If my photography can, in any way, help others or be a conduit from Indonesia to the world, then I’ll feel as if I’ve accomplished something meaningful. Photography, on its own, is a passion of mine but rather than make money off of selling pretty prints, I feel much more fulfilled if I can somehow give back. I was hoping that my photos of the flooding in Jakarta could help voice how dire the situation was, and to help raise awareness for such disasters that fade from BBC’s home page within days.

On that note, I received this email today. It seems to be a step in the right direction:

Hi Java

I saw that you have a nice photos of floods and more, I am Mario, I work for the United Nations in Geneva, the branch which works for the prevention of natural disaster (www.unisdr.org). We are building a photo gallery for using in our publications and want to ask you if it is possible to include your photos including your name in our gallery, we can send you the link where you can see the publication and in some case send the hard copy.

For the time being, the Photo gallery will be used only for our organization but in the future it will be shared with other United Nations organization.

Actually, if you give the rights now I am working in leaflet and I would like to use one of your nice photos on the cover and another one in the internal page.

Looking forward to hearing from you
Many thanks
Mario