Jogja Fotografis Festival 2023 Explores Photography's Expanded Boundaries in Yogyakarta

The inaugural Jogja Fotografis Festival 2023 ran from August 18 to September 11 at Galeri R. J. Katamsi in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Titled 'Mengukur Panjang dan Lebar Sebuah Bingkai' (A Strategy to Measure a Frame), the event featured 29 international photographers and artists examining inclusion and exclusion in sociopolitical narratives. Works progressed across four gallery levels from documentary photography to hybrid forms incorporating video, text, performance, and installation. Riska Munawarah's series 'This is Us (?)' (2019–) presented six anonymous women in hijabs from Aceh province, contrasted with intimate 1982 family photos showing women without headscarves. Rajyashri Goody's 'Eat with great delight' (2018) explored Dalit heritage through family photographs centered on food gatherings, drawing from her Pune upbringing and ongoing collection of Dalit literature about food. Posak Jodian's 'Misafafahiyan Metamorphosis' (2022–) documented a seventy-year-old trans Amis performer from Taiwan through a 16-minute video and portrait jigsaw puzzles. The art collective Lembâna Artgroecosystem presented 'Bahwasanya Anda di Lembâna' (Now That You Are in Lembâna, 2022–23), a multimedia installation about village life in Madura featuring video, narrative text, and artifacts like sarung fabric. The festival redefined 'fotografis' as a philosophical approach rather than a strict medium, focusing on marginalized communities across Asia.