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The political life of  images 

 
STRASSLER, KAREN. 2020. Demanding Images: Democracy, Mediation, and the Image-Event in Indonesia. 
Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 
 
Keywords: images; Indonesia; public politics; democracy; image politics; authenticity. 
 
Karen Strassler’s book Demanding Images: Democracy, Mediation, and the Image-Event in Indonesia engages with 
the role played by images in the political public sphere and the dynamics unfolding around these in 
contemporary Indonesia. Its focus lies on the first decade and a half  of  the 21st century, a period in 
which images, and specifically photographic pictures, have come to be seen as vehicles for attaining the 
democratic ideals of  accountability, transparency and popular political participation in the country (p. 
12, 243). Yet, as Strassler notes, it is precisely because of  this status that images have also become the 
primary means through which major political struggles of  the time were fought (p. 12). In these strug-
gles, the malleability of  images and their proneness to being altered turned out to be a crucial character-
istic, as they provided a stage both for contesting the truth value of  certain pictures and for producing 
new truths with doctored images figuring as evidence (p. 223, 231). 
 
Core to the book’s argument is the notion of  the image-event, which denotes the political processes that 
unfold when images become central to the public discussions in which they intervene (p. 9-10). As 
such, Strassler argues that “conceptualizing all images as unfolding events enables us to see them as 
contingent and politically consequential processes in their own right” (p. 13-14). Here, images happen, 
again and again, rather than move as things built to completion before released to the public (p. 243). 
This draws attention away from the particular image itself  and onto the processes in which images im-
pact public politics, processes in which these images themselves are made and remade (p. 17-18). 
 
The book moves through a series of  image-events, providing the empirical ground on which Strassler’s 
theory is built and offering rich insight into the nature of  politics and the public sphere in reformasi In-
donesia. Chapter One revolves around montaged Rupiah bills displaying the face of  the former dictator 
that circulated in the early post-Suharto period. As instruments of  commentary critiquing the preva-
lence of  corruption under the old regime, they reflected the newly won freedoms that made the spread 
of  such images possible. Chapters Two and Four engage with events unfolding from the emergence of  
different images of  sex and sexual violence. While the former discusses debates about the truth-value 
of  photographic images in the context of  rape, the latter traces the development of  a controversy sur-
rounding artworks labeled pornographic by conservative hardliners. Meanwhile, Chapter Three centers 
on the particular figure of  the expert, equipped to judge the authenticity of  photographic material in 



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the context of  public debates. This figure aligns its own mode of  presenting their claim to expertise in 
public with a generally prevalent trust in technological forms of  distinguishing truth from forgery. 
Chapter Five turns to more recent battles over forms of  street art and public signs that intervene in 
political debates and the resulting backlash against these public expressions of  political opinions. Final-
ly, the conclusion discusses the first presidential campaign of  Indonesia’s reformist candidate Joko 
Widodo, and the uses of  and debates surrounding images and videos of  rallies made on smartphones 
by his mostly young supporters. 
 
In recentering the debate about the politics of  images, authenticity and fakeness around the playing out 
of  processes through which these are contested, Strassler’s book offers a valuable approach for explor-
ing contemporary image politics. As politicized images proliferate through increasingly diverse modes 
of  circulation while their production and manipulation is accessible to a wider public, it is precisely this 
attention to the events, which make and are made possible by images, that can help us grasp the dynam-
ics of  this novel political landscape. Here, the book’s final discussion, revolving around the presidential 
election campaign of  2014, is particularly instructive. The role of  social media, of  images and their ma-
nipulation in the context of  election campaigns has been a major point of  contention in many coun-
tries over the past years and the concluding chapter will thus be of  particular interest for many readers. 
Yet, the book’s real strength is that Strassler’s careful discussion of  diverse instances of  image-events 
offers a much more thorough treatment of  these dynamics than any ever-so-detailed analysis of  a sin-
gular event could have provided. 
 
At the same time, Demanding Images presents a careful ethnography of  the political public sphere in 
reformasi Indonesia. Like any ethnography, it is situated within a particular place and, perhaps more im-
portantly for the book’s structure and theme, a particular time. These temporal limits, however, are well 
chosen, spanning the entire period from the tumultuous beginnings of  Indonesian democratization in 
the last years of  the 20th  century to the election campaign of  popular reformist candidate Joko Wido-
do, itself  a break of  sorts with the political landscape of  the preceding decade and a half. The book, 
then, offers a vivid ethnography of  the political culture in the streets, the newspaper articles, television 
shows, and online forums of  contemporary Indonesia, weaving together the voices of  an astonishing 
set of  characters. Street artists, activists and students appear alongside self-proclaimed experts in pho-
tographic analysis, religious hardliners, and politicians of  all shades, reflecting the diverse voices of  the 
contemporary political public sphere in the country. 
 
Finally, the book itself  forms an experiment in writing ethnography, at least to some extent. As it fo-
cuses on the role of  images in political debates, pictures themselves are central to the book. They are 
well integrated into the text, being neither overbearing nor hidden away in appendices. The decision to 
stick with black-and-white reproductions when it comes to the pictures chosen for the main text avoids 
distracting ruptures between the numerous images and the printed text among which they appear. 
Luckily, the reader can get a sense of  the colorful reality of  the images discussed as the main text is 
preceded by a well-assorted, color-printed photo essay that assembles a selection of  the images that 
appear in the book (p. xv-xxxi). 

 



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Demanding Images, then, caters to readers with interests as colorful and diverse as the images it discusses. 
Whether one is interested in contemporary Indonesian politics, in understanding the role of  images in 
public spheres more generally, or in the production and life of  images themselves, this book will cer-
tainly be a valuable read. 
 
Jonathan Kraemer is currently PhD student in the Department of  Social Anthropology at Stockholm 
University. He is interested in the intersection of  contemporary labor migration and environmental 
change in rural Indonesia. He holds a Master’s degree from Heidelberg University and a Bachelor’s de-
gree from the University of  Toronto. 
 

 

 

 

© 2022 Jonathan Kraemer 


