Derian's photography is a way of escape. It's appearing and disappearing. Like that black silhouette in the background that you do not perceive when you pass by the billboard after the night fun, but that embodies the axis of the luminous photograph during the day.
A stage. No! An auxiliary light. Even less! A filter. Absolutely not! A concept. Not even! This photograph is just the sincere reflection of a happy moment. But the bystander knows nothing, only finds a puzzling scene full of random elements. Is it a little island, a mountain of sand...or where are they? Who are they and what are they doing? Why is the figure on the left carrying a broom? And why does the girl lying down look at us so fondly?
The artist himself doesn't know how to describe an absolutely personal image, perhaps because having an Instagram for his artistic photography, I proposed him to place on the billboard this image from his particular one. «There is no concept behind this photograph, everything was spontaneous. When I was there it was just an amazing moment with surrounding. What I do is mostly reflecting myself on photography. Just being natural». Being natural as the specks of dust that have slipped into the scanner of this wonderful analogue photograph.
If one doesn't know the context of the image (which has allowed me to inquire into the fresh perceptions of people who had no idea) he/she rarely notices the interculturality of the image, where some women enjoy the sun in bikinis and others enjoy the water in hiyab. But if you look at the little piece of coral that appears on the shore of the small island you will immediately suspect that it is a tropical country. Derian Derian is a young Indonesian photographer whom I met in my one-year-long stay at Yogyakarta's Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI by its acronym in Indonesian) and whose intimate character as a fellow and as an artist always caught my eye.
«I prefer to let the people judge my works, whatever it is. Everything that I do for photography is more like reflecting myself into something for some meaning. When I shoot an event, gig or party what I'm doing is presenting myself to them, adoring them and their works. But I'm not doing just whatever; I'm a selective person. When I'm in the streets, I prefer to shoot an environment that people are not realizing or an objet they are not aware of but that's unusual, bizarre, strange and mysterious, and that satisfies me while I gaze at it. All that's for me just beautiful. And I love to photograph it.»
Noise, silence, alcohol and cigarettes. Everything is mixed in Derian's rebellious but tender photographs that show an obvious search for breakout. Youth, beauty and a dragged nostalgia can be intuited in the eyes of their models - which are their own. Joy of living, sure. But with a heavy nonconformity that disturbs and helps grow at the same time.