Photography documentation of cultural heritage; Pua Kumbu textile of Sarawak, Borneo

Abstract

The discourse on the image and the archive is critical in these times of higher capacity storage, bigger bandwidth, and larger than ever digital projections and display applications. As we move from giga to terabytes, machines are now equipped to handle and manage thousands of images, opening up possibilities of increasing the numbers in photographic documentation of culture and heritage. Data or photographic capture of a chosen subject has never been as liberated with this phenomena, thus the availability of DSLRs with more than 30MP picture taking capacity. This paper describes the technical and theoretical elements, as well as the output of images, of a documentary photography of the Pua Kumbu textile making of Sarawak, on the island of Borneo. The location of this documentary is the Garie Longhouse, situated on the bank of Kain River, a tributary to the Rajang River, in the district of Kapit, Sarawak. Three fieldwork of a week each were conducted over a period of one year, to document the processes, weavers, environment, tools, and the produced textiles. Isolated in the interior of Borneo, access to the longhouse is only via the river, which means 8 hours of boat ride on 2 types of boats from the International Airport of Sibu, Sarawak. As a common issue in documentary photography, which is; what is more important, the subject or the photograph, this paper will elaborate on the theories and practice when capturing the scenes and objects. The whole collection of images, with a pixel dimension of 4912 × 7360, averaging 15Mb (pre-processed), at 300dpi are intended for an interactive projected display in a full scale mobile exhibition, with selected images for large digital prints and a book publication.