Physically, home is a form of mapping, an effort to control space. Beneath, the family intimacy becomes an abstract space, a potential space of resistance. Through stories told at the dinner table and photo albums kept by the families, the domestic narratives are passed on between generations; or they disappear and are forgotten with the passing generation. Karen Strassler noted that since the New Order regime, photography has become more accessible to the Indonesians*. Although photography was initially done in the photo studio, the booming investment and the import of foreign products during the 1970s in Indonesia brought cameras and photography closer to its citizens. When economic conditions and infrastructure development in Indonesia began to develop, the consumption of photography increased. Since then, the trend of documenting family activities has begun to become the new norm in society. A family photograph is a small, collective recording of several individuals that is produced voluntarily and in a participatory manner, and is consumed in the domestic realm. However, the domestic space is a spark of the condition of the outside world. These photos are likely to hold fragments of historical records that can be decoded to re-interpret the major historical narrative.
Take, for example, a series of photographss of a circumcision process in the 1980s depicting a child being held by his arms and legs. The use of anaesthesia in circumcision was introduced during that time. The circumcision was performed by a Mantri (a registered male nurse with only specific skills, e.g. circumcision) with simple equipment. It was not as sophisticated as today. With lasers and non-injection anaesthetics, circumcision nowadays is easy, fast, and almost painless. Apart from being a concrete visual depiction of the circumcision process in the 1980s, these photographs provide a visual artefact of the development of medical technology in Indonesia. The documentation of work activities stored in family albums often includes other community members. The multiple roles of family members—who are also members of other communities—negotiate the very definition of ‘family’ in the family archive. The multi-dimensional relationship positions the family archive as a recording of the network between communities. Rather than just a record of domestic life, it potentially records broader communities such as the working family, village community, urban community, and community as nation.
An example is the ABRI Masuk Desa (military involvement on villages) programme, which could be found in this family album. The documentation shows the active involvement of military officers in village infrastructure development, civilian skills training and the Transmigrasi program (resettlement of Java residents to other islands for the distribution of population). Adrian Vickers writes that this was the government’s effort of controlling space. Assigning military involvement in the villages was a panoptic practice to monitor civilian activities**. Not only in villages, the “normalization” of college life in the 1970s was also carried out to control student movements. After all, the New Order regime was best friends with the military, since President Suharto also came from the same group. The military was positioned as the hero throughout the contexts of the independence movement, the revolution, and the maintenance of national stability. During the New Order era, military officers of certain ranks held a special position in the governmental system. It gave them more privilege and improved their social class. They gained the authority to manage state companies, plantations, hotels, sugar factories and transportation services***. In addition, the symbols of patriotism and nationalism were closely associated with the military figures. On the anniversary of Indonesian independence, children were often dressed up as soldiers in uniform. Most Indonesians assumed that becoming a military man would help to achieve social and financial security.
While photographs of work portray the father as the head of the family, women are often portrayed as mother and wife. In some family photographs, women are shown to be involved in various activities, including meetings, sports, neighbourhood life, and domestic work. In some events, they appear in fashion adapted from the portrait of Kartini, a historical figure of women emancipation in Indonesia. Today, the promise of women emancipation has been reduced to a myth. Stripped from its activism and intellectuality, the value of emancipation is reduced to mere fashion; kebaya and [hair] bun. This indoctrination is supported by jargons such as 3M (macak, masak, manak; dress up, cook, and give birth)****. Julia Suryakusuma calls this as ‘State Ibuism’ or ‘State Motherhood’, which is to indoctrinate and control women’s role in society*****. This is a concept that places women only in the domestic space with a domestic role, as wife and mother with responsibility to serve and support their husbands. The ideal woman was officially personified in the 1978 State Policy Guidelines (GBHN) through the concept of Dharma Wanita.
Families from the upper class—usually the military, engineers, prosecutors etc.—tend to have substantial amount of family documentation. Given that the main mission of the New Order was infrastructure development, the spirit of that era positioned certain professions as important to the national agenda. The military functioned as the safeguard of government projects, while engineers and prosecutors were the hands and brains of infrastructure development. With their social and economic class, they were among the groups who could afford and access photography. In this sense, it can be assumed that photography tends to record a certain class. It is too ambitious to claim that family photographs could record the spirit of an era. As a sample, it only represents a limited scope of society and class. It is premature to generalize the condition of society through this limited medium without interdisciplinary studies. This process certainly has many challenges, because photography and history have their own complexities in terms of their discourses. The photos discussed above are mostly found photographs, which I call orphan images******. They were discarded or abandoned at flea markets, thrift shops, and even as garbage. This is an effort to adopt them by rediscovering and activating them as archive. Mechanical technology and their simple physical form have made these lost and found images so resistant. They can be easily found because they are visible and palpable. Unlike digital photo archives which are intangible and more prone to modification and manipulation; or photographs in the Internet (social media albums) which are super easy to access and yet could be potentially misused (for surveillance, advertising, and data theft); these physical photographs are more resistant to the challenges of the digital and virtual world.
Photography tends to be used to portray an ideal image. However, since family photographs are created for domestic consumption, they are at least more straightforward and innocent. Adopting these orphan images is an effort to access private—collective documents, and to peek at traces of the historical discourse from the intimacy of family stories. In this fast-paced era, this is an attempt to linger on peripheral narratives before they are swept away by the swift currents of time.
Arif Furqan
Freelance photographer and writer based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Currently doing project on Unhistoried, an artistic/research on Indonesian family photographs, narratives, and archive. Also a part of Flock Project, a collective exploring the possibilities of photographic works through printed matters. Co-founder of Walkingalam, community focusing on photography education and collaboration. Now currently enjoying slow living in rural Indonesia.
This article is translated from Bahasa Indonesia, “Foto Keluarga ala Orba; Teknologi Khitan, Militer Masuk Desa, dan Ibuisme Negara”, published in Arkademy.id, July 2020.
Endnotes:
* Strassler, K. (2010). Refracted visions: Popular photography and national modernity in Java. Durham and London: Duke University Press
** Vickers, A. (2013). A history of modern Indonesia (2nd ed). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*** Ibid.
**** Hasba, I. B., & Wildana, T. D. (2017). Patriarkhisme Pancasila: Dialektika perempuan dalam perumusan Pancasila dan pembangunan bangsa Indonesia’. In A. Khanif (Ed.), Pancasila dalam Pusaran Globalisasi. Yogyakarta: LKIS Pelangi Aksara.
***** Suryakusuma, J. (2011). Ibuisme negara – State ibuism: Kontruksi sosial keperempuanan Orde Baru. Depok: Komunitas Bambu.
****** This is one of the projects in Unhistoried — Indonesian family photograph, narrative, and archive.