"Alun-alun" Bandung - Life at Bandung's City Square #1

"Tahu Gejrot" vendor at Bandung City Square - ©Eki Qushay Akhwan

Text and pictures copyrights ©Eki Qushay Akhwan, all rights reserved

City square (or in Indonesian "alun-alun") holds a very important function in the Javanese cosmological concept of a city. Alun-alun is not just an open public space or park in the center of the city. It is literally the front yard of a king/ruler's palace/residence. Surrounding it are the various symbols of a society/nation's livelihood. By rule, the palace should be located on the southern part of the square, facing north. On the west is placed a house of worship (the divine element: a mosque in Moslem Indonesia; a temple in Hindu era Indonesia). East of the square is the place for the market (the mundane/worldly element), and north is the place for the administrative offices of the kingdom/country/city.

Bandung's city square is as old as the city itself. The square was built as part of the new capital city of Bandung Regency in the early 19th century (before then, the capital was located at Dayeuh Kolot [old city], further south of where the current city square is located). The square's face has undergone a lot of changes since then, but one thing remains the same: It's still a bustling, open public space where citizens meet and do different kinds of activities.

In this series of photo coverage, I am trying to show you what life is like at Bandung's City Square today.


Leatherware and trinkets vendor at Bandung City Square - ©Eki Qushay Akhwan



"Sate" vendor at Bandung City Square - ©Eki Qushay Akhwan

Jay-walking or Bridge-crossing? (And the Winning Photo)

Text and pictures by © Eki Qushay Akhwan, all rights reserved.

People using the pedestrian crossing bridge to cross the street like in the above photo is probably a common sight in some other countries, but it is not in Bandung. Many people here prefer to jaywalk to cross the street rather than using the pedestrian crossing bridge. One of the reasons is perhaps because our streets are relatively narrow and it takes more time and energy to cross them safely using the pedestrian crossing bridge than jaywalking, despite the risks. But then, when it is an expected thing, everybody knows what to do. Motorists would usually slow down and yield to jaywalkers when they already give a gesture with their hands that they want to cross the street. It's a kind of mutual understanding that makes up our "street culture". Of course, sometimes accidents do happen, but, amazingly, they are very rare.



The government has of course made the necessary efforts to promote the use of pedestrian crossing bridge. There are laws and regulations that give protection to pedestrians who use the crossing bridge or the zebra cross to cross the street (a legal protection that is not given to jaywalkers), but without enforcement, the old habit seems to die hard.

It's good to see that more and more people begin to use the pedestrian crossing bridge like in the top photo which I took on Jalan Raya Cimahi, a town about 12 kilometers west of Bandung. (Cimahi is administratively a separate municipality, but it is still part of the Greater Bandung area.)

I took the bottom photo on Asia Afrika Street (Bandung's main street and city center). A similar picture that I took has won a prize worth $US 200 from Reader's Digest Asia and been published in its May 2008 edition. You can check it out here.

Bandung Urban Scenes - Exploring Urban Photography #2

Text and picture Eki Qushay Akhwan

As I Was saying yesterday, urban photography is esentially about finding "order" in what looks like a chaotic realities of urban life. Patterns are one thing that we can look for. Another thing that we can look for to comprehend the chaos is the human elements - their activities, their day to day struggles in navigating the hustle and bustle of a city, etc. Unlike the geometric or "still life" elements, the human factor tells the story of a city through motions (and emotions).

The focus on the human element is, I think, where urban photography intersects with street photography.

I took the scene in the above photo on Jalan Suniaraja (Suniaraja Street), Bandung. Three human figures in the photo depict motions of different kinds symbolic of their stuggles in finding their ways to their uban existence.

Bandung Urban Scenes - Exploring Urban Photography #1

Text and picture by Eki Qushay Akhwan

Urban environments may look visually chaotic. But to the discerning eyes of photographers and visual artists, this chaos is just a facade beneath which are hidden an infinite number of interesting elements ready to be discovered if only one can pay enough attention to the details and/or rhythms that make up that chaos. This, I think, what urban photography essentially is: an attempt to discover "order" in what looks like incomprehensible and chaotic realities.

In exploring urban photography, a genre of photography which is generally still categorized as a subform of documentary and/or street photography, a photographer needs to be creative and have a daring attitude to see the realities around them in different ways. One way to do it is to look for patterns, like what I did with this photograph, which I took at BEC (Bandung Electronic Center) parking lot a couple of days ago.