This year, her photo essay about orangutan babies in Ketapang, West Kalimantan, won the Alfred Fried Photography Award.
By
Ida Setyorini
·5 minutes read
PERSONAL ARCHIVE
Dilla Djalil
Dilla Djalil-Daniel\'s love of photography and animals has brought her to many countries. On each of her trips, Dilla tries to capture the relationship between humans and animals through her photographs. This year, her photo essay about orangutan babies in Ketapang, West Kalimantan, won the Alfred Fried Photography Award.
The Alfred Fried Photography Award, which has been handed out since 2013, is an award from an institution that promotes photographers from around the world whose works illustrate human efforts to promote peace. The award was given to the photographer who successfully expressed the idea that the future of mankind was determined by the ability to coexist peacefully. The photographs chosen from year to year generally depict aspects of peace, such as empathy, success, environmental preservation, human rights and the drive for good.
Dilla won the award, thanks to her monochrome photo essay entitled "The Forest Orphanage" which tells the story of orphaned orangutan babies in Ketapang.
This year, the award, which was named after Austrian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Alfred Hermann Fried, was given to five photographers from four countries, namely Dilla Djalil (Indonesia), Ilvy Njiokiktjien (Netherlands), Stefan Boness (Germany), as well as two photographers from France, namely Alain Laboile and Camilo Leon-Quijano. Dilla won the award, thanks to her monochrome photo essay entitled "The Forest Orphanage" which tells the story of orphaned orangutan babies in Ketapang.
"That is the first award that I’ve received," said Dilla, whose full name is Nur Adilla Djalil-Daniel, in Jakarta, Monday (23/9/2019). Photographs of the winners\' works were exhibited for one year at the Austrian Parliament.
Dilla said the photos of the orangutan were taken in 2016. At that time, she wanted to make a book. Dilla has also documented an elephant hospital in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and a dog clinic in the Western Cape province, South Africa. She has also gone to the village of Badikhel, near Godavari, Nepal, to document donkeys and horses who were tasked with carrying heavy piles of bricks every day.
ARSIP PRIBADI
Dilla Djalil
"I took pictures of the orangutan because the animal is unique to Indonesia. There are many Indonesian animals, but it is impossible for me to take pictures of tigers or rhinos, for example. So, I chose to take pictures of orangutans in Ketapang," said Dilla, who wrote the book A Trunk and Other Tails. She divided the entire proceeds from the sale of the book to the organizations that house the animal.
To get the photos, she went to the Orangutan Rescue and Conservation Center, run by the Indonesian Nature Rehabilitation Foundation in Ketapang, West Kalimantan. There, she recorded several aspects of the lives of baby orangutans with orphan status. The photos, entitled "The Forest Orphanage," were exhibited at the Helsinki Zoo, Finland, on July 16 to September 9, 2019 at the 2019 Festival of Photography.
"I [at that time] was called a winner, but that was not in the sense of a champion. Only, photos of my work were chosen to be exhibited at the festival," said Dilla. During this time, Dilla is more focused on holding photo exhibitions at home and abroad, such as in Singapore, China, and Finland, rather than joining the competition.
Camera gift
Dilla began to learn about photography at the age of 9. At that time, she received a birthday present in the form of a camera from her father, Juliar Djalil, who also loved photography. It was the camera that brought Dilla deeper into the world of photography. From the start, she loved photographing her pet dogs. Entering her teens and attending junior high school, she began to study photography more seriously. She took photography classes, fixed analog range finder cameras and learned how to print photos. She even turned her bathroom into a dark room. "I covered the ceiling of the room so that no light came in, he-he-he," she said.
At that time, I was boastful, going to Europe using my own money, he-he-he.
Entering high school, Dilla began using a professional camera. She learned the art of photographing faces and many things, such as the lighting of studio lights and lenses. Her photo works in high school have started to be loved by her friends. As a result, at the age of 21, Dilla had a lot of money from photography. She used the money to go to Europe. "At that time, I was boastful, going to Europe using my own money, he-he-he," said Dilla while giggling.
As the years passed, Dilla decided to become a photographer. Her old ideal to be a veterinarian was ditched. For that, she continued to explore photography. Initially, she wanted to study fashion photography. Unfortunately, in the early 1980s there were no photography schools in Indonesia. At the same time, her father disapproved of his daughter becoming a photographer. She ended up studying English literature at the School of Letters at the University of Indonesia.
Dilla married an Englishman named William Daniel in 1994 and followed her husband to work abroad. For four months, they lived in Seoul, South Korea, then moved to Tokyo, Japan, and Manila, the Philippines. Dilla was only able to do photography for the family and personal documentation.
In 2010, Dilla wanted to take a photography workshop. Because she was married, Dilla only wanted to take a photography course for two weeks. Her courses, among others, were in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Istanbul, Buenos Aires and Antigua. From these courses, her eyes were opened that photographing not only for fun, but also includes thinking and research.
Armed with the results of these courses, Dilla returned to the world of photography with a more mature concept. She chose to focus on shooting animals. Choices in the field of animal photography made her in and out of captivity, animal hospitals, animal rehabilitation centers, to animal festivals.
She also went in and out of the forest and explored the slums. Through a camera lens, she tries to record the goodness and love of humans for animals, the relationship between humans and animals, and photographs that tell stories of animals being persecuted.
