The project “Men, Mountains And The Sea” by Rony Zakaria will be exhibited in July during the upcoming Les Rencontres D’arles Festival. The exhibition is curated by Dimitri Beck in collaboration with Photolux Festival and the Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation.
Spread over 17,000 islands and located in the Pacific Ring of Fire, Indonesia is home to more than 150 active volcanoes and marked by coastlines that span over 80,000 km. Here, lives are affected by two major entities – the mountains and the sea.
Photolux and The MRO Foundation are pleased to bring to Arles the work of the 2015 Roberto Del Carlo Photolux Award winner Rony Zakaria. In a series of evocative images, Zakaria explores the deep spirituality that connects men to nature in Indonesia.
Rony Zakaria – IndonesiaDisplayed in rich, grainy black-and-white: Men, Mountains and the Sea leads us from lava-spewing volcanic heights to the shores of a vast and moody sea, exploring along the way the sacred rituals and traditions observed by these islanders in their quest to tame the fury of their powerful hosts.
In an interview on his winning the Photolux award, Zakaria said, “When I started the project I just wanted to see the connection of people with the mountains and the sea. As I go further in my project, I get the sense that people in my country have a deeper connection with the nature. These entities, the volcanoes and also the sea, are sacred for them.”
Since 2008, Zakaria has movingly documented this ongoing history of the Indonesian people, their communities and their relationship with nature in this island nation. The images have a classic, poetic beauty to them while never losing hold of the stories they are telling.
