Rori’s earliest relationship with photography was not with a camera he owned. It was with family photographs. Growing up in Indonesia, his mother made sure the family could visit photo studios even when the expense was significant. Those pictures became proof that ordinary family time was worth preserving.

Photography became personally important much later, after Rori moved to Japan in 2021. What began as a hobby and a way to relieve stress gradually became one of the structures through which he understands daily life.

Film as a way of changing pace

Rori began with digital photography, but old family albums, photobooks and friends who used film pulled him toward analogue cameras. What kept him there was not only the visual character of film but the change it produced in his behaviour.

A limited roll makes each frame feel more valuable. Holding the camera, composing, pressing the shutter, advancing the film and waiting for development all stretch a moment that would otherwise disappear quickly. In an increasingly immediate world, that process creates a reason to pause.

Discovering rather than constructing

Rori rarely leaves home with a rigid project in mind. He walks, looks and lets light, people or small events interrupt him. Photography feels most natural when it is an act of discovery rather than construction.

He is currently less interested in forcing his photographs into a named series than in watching connections emerge between them. Everyday life, urban spaces and people who may not realise they are entering someone else’s visual memory slowly accumulate into a larger story.

The edit needs time too

The slowness continues after the film is developed. Rori scans his negatives at home and edits only as much as necessary, preferring to preserve what was actually present when the photograph was made.

He also avoids deciding too quickly whether an image is good. A photograph can become more interesting after distance has removed the excitement or disappointment of first seeing it. For Rori, the strongest images are often those he still wants to look at after time has passed.

Burnout and the right not to photograph

That relationship with time became especially important after a period of burnout. Photographing, editing and thinking constantly about producing new work turned something he loved into an obligation.

The experience taught him to stop. He now allows himself to walk without a camera, observe without recording and take breaks without treating them as failures of productivity.

Maintaining a healthy relationship with photography has become more important than constantly generating images.

A portrait of his mother

One photograph brings many of these ideas together. Rori photographed his mother for the first time while she was cooking in the yard of the family home. Nothing was prepared. Afternoon light passed through leaves, smoke rose from a wood-burning stove, and she continued being herself.

The image matters because it is simple. It contains home, the movement of time and the presence of someone who has always been there even when Rori himself has lived far away.

Giving photographs another life

Rori’s ambitions extend beyond individual images. He has contributed to the collaborative photobook Story Of The Street and made his own book, 僕と千葉の端 / Me and The Edge of Chiba. Photobooks, zines and exhibitions matter because sequencing allows photographs to develop a second life beyond the instant in which they were made.

A future solo exhibition remains an aspiration, but he does not want to force the timing. For now the work continues through walking, collecting and allowing a coherent body of photographs to emerge naturally.

Photography, in his description, is a journey without a fixed destination: a way of seeing, remembering and understanding the world around him.

Developing Stories is a Berlin Photo Studio editorial series about the people, memories and lives behind the film we develop.