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Asia through a different lens

A rare glimpse inside societies where cameras are scarce
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May 9th, 2007 issue

Photo by Rajesh Vora
Cheesy studio photographs like this one from the "Selling Dreams" series offer unintended psychological portraits.
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The exhibition misleadingly titled “Air Asia” at Langhans Gallery was originally called “Another Asia” when a larger version of the show was displayed at the Noorderlicht Photofestival in the Netherlands. A more apt title would be “The Other Asia,” since it presents an eye-opening view of societies in South and Southeast Asia, rather than of dominant Asian countries such as China and Japan.
The exhibition in Prague is a collection of historical and contemporary images by 16 photographers from countries including Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia and India as well as Bulgaria, Australia, France, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom.
Air Asia

Langhans Galerie Praha Ends July 1. Vodičkova 37, Prague 1–New Town. Open Tues.–Fri. noon–6 p.m., Sat. 11 a.m.–4 p.m.

The helpful guide to the exhibition (in English and Czech) explains that in most countries of South and Southeast Asia, photography was extremely restricted until the 1990s. Essentially, it was a government-controlled applied art instead of an independent fine art.
The year 1992 is considered a milestone for photographers of the region because that was when the Art Institute of Jakarta opened a photography department. And, in Indonesia, the national news agency Antara opened one of the first photography galleries in the region.
Even in countries without severe political repression, such as Malaysia, tough economic circumstances limited camera ownership to the higher echelons of society until the 1980s. In a country such as India, widespread poverty severely restricts ownership of this luxury consumer item even today.
Thus, the show contains literally hundreds of found images and photos collected from studios reaching back to the turn of the 20th century. Put together, they provide a unique historical and sociocultural insight into the region.
The most absurd images are from Rajesh Vora’s series “Kulsum Studio, Selling Dreams on Bromides — Traveling Photo Studios in India (2000–2004).” Lining the gallery’s stairway, his 40 small photos in colorful frames are primarily of poor Indians who paid 35 cents to “have their dreams fulfilled” —  meaning to stand in front of kitschy, hand-painted backdrops with a tiny Air India airplane or sexy Bollywood movie stars, for example.
Nishta Jain’s City of Photographs is a poetic documentary film about the difficulties and successes of small photo studios in India, using personal stories to reveal the significance of photos for the lowest classes in India.
In the same room, I-Lann Yee (born in 1971) has an installation titled “The Pakard Photo Studio” (from the series “Through Rose-Colored Glasses,” 2002), which shows 100 baby photos, 100 wedding couples, 100 families and 100 assorted groups or individuals. The photos were taken between 1977 and 1982 in a photo studio in Malaysia, and they serve as a sociocultural document of the changes in the country, as well as a rush of exotic eye candy.
Sue Hajdu (born in 1966 in Australia) has two noteworthy installations from her series “Unspeakable Memory” that are intended to fill in the gaps of public memory about modern Vietnamese history. Information about the Vietnam War is still suppressed by the Vietnamese government, 30 years after it ended.
In Miss Peacock (2001), Hajdu has collected almost 100 black-and-white photographs of a glamorous though forgotten film star from Saigon’s cosmopolitan era of the 1960s. Chou Chou From Texas (2000) is made up of five photo postcards that were sent from a South Vietnamese military officer to his girlfriend back home while he was on a training mission in Texas. For some comic relief, Hajdu has translated the corny texts, full of many “miss you and kisses for you baby,” that accompany the pictures of the officer standing beside kitschy monuments in Texas.
Dominique Mérigard revives painful memories from the recent history of Cambodia with his series “Témoin S-21” (1994–95). Mérigard took photos of the infamous security prison 21 (S-21) in Phnom Penh, where almost 17,000 Cambodians were imprisoned, tortured and killed under the terror of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Every victim was systematically photographed before his or her execution.
Mérigard offers photos of the prison and portraits of current residents of the prison’s neighborhood, representing a new life since that time. Yet for him these portraits also represent the faces of the thousands of victims of the prison. Among the photos are two framed texts that seem to speak to our own times: “Better to arrest 10 persons wrongly than to release one by mistake” and “To spare you is no gain; to kill you is no loss.”
The most compelling personal expressions in this exhibit are by Michael Shaowanasai, who shows a selection from his series “Self-Portraits” (2004–05). In these, Shaowanasai is a vixen with fire-red lips, false eyelashes and a rose blouse with four variations — as a transvestite Buddhist, Muslim, Jew and Christian. Another standout in the show is Annu Palakunnathus Mathew’s manipulation of Bollywood movie posters, which are strategically placed in the first room on the ground floor. These mock posters are perhaps the best introduction to this colorful blast of exotica in South and Southeast Asian photography.


Other articles in Night & Day (9/05/2007):

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