Sometimes, you don’t find new places. You find new eyes. These ten selected photos are my way of translating Glodok.
On my Jakarta trip last week, I joined MET Glodok for their photo walk session. It happened on Friday during the Lebaran break, when the city felt less busy. The session was guided by Mudita Nanda, a home photographer from MET Studio. Our mission was simple. Capture the neighborhood. Its people, its spaces, its doorways, their stories.
For a long time, my memory of this area was quite narrow. A place to shop for electronics. A place often associated with one community only: the Chinese. But walking through it slowly, with my new Sony Alpha 7CII paired with a 35mm lens in hand and time on my side, something shifted.
Glodok revealed itself as a place where cultures and religions meet. You see a Hindu Bali statue in front of an alley leading to a Chinese temple. They coexist. Survive. Live side by side in the rhythm of the metropolitan.
Big gates with barbed wire. Multiple door locks. Layers of protection. Maybe not just for safety, but also a quiet reflection of how people hold on to peace in a city that rarely pauses.
And then, something touched my heart. Conversations with the locals slowly replaced my old assumptions. What once felt distant started to feel warm. Kind. Human. Even familiar. And yes, they have a very good cafe, MET. I was fasting that day, maybe this is the reason to come back in the future.
I cannot help but feel that this was not just a random plan. My schedule suddenly opened up just one day before Lebaran. Almost like it was written for me to be there. Maybe this was one of those small invitations from my Maker. An invitation to soften my judgment. To see humanity, especially the ones that feel close to home, but we often overlook.
