Leonard Suryajaya

Leonard Suryajaya's work explores the intricate and complicated layers of selfhood in the context of cultural background, intimacy, sexual preference, and personal displacement. Influenced by the cultural milieu of inter-ethnic relations in Indonesia, he utilizes photography, video, along with elements of performance and installation. Through the use of personal narrative and story telling, his work challenges and deconstructs the perspective we use to scrutinize and observe our roles in a transnational global world.

“I work from a place where I hold firmly that art is a conduit for social exchange. The relationships between the viewer and my subjects, the viewer and me and my subjects and me are equally important. The act of generosity is something that I’d like to maintain and foster.

“Being able to experience such diversity and adversity is a privilege. I’m conscious of the fear one might have about the idea of other people that they don’t know. That’s why the use of humor, intimacy, and purposeful confusion is really important to me. I want to prick, disorient, and open up different ways of seeing other people. And hopefully in that process I get to forge a sense of relationship between the viewer and the subjects.”

“The subjects in my work are really important to me. The work that I make with them is not merely a photograph of persons/people and that the subjects are simply ornaments of my photographs. It is vital that they participate and work with me because it is essentially our work together.

“It is vital that I acknowledge their participation and not further strip the sense of authority they have. They are actors in a setting that we build together. They are always active and the result is not a photograph of them. It is a portrait of our exchange and interaction.

“For the viewer, that’s exactly what I want to communicate with my work. Acknowledging their burning desire in being able to comprehend who they are seeing and then start shifting their questioning to the gestures and other visual cues that are present when they find it impossible to certainly classify the subjects in the molds they have for them in the initial exchange.”

Discussion Questions

1. How does Suryajaya employ to emphasize humor and intimacy, in order to safeguard against viewers who might have a negative “idea of other people that they don’t know”? Consider, for instance, his use of color, subjects’ facial expressions, and gestures.

2. Suryajaya argues that his photographs are not just portraits of people, but a “portrait of our exchange in interaction.” However, as discussed in the “Navigating Alterity” essay, we can also argue that all photographs are revealing of the photographer-subject relationship. Can we see this difference of intentionality between the Jesup images and Suryajaya’s photographs?

“We can’t really think about photography without addressing its loaded history. The photographic archive and standardized identification photographs were initially created as a tool of state surveillance used to oppress black and brown bodies. At its inception, these surveillance strategies were created for the purpose of identifying a criminal ‘type’ and were made to function through contradistinction—the pretense being that you could identify a criminal just by looking at them. These systems relied on racist pseudoscience where racial hierarchies were ‘scientifically’ investigated and established, though only after having already concluded that one race was superior.

“These are all ideas that I considered while making Mugshot Portraits: Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I was thinking about how I could disrupt these systems, how visual codes of criminality could be transformed to present a contemporary way of looking at the Montgomery Bus Boycott women.

“I was also interested in how these women undermined the state’s attempt to represent them as criminals by employing various strategies. For example, they dressed in their best clothes and refused to put the booking numbers around their necks. They maintained their agency and autonomy as best they could, taking control over their representation even as they were subject to the repressive limits of the mugshot. In doing so, they actively contributed to the ‘making’ of their portrait, an idea that is raised in works by Alfredo Jaar and best summarized by Ansel Adams, when he says, ‘A photograph isn’t taken, it is made.’”

Discussion Questions

1. Why does Thomas use graphite drawing to present a “contemporary way” of looking at the Civil Rights Movement? Do these drawings make you rethink these women and their place in this part of American history? Why or why not?

2. Do you agree with Thomas’ suggestion that these women asserted their agency in the making of these mugshots? How do they employ similar strategies as the subjects of the Jesup archive images?
   
   

“What is interesting to me about Seeing White and the podcast is whiteness examining whiteness. A part of the conceit of MWF project is that recognizing whiteness as a visual category.  It makes people rather uncomfortable.  But in reality, I have been asked to talk, engage, make work about my blackness for years.  That interior contemplation of how the history, description, and stereotypes of my racial identity affect me as an individual is an intellectual loop that I am constantly engaged with.” 

“When I made MWF [My White Friends], for many of the sitters, good dear friends of mine, it was the same thought experiment… being approached because of their racial identity.  Many had never been approached that way before… and had to reconcile the idea of being forefronted as a racial category.  It started many interesting conversations and revelations.”

“The question of power is really one of imagining who is controlling the camera.  Rarely do you imagine that on the other side of the lens is a black woman. In terms of power, it is a dynamic relationship.  My friends openly gave me control, because of our friendship and trusted me.  And often when they saw the pictures, they recognized the image located itself somewhere between a stereotype and a portrait.  This was actually the goal, to make these people universal descriptions of many categories [...] Many historic photographers wanted to offer truths through portraits, here, I offer descriptions… which I think is something different.  The issue becomes what the viewer has to question.”

“I have learned that everyone looks with their own eye, and each eye is distinctive, born out of their own lived life and cultural context.  Some eyes investigate, some only respond to beauty, some avoid confrontation, and others only want to see what they agree with. I can not transpose my way of looking – which is interested in dissecting and digesting all of the visual clues of the image, one clue is often race- but also place – and also function- onto others with only the photograph (and somehow how the photograph will always fail).”

Discussion Questions

1. Myra Greene uses an anthropological approach to photographing her friends for My White Friends. How does this approach change your reading of anthropological photographic archives like the Jesup archive?

2. Consider what ways a photographer might wield social power over a subject. How does Greene subvert these power relationships in My White Friends? In Character Recognition?

3. What are some historical examples that might have inspired Greene to make the images in My White Friends?
   

“In the enclosed space of prison a woman is always in the position of being watched, deprived of physical and even supposed possibility to be alone. Years long state of complete nudity and loss of intimate space cripples personality put in the society as merciless as the cruelty of crimes she committed. In the project I don't concentrate on the details of the convicted women's everyday life. It is more important for me to show their gaze trying to isolate themselves, faces and gestures changed by constant watch by the public authorities and cellmates. Details of the private and the intimate, brought out forcedly to the public view and judgment.”

“In Russia there are serious issues in relation to the acute problem of domestic violence and violence in general. Historically, our culture does not accept "[washing] dirty linen in public" and it is not appropriate to discuss family staff outside the house.”

“Only 10-12% of victims of sexual violence in Russia go to the police, and in only one in five cases the police takes a statement. To court go only 2.9% of criminal cases … These figures largely reflect the public opinion for victims of violence that exists in my country, summarized “My own fault”. Even the victim is a child. Almost half of Russians believe that victims of violence are the ones to blame for what happened. Half of the respondents are also convinced that public statements about violence destroy traditional values such as family, loyalty, love.”

1. Anasova observes that prison surveillance and cameras both  enact a voyeuristic gaze upon their subjects. What are some similarities and differences? Does Anasova, in capturing these women through the camera, recreate or reclaim the gaze for these women? 

2. Consider the props, settings, and poses in these images. How do these posed portraits draw out other parts of incarcerated women’s identities? What don’t we see?

Ada Trillo
Ada Trillo is a documentary photographer based in Philadelphia, PA, and Juarez, Mexico. Trillo holds degrees from the Instituto Marangoni in Milan and Drexel University in Philadelphia. Trillo’s work is concerned with human rights issues facing Latin American culture. Trillo has documented forced prostitution in Juarez, and the recent migrant caravan attempting to reach the U.S. Her work is included in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

“I was born in El Paso but raised in Juárez, Mexico. Because I'd been educated in the U.S., I crossed the US-Mexico border almost daily. I remember walking across the bridge that connects the sister cities and watching inflatable rafts fight the current of the Río Grande River below. Those lightweight vessels held migrants of the 1980s, desperately fleeing from crime, poverty, and political unrest. Today, as I walk across that same bridge, it feels as if I am watching history repeat itself.”

“Kevin eventually arrived at the U.S./Mexican Border and turned himself over to immigration, claiming asylum. Nobody has seen or heard from him since. [...] Other transgender members of the Migrant Caravan are similarly escaping a life of prejudice and social torment, hoping to find acceptance in a more tolerant society. The stigma of their lives/choices is so deeply rooted in the Latin American culture that even their fellow caravan members ostracized and abused them. Finally, in Mexico City, the LGBTQ community provided buses to the transgender members of the Caravan, to ensure their safety for the rest of the trip.”

“There are many misconceptions and rampant racism associated with the immigrants coming from Central and South America. My goal is to bring awareness to the faces and the stories of good, hardworking people that have had horrible experiences and have a legal right under the 1951 refugee convention to seek asylum.”

“Through all of my work, I hope that viewers here in the United States can begin to understand the odysseys many have undertaken to provide a brighter future for themselves and their children. The stories behind my photographs are both heartbreaking and complex, and they defy generalizations that seek to divide us. Through the lens of my camera, I hope to bring awareness and inform those who may have never been to the border and may not have ever met a refugee. Above all, I hope my art sparks conversations where there has been too much confusion and mistrust.”

Discussion Questions

1. Are Trillo’s photographs effective in showing the struggle of migrants? What strategies is Trillo using to depict these struggles?

2. Has Trillo’s background influenced her photographic practice in some way? Do you see this influence in the photographs? How?

3. What are the ways that Trillo is a part of this community, and what ways is she an outside observer?

“The world is full of stories. Many of those stories repeat what we already know. How many stories teach us to see the world from a truly different perspective? Indigenous peoples are cast as tragic victims of colonization and of climate change. Yet the views from the inside are not ones of despair, but joy. While the dominant cultures continue to gaze at us as they always have, Native storytellers work to offer our own perspectives through modern mediums. The way we work in photography is changing. The colonial gaze is tired.”

“I think that for those of us that can serve as interpreters between cultures, we inherit a responsibility to do so. Without cultural ambassadors who can walk between worlds, what we get are knee-jerk reactions to each other. Cultural biases are incredibly strong, and by their nature, invisible. But those knee-jerk responses can lead to devastating consequences, particularly as dominant colonial powers have created the boxes that indigenous peoples are forced to live in.”

“Native storytellers are inherently advocates for stories concerning indigenous communities. But more importantly, the stories we tell represent the realities we know. We balance showing indigenous issues like suicide and drug abuse against the stories of our triumphs and joys, such as the power of tradition in the modern world. We work hard to make sure the outside world understands that we are modern people, that we are still around, and that we have to make it work just like everyone else.”

“It’s impossible to ask every community to tell its own story. But right now, nearly all the stories come from what is essentially the dominant culture, the colonial viewpoint. I think it strikes a good balance to have specialized storytellers that are much closer to the communities they are describing. Aside from having a better intuitive sense about indigenous issues, we also are much more inclined to work collaboratively with the communities themselves. Indigenous communities have a completely different sense of permissions. In the dominant culture, you can just swoop in, take some pictures or write a story, and then leave. For indigenous storytellers, we are held to a different standard, and responsible for telling not just the story we want to tell, but the community’s notion of itself as well.”

“The bulk of what creates an indigenous culture is responses to the land and living within it. … For the last century, National Geographic has been showing images predominantly made by white men, which means from only the dominant colonial point of view. The problem that results is that only what interests and concerns photographers from the dominant culture gets shown. Their interpretations of the world have their values embedded inside.”

Discussion Questions

1. What qualities might make someone an adept cultural ambassador? What qualities do you see in Yuyan’s work that make this a role he fulfills?

2. What are ways a photographer might collaborate with subjects who come from a marginalized community? How does this change if the photographer is from outside that community?

3. How do we look back at problematic photographs like those in National Geographic or the Jesup collection with a modern lens? Do these images still hold value, or are they relics of a colonial society that should be discarded?