look at the stars.”
(Iliya Dahir Abu Madi)

 

Kampung Lebak Soto. Bogor, 27 August 2014

This time I want to tell you about a photograph, taken yet in a kampung but urban ones, in the city of Bogor, near Jakarta.

No greenery, rice fields and rural life this time; but the story of a photo that I particularly love, and which I also mentioned in my book Sweet Light about the “Dark Side”.

In that chapter, the protagonist was an Indian girl from a wonderful photograph by Ferdinando Scianna, taken in Benares in 1997. In those lines I tried to express the healing power that children have on me, so much so that I named them my photographic exhibitions and chapters of my books.

In those lines I mentioned the girl from Bogor, for some similarities with that of Scianna, among which the most important was that of the contrast between the beauty of the girl and the poor and dirty surrounding: like a flower that blooms in the garbage.

Well, this photo has its own story, and I want to tell it to you.

 

Ferdinando Scianna. “Benares” Uttar Pradesh, India, 1997

I often happened to take photographic trips to Indonesia with my friends, for kampung and cities. That month we went to Bogor, and photographing through the alleys of the neighborhood I entered this small street where some children played in front of a house.

What struck me was that it was a home of women, of all ages, from newborn to the deaf old woman. Then the big daughters and their little daughters, all sitting on the patio of the house, between walls and peeling columns and heaps of rubbish on the street, with the children playing in pajamas as is normal in Indonesia.

 

Kampung Lebak Soto. Bogor, 2 August 2014

I took many photos that day, and one of them was part of a photographic exhibition with workshops in August of the same year, in Jakarta, called: “Capture the Beauty - Spread the Love”.

It was the portrait of one of those children, with an expression that seemed to wander between shyness, anger, melancholy and that touch of wildness that absorbed the atmosphere of the place.

The fact is that, once the exhibition was over, the curators of the exhibition offered me the opportunity to take only one of the photos on display, and I chose that one.

Indeed, from the first moment I was asked which photograph I wanted, I have not had the slightest doubt, because seeing that framed girl I immediately thought of giving it to her mother.

 

Kampung Lebak Soto. Bogor, 2 August  2014

Photographs are gift. And the gift is a very important fact.

Anyone who has studied anthropology knows that one of the fundamental texts is that of Marcel Mauss of 1923, in which – comparing some ethnographic research – he affirms that the exchange of goods is one of the most common and universal ways to create human relationships.

When we photograph someone, we bring their identity with us, so sometimes we have to give back somehow, to re-balance everything.

 

So three weeks after that first meeting I returned with some friends, photographers and curators of my exhibition to give that picture to the mother.

It was in that circumstance that an event happened that I often tell during my workshops, which has to do with the power of photography.

Actually, that moment was very touching for me. The mother was incredulous and so happy for the gift, and  I was talking to the women and meanwhile taking more photos.

The little girl in the framed portrait was clinging to the mother's leg who never stopped looking at the photograph. Then I said goodbye and went away with my friends, but realizing that she was still motionless with the frame in her hand I stopped to spy from around the corner of the street.

Then I saw some women coming who lived in the same street, perhaps intimidated first by our presence. The mother proudly showed them that photograph and these women began to caress the image, all as like enchanted, with the girl in flesh and blood under them, between the legs of the mother.

 

Kampung Lebak Soto. Bogor, 27 August 2014

A few years later I bought a splendid book, The Empty Mirror, also by Ferdinando Scianna, the same as the photo of the Benares girl, almost closing a circle.

In that book, to explain our relationship with photography and even more with the image in relation to our identity, Scianna quotes a story told by McLuhan in “Understanding media: the extension of man” (1964):

A friend meets a lady who has a beautiful baby in a wheelchair, approaches her and says: “Oh, what a beautiful baby you have!” And the mother proudly replies: “And this is nothing: you haven't seen him in photo!”

It may seem like a joke, but it speaks volumes about the complete reversal of our relationship with the image, we now live. No longer images of the world, images of ourselves, but images in place of the world, images in place of ourselves. 

I almost always mention this story because it was exactly what I saw that day: the real little girl completely ignored for her copy in the photograph. The mother and her friends caressed, almost with reverence, the face of the girl who meanwhile looked at them from below.

And all this simply because that face was printed and placed in a frame, it had turned into something special. Outside that house, the peeling wall and the rubbish at the edges of the dark, narrow road.

Art had redeemed their simple lives, in their minds.

 

Kampung Lebak Soto. Bogor, 27 August 2014

And right on the steps of that same street she was sitting, one of the daughters of that family of all women, intent on playing with the orange cap, always serious, never smiling. But capable of radiating a particular light, from inside, maybe precisely because of the contrast of shades and  surfaces between her skin, the white pajamas and the darkness of the degradation and dirt of the street.

Like the Indian girl of Scianna, standing, proud and upright, with her eyes on us, to remind us of the magical power that only children have.

Kampung Lebak Soto. Bogor, 27 August 2014

Here too, once again quoting one of the most beautiful lines of a song by Fabrizio De Andrè, which is the perfect description in poetry of many similar situations:

“Nothing grows from diamonds ,
but flowers are grown from manure.”
(Fabrizio De André, “Via del Campo”)

 

Kampung Lebak Soto. Bogor, 2 August 2014

Marcel Mauss: “Essay on the gift. Form and reason for exchange in archaic societies” (Einaudi, 2002)
Ferdinando Scianna: “The empty mirror - Photography, identity and memory” (Laterza Editions, 2014)

 

RELATED ARTICLES:

• Bogor,  the Story of a Flower: “My Indonesia” PhotoSeries (7)—Post Scriptum
• My Indonesia

 

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