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In 2008 and 2009, a Dutch photographer, Jan Banning, and an anthropologist, Hilde Janssen, traveled around Indonesia to document, with photographs and testimonies, survivors of militarized sexual abuse by the Japanese military during the three-year occupation (1942-1945) of the former Dutch colony, the Netherlands East Indies. We argue that the resultant photographic project can best be understood within the framework of the "politics of pity" and the associated genres of representation. The project creators anticipated a cosmopolitan audience that might be moved to action to support the survivors. Yet, as the project was exhibited in different sites, the women's memories were interpreted through local knowledge systems and mnemonic practices. We analyze the reception of these photographs in diverse local contexts.
Keywords: militarized sexual abuse; Asia-Pacific War; survivor memory; photography; Indonesia; Japan; Netherlands
The photographs
From April to August 2010, the Kunsthal Museum of Rotterdam presented an exhibition of photographs depicting elderly Indonesian women in their eighties or so. The photographs were in portrait style, showing head and shoulders, slightly larger than life, with the subjects posed against dark backgrounds. The photographic quality was excellent-one could see details like individual grey hairs standing out against the dark backdrop, wrinkles etched on faces, moles and liver spots on skin, cataracts in eyes. In one case, the camera had captured a fly resting on a woman's hat. This suggested a moment frozen in time, but also evoked a hot climate where flies moved sluggishly. The plain, dark background reduced historical and geographical specificity, but the sight of the fly, ready to fly off at any moment, suggested a whole world outside the photograph.
All of the women have a front-on orientation to the camera and a direct gaze. The similar pose, orientation and size of the photographs suggest that the women have something in common, that they have a similar relationship to the camera, to the photographer and to the viewer. These positionings also suggest careful staging on the part of the photographer. Some women wear sarong kebaya and some wear a jillbab or other head covering. Each distinctive style of dress suggests regional differences or membership in particular ethnic, religious or cultural communities. There is a tension between seeing each woman as one of a group...