In Javanese, wayang means puppet, wayangan means shadow, and wewayangan means reflection. The term orang is simpler: it signifies human. Thus, wayang orang is a theatrical genre that also includes several other art forms such as dance, gamelan music, and literature. The performances, which can last approximately nine hours, narrate storiesfrom the two great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
Another form of wayang is shadow play. While the core story remains the same, the dalang – the puppet master – occasionally modernizes it by incorporating incidents drawnfrom the daily life of the local community into the tales of the gods. These elements allow the audience to see themselves reflected in the play, which can evoke feelings of pleasure or even annoyance. However, the audience is usually pleased because these familiar stories elevate them from the ordinary to the level of the narratives about gods – and people need to feel exceptional.
One of the most important centres of wayang is Yogyakarta, where I spend part of my life. For nearly a decade, I was taking photographs of remote areas accessible only by motorbike and of the people I encountered along the way, though our exchanges were often limited to just a few words and smiles. Last year, I decided to return to studio portraits for a while, in a manner similar to how the material for my first exhibition was created almost three decades ago (The Engelhard Legacy, 1996, Dorottya Gallery).
I use my living space as my studio, setting up the simplest neutral background and a single light. Even so, the place is transformed into a stage.
My models receive minimalinstructions; if they need props, they either use their own personal items or select something from my natural environment. However, the situation inevitably lifts them onto a stage where they play a role – not one written by someone else, but a role that is their own. The picture elevates them out of the ordinary, sometimes even idealizing them, yet it undeniably speaks about them, just as the wayang elevates the ordinary to the stage amidst the exceptional stories of the gods. In an intensified way, the same thing happens in the studio that tends to happen whenever someone is aware of being photographed, knowing that the moment, the gaze, and the gesture will be preserved and seen by others, even years later.
At the time of my first exhibition, I worked under similar conditions, photographing writers who were either my closest friends or whom I knew only from afar yet who, in some way,defined that period of my life. The result was more personal than a pantheon, even though many of the subjects held significant places in the Hungarian literary pantheon.
Similarly, I have photographed those who, in some way, define my life in Java – close friends and more distant acquaintances. This group includes visual artists, musicians, photographers and former photo models, religious educators and batik dyers, high school students and traditional Javanese dancers as well as a film director with theirdaughters. Some of them are non-Javanese who either live there or just visited me for a few days.
Although the dalang is indeed a puppet master, the first lesson they must learn, even before memorising the nine-hour text of the epics, is that the wayangs are not mere puppets. They have souls and lives. The dalang partly controls them but they also possess their own freedom of movement. The light is always the same yet the shadow changes and plays with it. What puppet masters understand even better is that theirknowledge would be futile without the wayangs – at best, they could be storytellers. Without the wayangs, they would be unemployed as dalangs.