(b. 1980, Indonesia) began his career as an illustrator and digital imaging artist when he was a graphic design student at STDI Design and Art College in Bandung, Indonesia. After graduating, he became a photographer for Trax Magazine, an Indonesian based music magazine, and he also contributes his work for various magazines in Jakarta. His practice subtly plays and fuses disparate elements into seamless and surreal situations. His first solo show Safari was held at Ruang Mes 56, Yogyakarta, 2009. He is based in Jakarta.

Curator’s note:

Photography is a form of spectacle. It nobilises many things, from everyday insignificance through to poverty and violence. If we are not directly affected by what we see, we become desensitised almost immediately depending on how often we have come into contact with shocking or provocative images. Cinema and television also plays an important part in this process of turning knowledge into entertainment culture. And it is this transformation that Agan Harahap turns his attention to. War and violence for many have become abstracted from their everyday lives and immediate personal history. It is something we learn about through education and the media, rather than experience first hand. But it is also a form of enjoyment in art, literature, film and theatre and most aptly the video game. War is more epic and heroic than ever, filled with memorable villains and champions. Through skilful digital manipulation of historic war photography, Agan Harahap inserts the most exaggerated character of them all: the super hero. Captain America, Batman, Superman, The Incredible Hulk and Spiderman now appear next to Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, combat soldiers and prisoners in a humorous parody of the spectacle of war. With their different strengths and weaknesses they seem like mere observers rather than protectors. Their presence creates a sense of curiosity in the viewer firstly through the technology used to create their seamless insertion and secondly the purpose of their appearance.

Photography has been in part, complicit in the glorification and justification of war. Government leaders savvy to its power have manipulated photography through physical and digital methods erasing key figures and inserting details to create distorted truths. Digital manipulation has also fuelled much political humour through satiric advertising campaigns and cultural commentary. The combination of photography as propaganda alongside the concept of the super hero, itself a form of political messaging, of good versus evil, the West versus everyone else, is a playful critique of how we understand and process war imagery.