In spite of the resistance I feel every time that I have the idea of going out and photographing Ubud, each time I have revealing experiences –– certainty in the work I’m doing, even when the topic is hard for me to define. It doesn’t matter that I can fully describe it in a rational way. I feel it in the shapes and forms that appear in front of my lense.
This incapacity to define, it seems, spawns from fear. It still haunts me some of the interactions I’ve had after speaking openly about how I feel when businesses take advantage of the image of Bali as a paradise island, and the easiness with which I gave up rather than standing up for what I believe.
It’s easier to romanticize my experience than to put together a thesis about my observations that I’m willing to defend. It’s also clear to me that I can’t do my job well if I’m overwhelmed by the emotions that rise up during my process.
That’s another reason why I feel it’s important for me to go out of Indonesia. Here I don’t feel safe nor with the right to express myself freely. It’s not necessarily a matter of place, I’m aware, but there’s nothing like being in my own land to feel grounded and supported in ways that I haven’t found here.
I recognize that, ultimately, everything will boil down to me and the effort with which I search a way of pointing up a light to what I’m doing. I no longer carry illusions of being “discovered”. My duty to my work is to finish putting the pieces together.
Everything else comes after.
