FATRIS MS

Fatris MF is a writer and photographer from Padang, West Sumatra. Since 2005, he has worked as a freelance travel writer for several different magazines. Together with photographer Muhammad Fadli, he is co-author of The Banda Journal, a book about the colonization of the Banda Islands and recent winner of the 2021 Best PhotoBook of the Year Award from the Aperture Foundation. This interview was conducted by photographer and writer Brian Arnold.

What is your relationship with photography? Are you a photographer? Or only a writer?

I am a photographer as well as a writer. I used to write articles and photo essays for newspapers and magazines. It's only recently, in making The Banda Journal, I chose to focus on writing. Maybe I prefer to write, and I do more of it than photography.

As a writer, what do you think photography brings to a narrative?

Photography has its own visual language, emphasizing ideas difficult to convey with text narratives, but there is also a potential problem, photography can make textual narratives lose their imaginative powers.

How did you and Muhammad Fadli start The Banda Journal? And how did the two of you first meet?

I have known Muhammad Fadli since college in Sumatra, and we would often work together on articles for different travel magazines. He would provide the pictures, and I would develop the text. In 2014, I went to Banda for the first time on assignment for DestinAsian Indonesia magazine. When I returned to Java, I stayed at Fadli's house in Bogor. I told him about Banda, and he was interested. We discussed creating an interactive website about Banda and the impact of protracted colonialism.

The Banda Journal was published as both a website and a book. Can you compare the two forms?

In comparison, the website accommodates things that simply cannot be contained in a book, such as videos, songs, or short stories provided by the Bandanese.

 The design of The Banda Journal is beautiful and is a great example book arts. Can you share something about its design and production?

The Banda Journal book was designed by Jordan, and truthfully, I don't really understand how design works, but I can say he is a very good designer. While he worked, I could only discuss ideas with him with Zoom because of the distance between us; Jordan lives in Jakarta, and I am in Padang, West Sumatra. Prior to designing the book, Jordan read it many times, and conducted a lot of research and experimentation until he got a red nutmeg or mace membrane to use as a cover to lay over colonial figure. I was quite surprised by what he achieved with the cover, because I don't really understand how designers work, but what Jordan conveyed through the cover and layout of this book really was really impressive to me. 

Do you collaborate often? How has this collaboration informed your work and practice?

The Banda Journal is really my first collaborative project, same for Muhammad Fadli. I think this kind of collaboration is a good way to work. I firmly believe that if I am trying to write and make pictures at the same time, I will miss a great deal and feel too distracted. Fadli has said the same.

Too often the history of Indonesia is the history of Java; why the Banda Islands? Is the history there unique? Maybe it is a metaphor for all of Indonesia?

You are right about this. And the history of Banda can be a metaphor for Indonesian history. Many people are in a hurry to say that the history of Indonesia is the same as the history of Java, but the history of Indonesia is a history of resistance for centuries, and not necessarily uniform across the archipelago. Indonesian independence was won through a long war, and it can not only be seen from the history of Java. And, because Java has been written about so much, it is important to look at the differences in Banda.

Fadli and I started the project in Banda, not because Banda is unique; we are all Indonesians and given that I am from a small village in Sumatra, Banda doesn’t seem unique or exotic at all. We can still see and relate to Banda, with all its problems: for centuries the fate of a place, the destiny of its people, is determined by one type of plant, nutmeg. Long before the birth of Christ, people have visited Banda to trade for nutmeg, because for centuries it was the only place nutmeg grew naturally. In the colonial era, the Banda people were massacred by the VOC (Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagnie, or the Dutch East Indies Company, a conglomerate trading organization that was an essential mechanism for colonialism) in effort to monopolize nutmeg. The Dutch government traded New Amsterdam (now Lower Manhattan) with the British, in exchange for Rhun Island, one of the cluster of islands that constitute the Banda Islands. It is so important for the world to see Banda, to understand the history of this small archipelago that for so long was patronized and violated by nations from the West and the Middle East. How can one plant have such extraordinary and magnetic power? Even now, nutmeg still determines the fate of thousands of people in Banda.

Maybe you can share some ideas about colonialism today? This history as you experience it today?

 Colonialism isn’t just something of the past. Even today, colonialism is still happening and is entrenched in Indonesia, which has been “freed from colonial grip.” Many of our government’s practices – law enforcement, the confiscation of farmers' land – are still done still using the Dutch colonial methods. Indonesia as a corrupt country, in practice, and is following the corrupt ways of the VOC and the Netherlands. This didn’t happen on its own. In fact, many scientific and academic institutions in Indonesia still think in a colonial way.

Can you share something about your research process? Text versus fieldwork?

I try not to be influenced by one point of view, especially given that most of the writing on Banda comes from colonial sources, which of course are written with colonial eyes and points of view. I try to see Banda as it really is, to listen to the various opinions of the people from Banda, to live and talk with them.

Do you have a new project?

My new project now is about the people who live along the Great Post Road or De Grote Postweg, a road made on the orders of Herman Willem Daendels (governor-general of the Dutch East Indies from 1808-1811) by using forced laborers to traverse 1,000 kilometers of forest from the west to the east of Java Island. Now, life along the path is very ironic, even the path itself is ironic. Everything is profane, defined by squalor, wealth, and disorder. It all comes together along the Daendels Way, a grim portrait of the most populous island on earth.