Introducing The Bandung Streets [Photography] Project

You may have noticed that I have not been posting here for a while now. No, I have not stopped making pictures and doing photo journaling/blogging about the city of Bandung yet. It's just that Bandung Daily Photo will have to wait for a while as I have more important engagements and projects to attend to. One of them is this street photography project for the 200th anniversary of Bandung.

"Bandung Streets" as I call it is a project to document life on Bandung streets as it is. It contains candid or uninhibited view of Bandung's urban environment with the emphasis of presenting the human aspect, the unseen nitches of the city, and problems that the city is facing that need to be solved soon.

The project aims to collect more than 500 photographs, of which 200 will be selected to be published in a book.

Please support this project by visiting the blog and comment.

Thank you.
Best regards,
Eki

Skywatch: Signature in the Air

An old telephone pole whose cables had been cut off near Stasiun Hall (Bandung main railway station).

This is Skywatch Friday post. Please follow the link to see other participating bloggers' posts from all many other parts of the world.

Stationery Vendors

Stationery vendors in front of Kantor Pos Besar Bandung (Bandung Grand Post Office) on Jalan Asia Afrika. Business is quieter for them now than it used to be before the era of the internet and cell phones. Now people don't send as many mails as they used to be. They now prefer emails, text messaging, and communicating with one another through social networking channels such as the facebook, etc.

Sausage Tree

Does sausage grow on a tree?

Of course not. But there is a tree that bears the name: sausage tree (kigelia afrikana). As the Latin name indicates, this tree is originally from Africa. The tree in the picture, however, is not in Africa. It is - and there are quite a few of them - part of the collection of Taman Hutan Raya (lit. Great Forest Park) Ir. H. Djuanda at Dago in the north of Bandung.

According to the park's records, the original seeds of the trees were a gift from one of the African delegates in the 1955 Asian-African Conference. The trees grow well here that the park has been able to give some of their offsprings to other botanical gardens in the country.

Lampung Sai Bride and Groom

Lampung, a province in the southern tip of the island of Sumatra, has several wedding traditions. One of them is Lampung Sai that I'm featuring here.

Mad Buffalo

These masked characters are the performers of Seni Helaran Kebo Ngamuk (lit. mad buffalo perfomance art) from the Indramayu regency in the northeastern coast of the Province of West Java (of which Bandung is the capital city).

Kebo Ngamuk performance consists of several acrobatic attractions with a mock-up mad buffalo as the central figure and a number of masked performers like these fighting with the buffalo. The performance is accompanied with dymanic music that is typical of the northern cost of West Java region.

My World: Sisingaan

Sisingaan (also called Gotong Singa) or the lion dance is a Sundanese performace art that is originally from the area of Subang in the northern coast of West Java.



This performance consists of several subsets of performances. They include:
(1) Tatalu or arang-arang bubuka, a dynamic musical opening;
(2) Kidung or kembang gadung, a singing performance;
(3) Ibingan, a dancing performance;
(4) a set of accrobatic performances, and
(5) a closing musical performance.



The name "sisingaan" is derived from a pair of lion-like figures that become the central attraction of the show. These lions are usually used to carry children like the ones you see in the pictures.



Sisingaan can be performed at any helaran (festivals). But it is usually performed at circumscision ceremony and other carnivals.

This post is linked to My World Tuesday, a weekly meme where photo bloggers show their worlds through pictures. Please click the link to see posts from paricipating bloggers from around the world.