http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/taking-photos-—-and-action-—-in-indonesia/
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In a region of Indonesia that is blessed with gold, copper and timber, the people who have lived there for centuries are cursed with poverty. The indigenous Papuans of the country’s two easternmost provinces have suffered, as they watched migrants come from other parts of the country to set up profitable businesses or get better-paying jobs.
The Papuans do have the distinction of leading in one category: they have been ravaged by high rates of H.I.V. and AIDS — by some estimates they have an infection rate 15 times higher than the rest of the country, which continues to experience annual increases in new infections according to the United Nations. Some 600,000 people are infected nationwide, the United Nations estimated, but the Indonesian government said only a fifth of those were taking the necessary medication despite universal access to health care.
Among indigenous Papuans, a lack of education and access to medicine combined with social stigma and moralizing have fueled the crisis, even as the Indonesian government pledged recently that it would step up its efforts to combat the disease.
Andri Tambunan, an American-raised photographer who lives in Jakarta, has been documenting the epidemic among the indigenous Papuans since 2009. The images in his project “Against All Odds” are a searing reminder that while in other parts of the world AIDS is increasingly becoming a manageable, chronic illness, it remains a ferociously deadly disease among the Papuans.
“I really believe in the power and potential of photography, to see what it can do to bring about change,” he said. “Photography has this ability to evoke empathy. You can put the viewer in the same moment, the same visceral space. It makes you think. Maybe it makes you angry or sad.”
Andri TambunanA man in traditional Papuan attire from Asolo Gaima, a village near Wamena, was tested for sexually transmitted disease at a clinic.
Mr. Tambunan was there to show the final moments in the lives of young women who were unknowingly infected by their husbands. He followed people as they went to get tested — and stayed with them to learn that they often failed to follow up on treatment because they lived too far from urban clinics or didn’t want others to know. He chronicled traditional healing sessions, where pigs were sacrificed to cleanse humans of their ills.
He showed a mother’s diary entry for the day she buried her toddler, a daintily dressed little girl in a white open casket.
Mr. Tambunan, 31, started this project almost by accident in 2009 when he was going to visit relatives in Jakarta. He came across an online article about Mama Yuli, whose husband infected her with the virus. He died, and she later passed the virus on to her son, who also died. She was rail-thin and shunned by her neighbors.
A nonprofit group helped her get medication. As her health improved, she took the step of going public.
“She gave a testimony in front of her church’s congregation,” Mr. Tambunan said. “She went public, on the radio, to tell people, ‘Look at me, I was ill and now I’m here.’ I thought that was incredible.”
He was able to make contact with the group that helped Mama Yuli, and within a week of being in Jakarta, he traveled to the eastern provinces.
“Having a camera in my hand gave me a reason to be there,” he said. “It also gave me this responsibility. Who else can really tell the story? I met Mama Yuli, and she introduced me to her friends who had the same struggle. This is something that had not been documented.”
He learned that while the government had started to make treatment available, it was limited, and it was often out of reach of people who lived in remote rural areas and could not afford to get to clinics easily or regularly. Condom use — the majority of transmission in the area is through intercourse, not drugs — was limited. Local officials frowned upon educating young people about condoms, preferring to stress abstinence, Mr. Tambunan said.
“Condoms have this connotation that you are going to do a sinful act,” he said. “So it’s not encouraged. One group wanted to put condom education in a book they were distributing, but the government official in charge of the project said it would only encourage kids to have sex. So in terms of education there’s still low awareness.”
Which is not to say the government has not been receiving assistance to fight the disease’s spread. What Mr. Tambunan hopes to do is to shed light on the crisis among native Papuans so that the international community can hold the Indonesian government accountable. To do that, he is self-publishing a limited-edition book of his photographs along with a lengthy text that describes in detail the conditions and attitudes that have allowed this disease to reach alarming levels. The project has been given a boost by support from Pictures of the Year International, the Reminders Project and contributions from friends and family. It is currently being exhibited at the Angkor Photo Festival.
“The only way I can have an impact is by getting this to the people who give the Indonesian government money,” Mr. Tambunan said. “It’s not necessarily a photo book. It’s an information book.”
It is also, for him, an action book.
“I just can’t stand back and not do anything,” he said. “There are times you have to make the call. Can you sleep through this? It doesn’t bother your conscience? For me, this was a professional responsibility.”
Andri Tambunan
A pastor prayed and blessed Dewi on the way to her cremation.