The oldest photo in ‘Prophecy’, photographer Mikael Aldo’s debut photobook, is a summit view of Mount Kerinci in West Sumatra, taken in the early morning of 2015. Hills rise beneath a sky ablaze with burning orange and yellow, wrapping the then-19-year-old Aldo like a protective blanket during one of the lowest points of his life. At the time, he was on a solo hiking trip during a gap year, feeling particularly lost and adrift.
“I was still looking for work and felt aimless,” he recalled. “But at sunrise, when I reached the top, I felt this overwhelming wave of ‘I made it.’ In that moment, everything felt worth it. That photo reminds me of that, when I nearly gave up but pushed through.”
Titled ‘19 Tahun’ (19 years of age), the landscape is one of 80 photographs featured in the newly published ‘Prophecy’, a ten-year visual journal weaving together portraits, surrealist scenes, still lifes, and landscapes—each a response to a spectrum of Aldo’s emotional experience. “Growing up, I was always seen as the sentimental one—the person who feels too much,” Aldo chuckled. “But over time, I’ve come to see it differently. Photography became a way for me to search for meaning, and I think I’ve been subconsciously looking for the answers through my work.”
Included with the photobook is a ‘mind map’, offering viewers a guiding framework to interpret the emotional undercurrents of each image. Drawing from the Social Interaction Theory he studied at his almamater, University of Indonesia—a theory that visualises human interactions in layered depths—each photograph is coded with a colour from the 8 Colours & Emotions system and numbered according to the layer that best reflects its emotional intensity, from surface-level tension to the truest, intimate feelings.
“Growing up, I was always seen as the sentimental one—the person who feels too much.”
The photograph ‘19 Tahun’, for example (coded C10—C for Orange, representing ‘Worry’, and 10 for the emotional layer), reflects Aldo’s inner turmoil of feeling lost while searching for light. The sombre, blue-toned ‘A Mother’s Love’ (coded G8—G for Blue, signifying ‘Hopeful’, and 8 for the emotional layer) shows Aldo lying on the lap of a skull, a haunting yet tender expression of hope that lingers beneath his remembrance of his late mother.
Shot mostly with a Canon EOS 5D Mark III, many of the photographs highlight Aldo’s penchant in conceptual storytelling, with scenes carefully constructed and layered through digital manipulation to deepen their emotional impact. In ‘No Rest for the Wicked’, one of the most challenging processes to shoot, he visualises his personal struggle with sleeping: a woman lies motionless on a bed, her body framed by a suspended array of knives, each one digitally rendered to appear frozen midair. “I grew up with eczema, so I often wake up with bloody nails from scratching in my sleep,” he said. “So it’s as if—when I’m sleeping, do I ever really sleep?”
In ‘Emergency Exit’, Aldo captures the emotion of ‘Curiosity’. A woman collapses through an open door, seemingly breathless after a long run. Behind her, a photograph of the Jayawijaya Mountains in Papua serves as a digitally edited backdrop, with the bedrock appearing to pour into the room. The steely blue atmosphere of the mountains tenderly clashes with the warm yellow interior, depicting a dreamlike crossing between two worlds.
“Surrealism is the genre I’ve felt most comfortable exploring since I began photography,” said Aldo, who first dived into the hobby at 14 years old. “In this space, I can play around with symbols and explore beyond literal meanings. A smile, for instance, doesn’t always mean happiness. But most importantly, it’s a space where no one can touch or judge, because this is a reflection of what I feel and remember.”
Through his lens, feelings branch out, overlap, and contradict. Some remain elusive, difficult to articulate, yet still deeply true.
Last month in May, Aldo also held a photo exhibition in celebration of the book launch at Artsphere Gallery in The Dharmawangsa Square. It marks his first showcase, a milestone that Aldo had, in some ways, prophesied. In the book, a snippet from a 2016 journal shows him feeling anxious about turning 20; another entry from the same period ends with: “I have a big plan, and I’m not going to turn my back on it.” That plan now takes form through this body of work—a decade-long meditation on feeling, change, and selfhood, fulfilled like a promise to himself.
“Is ‘Prophecy’ a final statement of who I am? I don’t see it that way. It’s a reflection of who I am now, and it’ll probably evolve into something else in the future.”
On a quiet grey day at Sawarna Beach in Banten, a photograph captures Aldo sitting on a patch of grass, gazing into the distance. The gentle chill in the air and the sound of the body of water seem to pull him into a sentimental space—back to when he first discovered the beach, around the time he lost his mother. The image freezes him in a sterling moment of calm and stillness, an emotion he says has always been within him, but “often gets overshadowed by other emotions.”
Where emotion is often reduced to one dimension, Aldo, through his photographs, shows how he deeply engages with his own. Through his lens, feelings branch out, overlap, and contradict. Some remain elusive, difficult to articulate, yet still deeply true. In ‘Prophecy’, he invites one to process these feelings—not to judge or fix—but to sit with the discomfort, reflect honestly, and allow growth to unfold in the process.
