Armchair anthropology in the Spermonde Archipelago
Salemo Island, Spermonde, Indonesia (drone image captured by Sarah Hamylton)
There is a well-known Southeast Asian saying that translates as “same-same, only different”. It is apt in the Spermonde archipelago, a group of around 120 low lying coral islands, each with its own distinctive character, in central Indonesia. As we move between the islands, it is a thrill to step off the boat and discover what sort of a reception we will receive, what the houses look like, whether their front gardens will be tended grassy verges, coral rubble gardens, or accumulated debris.
Each community makes a different livelihood from the coast. Tables of small “ikan bete bete” fish dry in the sun to be sold on the mainland, where rice and other supplies can be gathered. Island communities to the north have built networks of aerated ponds, prawn farms that are drained and harvested to the rhythm of the tides. We walk along raised banks reinforced with piles of coral rubble and climb over sluice gates. A smiling woman sorts collected shell fish in front of her house, nested between two prawn ponds. An elderly man spreads piles of seaweed out to dry in a sunny garden patch.
Our team is here to do social surveys with the locals, alongside aerial surveys of the islands to track how they are changing over time. The last fifty years have seen houses proliferate on previously unpopulated land. Some sandy islands have disappeared completely, while others make their way across reef platforms in a slow migration of the landscape. Seasons superimpose their rhythm over this pattern, shifting tonnes of beach sand on every island.
We make our way to the police building to let them know of our arrival and intentions. The white of my skin attracts stares and I smile continuously as we walk, nodding and offering up the few Bahasa words I know. My Indonesian colleagues have a short exchange with a man who stands near an official-looking building and we head for the mosque. It is usually the tallest building in the centre of the island, a convenient point of orientation for an aerial survey that is customarily followed up by a quick prayer.
As we walk I think about surveillance, aerial reconnaissance and the military uses to which drones have historically been put. The locals show no sign of sharing these thoughts. Families come to watch and talk excitedly about technology. We go into houses and drink tea. Enthusiastic to gather records of their own, women and children ask me to pose for photographs, rolling up the sleeves of my sun-protective rash vest so that the white of my arms can be seen and touched. My face is uploaded to Instagram and I become part of the narrative of someone’s day.
Our team have collected several thousand photos of these islands. More images to be crafted into a story. In her essay On Photography, Susan Sontag observes ‘Our oppressive sense of the transience of everything is more acute since cameras gave us the means to “fix” the fleeting moment. We consume images at an even faster rate and, as Balzac suspected cameras used up layers of the body, images consume reality. Cameras are the antidote and the disease, a means of appropriating reality and a means of making it obsolete’ (Sontag, 1977, pg 179).
Our team has succumbed to the urge to photograph these transient islands. I ponder whether our work amounts to an act of appropriation. In capturing the light waves reflected by objects, the photographs can lay claim to being a material vestige of their subject in a way that other records can’t. Yet the reality communicated by these pictures doesn’t capture the simple happiness of the children who follow us chattering and laughing, or the complexities faced by the women who throw their family’s rubbish into the ocean in the absence of any waste management facility. Both experiences imprinted deeply into my memory.
The rich fabric of these island communities transforms me into an amateur anthropologist. The accumulated images tell a story that reflects the mind of the beholder as much any inherent quality of the islands or the communities that live on them. In a dynamic coastal region, my Indonesian colleagues work to capture an enduring story of a fleeting social and physical reality. How lucky I am to have seen this for myself!