Week 8 - Photography

Since our memory can not capture every bitter sweet moments, camera will always help. From the photograph that we capture can directly recall on what occasion that picture was taken. But not all of the picture we captured can be remembered, unless it was labeled perfectly or arrange it in album properly with the dates, time and so forth.

But for some reasons, photography can be cultural and social instrument of critique. For example the picture below:-

This is a picture of a arm of an old women who lived alone without any help from her children. She'll always go to RIPAS Hospital for a blood diagnosis (kidney problem).

 The story of this old women has been published on Borneo Bulletin newspaper. Shes been all alone live in her own old, dirty house. When we interviewed her, she told us that she always go to RIPAS Hospitals on her own by bus as early as 5am. She said she have a children who live on their own house, but no one of them who dare to look after her and bring her to the hospitals. To critique just by seeing this picture is hard to explain. But with the story inserted in the news, people started to see the bad side of her children. More and more people come to help her. We also received a bad respond from her children who stated that their mother (this old women) are stubborn, she don't want to leave her old, small, dirty house. But why, at least the children could spare some times to bring her to the hospital? or at least renovate or revamp her house for her comfy? Her children never call office anymore. That is how the social here in Brunei react, they help, they deny and soon after that when the space and time faded away, we will never heard about her anymore. :)

A mid-age lady who show some danger of her house in Kampong Ayer.

The picture above is a story of a complained news against the government here in Brunei. I wrote the story and interviewed her. According to her, she made a complain to the authority about her danger condition house, in hope she will get help from the authority as soon as possible. As the news spread out the next morning, the authority started to call press room and ask about her details, soon after that this authority people made a press release saying that she never made complained or ask for help to the relevant authority. There was when the ambiguous truth never reveal until today. Pray for this old women with a disable husband be always safe living on that shaking and dangers condition kind of house.

That's how powerful both picture was, but have to include texts information on it to let people to understand the real story. The picture alone will make people thinks according to their own perceptions. This is when Brunei culture reveal. People use media to get what they want. Government people start to work when media published the complained. When they received the complain, it takes time for them to work.

As stated by Charlotte Cotton, (2004), on her book titled, The Photograph as Contemporary Art, say that, "....Brend and Hilla Becher have been and continue to be highly influential in the shaping of contemporary deadpan photography. .........The Bechers' collaboration on seris of black-and-white photographs of pre-Nazi German industrial and vernacular architecture, such as water towers, gas tanks and mine heads, began in 1975 and is ongoing. Each building within the series is photographed from the same perspective, notes on each are taken and a typology is systematically created. The Buechers' work appeared in 'New Topograhics: Photographs of Man-Altered Landscape', a touring exhibition that began in 1975 in America. The Show was an early attempt to mark european and North American photographers' reinvestment of the genres of topographical an architectural photography with the implications of contemporary urban generation and the ecological consequences of industry", (p.83).

Photographs can be very useful to our memory and to record nostalgic moment. But for me photograph will never tell the truth. This is because the usage of the technology in changing and manipulating the image without knowing the originality except to send it to the CSI of photography. When this fake picture posted on the interned or published it or spread it, Bruneian people will believe its true and start to critique socially and culturally.


Bibliography:

Cotton, C. (2004). The Photograph as Contemporary Art. Thames & Hudson Ltd, London.