Soulscape Road
Oscar Motuloh
Curator : Bérénice Angremy
Photographing the disasters is one of the missions of photojournalism since the beginnings of photography. Before the photography, there were even some artists sent on the disasters fronts. There are those who have reported a shocking or captivating testimony, but there are also those, facing the tragedy, who have permeated their images of a soul and an internal reflection of the artist.
In the same way as Goya, who terrorized both the artist himself and his public with his famous work The disasters of war, and who seemed to denounce the absurd horror of war through his drawings, some photographers like Oscar Motuloh transmit an atmosphere that goes beyond the image of the tragedies of their time.
Disasters, tsunamis, earthquakes, landslides are the landscapes of Soulscape Road, a series of photographs taken until 2011, demonstrating an Indonesia tortured by its devastating natural elements. Oscar Motuloh, photographer and curator, who created the Jornalistic Photo gallery in Antara, is the key figure of the Antara Photo Press agency. He captured places crossed by disasters, which seem timeless at the same time frozen in a specific moment. The black-and-white photographs are closest to the earth, drought, crevasses and trees disfigured by storms.
Photographs first, then book, Soulscape Road has recently become a film made in cooperation with the musicians Toni Prabowo and vocal Nyak Ina Raseuki, whose soundtrack is throbbing and bewitching and like a call of the earth.
