Sunrise in Sanur

Wayan Juniartha, The Jakarta Post, Sanur | Thu, 08/05/2010 9:27 AM | Feature

Sunrise has always been associated with beauty. As the new light embraces the earth, people see the end of darkness and the beginning of new hope.

Morning Sunshine. Courtesy I Made Adi Dharmawan

Naturally, sunrise has also become a perennial source of inspiration for those who seek to narrate beauty — including poets, painters, photographers — as well as people seeking to be part of the beauty itself — meditators and spiritualists.

An ongoing exhibit “Sunrise in Sanur” is the most recent evidence of photographers’ affixation with the beauty of sunrise. Held at the Griya Santrian Gallery, the exhibit features the works of 31 local photographers, and runs until Aug. 15.

“The displayed works provide the audience with diverse visual interpretations of sunrise and on Sanur,” Denpasar Photographers Club chairman Iwan Darmawan said.

Iwan, a former Bali Post chief photojournalist-turned promising novelist, is the brains behind the

exhibition. The concept for the exhibit, he said, was triggered by a simple event.

“I browsed the Net and was surprised to see a large number of photographs on Sanur and sunrise posted on various sites and blogs. And the number kept growing,” he said.

This observation drove Iwan to organize an exhibit focused on that theme. He presented his idea to I.B. Gde Sidharta Putra, the owner of Griya Santrian Gallery and an influential community figure in Sanur.

Sidharta praised the idea and readily came up with the money to fund the selection process and the exhibit.

Sunrise At Sanur. Courtesy Iwan Latief

Iwan set up a Facebook account “Sunrise in Sanur” through which he invited members of the Denpasar Photographers Club and other photographers to submit selected images on sunrise in Sanur.

The response he received was tremendous. By the end of the submission period, 596 photographs had been uploaded to the account by no less than 286 photographers.

“Selecting 31 works from the 596 images was a headache for me. But I relied on the images’ ability to not only present beauty but also present diverse facets of Sanur,” Iwan said.

The end result is a display of stunning images, and some of them do present surprising stories. For instance, an image about the city’s lowly officers tasked with cleaning up the beach. They do their chore early at dawn so as not to disturb visitors or tourists who would flock the beach to watch sunrise.

“We often forget about their existence. We come to the beach, a clean one, and watch sunrise and often we don’t even notice that the beach is clean, let alone contemplate on the existence of these workers who clean the beach on daily basis,” Iwan said.

To some extent, the exhibit is an effort to provide sunrise with meanings and contexts, different visual narratives on the different meanings of sunrise and Sanur to the photographers behind the camera as well as the people who were in front of their lenses.

Training In The Morning. Courtesy Nyoman Widiyana

The displayed images also underline technical experimentations pursued by the local photographers.

Some used HDR (High Dynamic Range) techniques to render their images dramatic colors and haunting contrasts, while others played with fish eye lenses to give birth to images with extreme perspectives.

Young photographer Krisna Wirajaya employed a classical technique of multiple exposures to capture a series of movements in a single frame in Morning Rhythm.

As it happens, “Sunrise in Sanur” also has a non-photographic agenda.

“Through the images displayed here and in the Facebook account, we would like to send a message to potential travelers and photographers abroad, that Sanur is a good place to visit, a good place with many outstanding spots to take photographs,” Iwan Darmawan said.

Once a small fishing village ruled by influential Brahmin families, tourism has transformed Sanur into a modern, upscale resort village with luxurious eateries, avant-garde galleries and exotic boutique hotels.

Yet, the influential Brahmin families are still there, guiding the modern community with age-old wisdoms.

Each morning, the Brahmin priests commence their day by conducting Surya Sewana, the devotion to the sun. They will utter a sacred mantra wishing for the well-being of all creatures, Hindus and non-Hindus alike, as well as for the happiness of the whole universe.

The sun is considered the perfect symbol of this universality of good hope since it provides warmth and light to everybody and everything on this Earth.