Sepanjang jalan-jalan Riau, sepeda motor, rumah di tepi jalan, dan pertemuan kecil menjadi bagian dari perjalanan.
Some photographs begin with a destination. Others begin with the road.
Across Riau, I have spent countless hours travelling between towns, rivers and small settlements. Over time I stopped seeing those journeys as empty kilometres. The roads themselves became part of the place.
Under the trees
There are stretches where mature trees reach across the road from both sides, their branches forming a high canopy overhead. Light breaks through in patches. A motorbike ahead provides scale and movement. For a few minutes the road feels enclosed and surprisingly quiet.
These are simple photographs, but they capture something familiar about travelling through parts of Riau.
What appears along the way
Roadside life changes constantly. A wooden house. A food cart. A small workshop. Plastic chairs waiting beside a stall. Someone selling fruit or corn. Someone travelling home on a motorbike.
None of it needs to be searched for. It appears naturally when the journey is slow enough to notice.
Stopping changes the journey
The difference often comes when I stop. From inside a vehicle, a roadside scene lasts a second. On foot, details begin to emerge. People look up. Conversations start. A stall that seemed insignificant becomes a portrait of somebody’s working day.
This is one reason I enjoy photographing ordinary places. There is rarely a predetermined picture. The photograph comes from paying attention.
The space between destinations
Travel photography often concentrates on arrival. Riau has taught me to photograph the space in between.
The road, the people beside it, the trees overhead and the small scenes encountered along the way have become part of my memory of the province. Sometimes the journey produces the photographs I remember most.
See more from my Indonesia travel photography and Indonesian street life collections.
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