Rama:
The Poetry of Things

WORDS | JEAN COUTEAU, GIANYAR, BALI

Kemurnia means purity and describes the subject matter of Rama Surya's collection of photographs shown at the Richard Meyer Culture in Kerobokan. They are mainly male nudes photographed in natural settings, mostly in poses of supplication during yoga sessions at various locations across Bali.

Shot over a period of five years, the pictures document a period of "cultural adjustment" during Surya's photographic exploration of Balinese culture. Originally from Sumatra, the photographer admits his initial revulsion when requested to make photos of Made Budhiana practicing yoga in the nude. But during the course of his photographic journey, Surya began to understand the sexual symbolism and uninhibited earthiness prevalent in Balinese culture and language.

Photographs, records and travellers' journals of Bali from the early 20th century reveal the sensuality of the island in its mode of dress, dance and in temple decoration, natural qualities that have today been tempered by a "prudishness" imported by colonial masters and, later, Javanese "visitors" with strong Islamic sensibilities.

Active as a professional photographer since 1990, Rama Surya's work cuts across the grain of this conformist invasion. His images appears regularly in leading photographic and art journals. He has produced a number of published photo-essays covering a wide range of subjects including modern Indonesian society, the destruction caused by forest fires in Borneo, and Yogyakarta street society.

Rama Surya in his work questions the reality of personality and how a photographer goes about representing personality in two dimensional form. Can its essence be summed up in photographic images, or does it escape all attempts at immobilizing it as it is constantly transformed in the ongoing flow of time and movement?

In his images he invites us to discover real people, or rather through the way their representation is constructed, the spirit which animates them and which animates the photographer himself. The intuitive title of an earlier exhibition was Self, both the selves of others, and, through their reverberation, the self of the artist.

Rama Surya, born in Bukittinggi, West Sumatra, in 1970, is still new to his field. But his poetical approach, often used in the treatment of painful social themes, has brought him both national and international acclaim.

Starting out as a photographer for Hair magazine in Jakarta in 1993, he has quickly grown out of mere photojournalism to emerge as an important artist. In addition to the numerous publications and two books, he has been the personal assistant of Sebastiao Salgado (1996), one of the world's most eminent black-and-white photographers. He has been widely published in European magazines and has held exhibitions in Switzerland and Germany. The German fotoMagazine cited Surya as "Photographer of the Year" in 1997.

Rama Surya unveils the essence of the subjects he photographs through their relationship with the environment. It's the opposite of photographic portraiture, or rather it is a portrait suggested outside the outward aspect of the face, through the person's interaction with the things that surround them.
In the end, Rama Surya leaves the field of photography to enter into the poetic world of objects. And through this poeticized world, we enter into the inner world and ultimately his own inner world of feelings. His photographic approach makes feelings more complex and sophisticated by the juxtaposition of several pictures of the same personality, either within a single frame or in contiguous ones. Some with a similar content, albeit in a different composition, and others as a narrative story.

Rama Surya's photographs are bathed in sensitivity. He has a knack for illuminating the hidden qualities of things and people in subtle, yet simple ways. He should continue on this path. If he does, he will meet with increased success, while his mastery of his technique and instruments will further improve, opening new avenues to his expressive liberty. Rama Surya may then become an important photographer.