Since Aug. 27, over 100 people have attended “Jakarta: A Mirror of a Thousand Reflections” at the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) where they were thrust into the daily life of Jakarta, Indonesia. The exhibit was curated by Professor John Zarobell and features photography by Professor Pedro Lange-Churión. The artwork came out of the engagement with Jakarta experienced during a Global Studies intersession class, where the professors took graduate students there to study the urban challenges and think about possible policy-based solutions.
SPUR is an urban center for ideas and innovation. Their mission is to bring together people from across the political divide in order to create solutions to city problems. “I really love the idea of making connections between the university and the community here, and SPUR is, you know, a great outlet for doing urban projects because they’re primarily doing urban research and promoting urban research in the community,” Zarobell said.
According to Lange-Churiòn, the exhibit has two different stages or facets, “one which are all these sort of color photographs that are printed in very special paper because it’s a metallic paper, it creates like this sheen, and it was my way of sort of dignifying that particular aspect of the work,” Lange-Churiòn said. These photos are on 17-by-22 inch paper and showcase different ports of market. They take on a documentary, candid style that is more expected of when viewing images of the global south.
“There is a whole other aspect to the exhibit, which are photos that I printed in the dark room. They’re more deliberate photographs, and I printed them with the deliberate idea that they would look old, that the viewer wouldn’t know, ‘Is this Jakarta now?’ So in that space in which the viewer is asking questions, perhaps my hope was to listen to a different way of looking at the photographs,” Lange-Churiòn said. These photographs additionally have texture and are printed on special paper. Lange-Churiòn detailed how he was inspired by old jet style photography that emerged in the mid-20th century, which undermines the exoticized way the West views images of the global south. It allows the viewer to approach the images with fresh eyes.
Lange-Churiòn additionally took pin hole photographs to showcase one of Jakarta’s urban challenges. “They have another problem, which is called subsidation, where the city is actually sinking. So yes, while the tides are rising, the city is partially sinking. And so at the edge of the sea, you have different sea walls, depending on which part of town you’re in,” Zarobell said. The specific images are of the seawalls and coastal life for local Jakaratans. “They’re very evocative, pin hole photographs, because they’re a way of trapping time,” Lange-Churiòn said about his seawall photos.
“It’s incredible because after you go through the layers of differences and otherness that you experience when going to a place you’ve never been, you begin to see communalities in the human experience. And this is what I hope people will see,” Lange-Churiòn said. Walking through the thought provoking exhibit at SPUR, the human experience is at the forefront of the photographs.
“I think one of our ideas in terms of putting the exhibition together was to try to bring forward that complexity. On one hand, opening people’s minds, eyes and hearts, even, to, you know, this other world. But doing that in a way that allows them to understand that these are people that have real lives, and those lives are, you know, facing the kinds of challenges that are pretty different from the kind of challenges that we can experience,” Zarobell said. This partnership with SPUR provides a unique opportunity for students to stray from the campus culture, explore the city and learn something new about the world.
The exhibit is open until Oct. 10, but be sure to contact SPUR before stopping by to see this exhibit.
