In the presidential election of 2014, the fate of Indonesia’s democratic experiment seemed to hang in the balance. The two presidential candidates offered a stark choice between a return to authoritarianism in the figure of Prabowo Subianto, a former general widely considered responsible for human rights abuses and Suharto’s ex-son-in-law, and Joko Widodo (Jokowi) a self-made businessman turned politician with weak ties to the political establishment and a reputation for being “clean.” Jokowi’s narrow defeat of Prabowo in July 2014 seemed to augur a renewed commitment to the reformasi project of a more just society and transparent politics, although subsequent events have revealed how fragile that victory was.

I will argue in this essay that three aspects of photographic production and reception that were already present during reformasi had become amplified in 2014. These are: first, investment in photographic transparency; second, blurring of the boundaries between personal and the political; and third, reworking images as a means of political participation and commentary. Comparing the practice of photography during these two critical periods offers insight into the ways shifts in media technologies yield shifts in political imagination and practice, and reveals the ways that the hopes and aspirations animating the reformasi movement were both sustained and transformed in the decade and a half that followed.