“Because I learned fashion photography at my time at the magazine, where my visual references are photos from Nick Night, Javier Vallhonrat, Eugenio Recuenco, I tend to shoot technical,” says photographer Panji Indra Permana to the Phoblographer in an interview. Admittedly, he admits to having a bit of an ego. “I used to love working with many complicated lights, so it was harder for the others to guess the lights. But now I want to shoot more natural, less worrying about lights, and more into creating a bond with the subject.” These days, he doesn’t care about what other people think of his work — and he’s learned that comparison is the theft of joy. Instead, he’s hyper focusing on creating a soul, a genuine feeling, and a good mood.
All images by Panji Indra Permana. Used with permission. For more, please check out his website and his Instagram @panjiindra. Panji is one of the latest Hasselblad Masters for 2024.
“I look up to Lindbergh and Demarchelier works a lot these days. I just want to simplify things nowadays.”
Panji started photography in Junior High School around 1992. From his father, he got a Canonet QL17 — a gem of a camera and learned how to shoot on his own. In college, he started shooting architecture. Before graduating, he joined a publishing company an then a fashion magazine in Jakarta called a+ Magazine. That’s where he feels he really started to experience a color change in his fur so to speak. That’s because he had to do it all as a photographer. “It became almost my daily routine up until the day the publication closed in 2009; some called it ‘the beginning of the end of printed media,’ and I was starting to contribute to many fashion magazines and fashion clients,” Panji tells us.
His work in fashion took a deviation during the pandemic, and he created the Cyclist Portrait Project. “As a cyclist since 2010, I loved the scene, and the rise in cycling culture during the pandemic is exciting for me,” he relates. “I feel the urge to document this event as a lifestyle project. Eventually, I began shooting the people who work on a bike also, making the project more of a social project to bring awareness of share the road spirit and promote healthy lifestyle and love for the environment.” This project helped Panji win the Hasselblad Masters Award.
While that may make you think that he shoots with Hasselblad, he actually doesn’t. He’s used Mamiya, Canon, and Sony cameras for his work. His editorial work is done using the Leica SL2s, and for the Cyclist Portrait Project, he used the Ricoh GR2. He also packs Godox AD100, AD200, and AD600 lights. Panji goes for smaller cameras because he finds that bigger cameras frighten folks. When he does the project, he wants to look approachable.
The work is quite human for sure — and we couldn’t imagine an AI being prompted to make photographs like this. In fact, Panji doesn’t have much experience with AI at all. He jokes that he’s too lazy to generate the prompts. “This technology has become a taboo for many of my fellow photographer friends, especially those who grew up learning the hard way (shooting film, developing, etc),” he states. “But I think we need to embrace these new things, we need to adapt and learn how to make it work for us not the way around. I’m not against the use of AI, especially in the commercial area, where we need to solve problems for our client, not creating a personal project where we could maintain the purity of our work.” For the moment at least, he still prefers to work with humans.
AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT
The Phoblographer is a member of the Content Authenticity Initiative and works with human photographers to verify that they’ve actually created their work through shoots. These are done by providing us assets such as BTS captures, screenshots of post-production, extra photos from the shoot, etc. We do this to help our readers realize that this is authentically human work. Here’s what this photographer provided for us.
