Shaima Ayoub:
Congratulations on being selected for the 2021 Shiekh Saoud Al Thani Single Image award! Please talk us through the winning image.
Heriadi Joewono:
I would like to thank you, the jurors and Tasweer team for giving me the chance to be part of the awards, this conversation, and to express my idea. This picture captures a kid playing football in a family gathering. It is in the morning, as we can see from the long shadows. I see an interesting moment where I could freeze movement – a moment when the ball is bouncing from the floor, moving out of its shadow. The ball moves towards the goalkeeper who was getting ready to catch it, as though overtaken by his own shadow.
When I think about it further, for me, this photograph depicts a play between reality and imagination. Objective reality and subjective perception (represented by the shadow) mix, constructing the world as something we understand and experience. It is a game that could be fun but could also be ominous. When my thoughts are in a more negative mood, the image represents how reality can be perceived. The truth itself stays out there. It happens unavoidably that the truth becomes less important for us to seek. We tend to be satisfied prematurely with our conclusion and forget that, by nature, we have perception bias.
Shaima Ayoub:
How would you describe your photography?
Heriadi Joewono:
I am still experimenting. I’m trying to find ways forward – for myself and the viewer. The trial and error happens in how I try to visually communicate, how to create dialogue. Perhaps it will always be this way, and I keep changing. I try to keep open-ended, and to maintain the passion for there being a lot more for me to learn and to try. In general, I find photography gives me a way to communicate, to have a conversation with myself and with an audience, which is more freeing than a written or verbal communication. It gives me a sense of freedom – to tell the story without being too explicit, without insisting. The pace of the conversation with images allows for a more affable process. My photography is perhaps too selfish, more about what I want to express than anything else! It’s also not a profession for me (for the moment), it is not an assignment, it is not a book (yet).
Shaima Ayoub:
You previously mentioned that you don’t have any formal training in photography and so I’m even more curious about what got you into it.
Heriadi Joewono:
It started when I was an architecture student and was making photographs as architecture documentation. From architecture photography, it expanded to documenting life around me, and since then went on and developed in different directions. What provoked me and changed my idea in photography is when I met photographer Nikos Economopoulos, in his Magnum Photo masterclass. The encounter gave me a kind of confidence in exploring photography differently.
Shaima Ayoub:
How does your job now, as an architect, influence your photography practice?
Heriadi Joewono:
I think it affects it a lot. The way I see space, the way I see the relation between people and space. The way I perceive composition or how to compose, playing colors, exercising shadow, etc. And, for me, they are intertwining and interfering with each other: My architecture background impacts my photography, and photography has made me re-approach architecture differently. Photography has influenced my considerations in the design process: how visual/ image affects perception, how architecture will be perceived as a 2-D visual language, or in the presentation and communication of architecture, for example.
