In the Eyes of the Beholder
The charm of women returned to the lenses of Guntur Soekarno’s creativity after years of absence.
Guntur Soekarno returns from a long hiatus and presents new photographic works to document Indonesian beauties
Little do people know that Soekarno, or intimately known as Bung Karno, had many hobbies. He collected paintings and sculptures, played magic tricks, did martial arts of the Cimande-style pencak silat, and shot portraits. Of course, all the models were women from different circles: a doctor acquaintance’s wife, a female employee from the
State Secretariat, a stewardess from the Pan American Airways whom he frequently met during chartered flights for official state visits, and many others. As far as I could remember, among a few cameras he had, Bung Karno often used Leica 135. It was such a pity that they were not stored properly; today, it is difficult to find any photographic works by Bung Karno.
Since I shared the same hobby with my father, I kept safely one or two prints as a keepsake and reference. In 1955 I began my photography journey with Kodak Instamatic Baby Box, which Bung Karno gave to commemorate the good grades I got at school. The camera was easy to use because it only needed a look into the viewfinder, gave a slight adjustment of the composition and snap! After a quick printing process at the lab, the photo would immediately be ready. At first, the models were my younger siblings, Bung Karno and my mother, Ibu Fatmawati. I began to feel the joy of photographing people and was eager to develop a solid portfolio. Thus I searched for models to represent Indonesian beauties outside my family circle, which found my female friends and the wives and children of employees within the Merdeka Palace.
Back then, photos were still in black-and-white because the colour version was unknown. When I was in the second grade of junior high, Bung Karno gifted me quite a sophisticated camera, the Rolleiflex 6x6cm. Since changing to this camera, I became familiar with how the light meter, diaphragm size and focus control for distance worked. Moreover, I studied about types of films using the American Standard Association from ASA 100 to 200 and 400. I also learned to process negatives and print photos at Merdeka Palace by turning the warehouse under the palace into a dark room as a processing lab. All of these photography lessons came
from asking questions and learning from Rochman, the official Palace photographer. My autodidact learning source also included reading many photography books.
Thanks to many gifts and prizes, my camera collection had grown by the time I enrolled in high school: Asahi Pentax, Rollei Prego, Canonet and Polaroid. Along with the advanced camera and skill, I had even more varieties and numbers of women who became my models. One thing that remained constant until today is my choice to photograph non-professional models, the people in our daily lives who rarely pose in front of the camera. From my experience, when I take photos of professional models, they tend to patronize. For example, when I asked her to turn to the left, she protested because she usually felt prettier to be photographed from her right side. I would then become annoyed, and the idea in my head immediately disappeared.
During my university years as an Institut Teknologi Bandung’s Mechanical Engineering student, I was even more serious about continuing my photography hobby. As I studied under Obaja Susanto, a respected figure at Bandung Amateur Photographic Association (PAF Bandung), I began to document the photos into an album. In no time had I mastered the art and science of photography, both black-and-white and colour photographs. My camera collection continued to grow with super-sophisticated types, such as the Minolta X 700, the Zenith Camera with a telephoto lens, a gift from the Soviet Embassy, and the Mini Minox camera often used for intelligence activities.
I was most proud of the single-reflex lens (SLR) Hasselblad 500 C made by Gothenburg in Sweden with lenses made by the famous Zeiss, which NASA astronauts used. The sharpness of the photos is extraordinary, especially for photographing a model. I didn’t know how many dozens of models I shot with