Tabuh rah is a ceremonial fight that pours blood as an offer to evil spirits and is deeply enshrined in Balinese Hindu culture, but in the form of cockfights it is widely popular across Indonesia. Bali’s neighbouring island Lombok shares a lot of the same cultural heritage and although predominantly muslim, secular cockfighting is as big as it is illegal.

Personal project
Indonesia, 2014

A man’s fighting cock (sabung) is the source of pride and respect. Immense care goes into raising one to full strength, including bathing, massaging and feeding by hand.

Successful roosters can earn big money and big status, but despite all this, the men are remarkably unsentimental about their animals. A dead bird seems a purely financial rather than emotional loss.

The events are clandestine, organised in shacks well out of sight for by-passers or authorities. The latter’s interference is mostly reduced to coffee money, the colloquial term for bribes, which both sides seem to understand as a prepaid fine.

People come together to show off their latest breeds, strengthen community ties, drink moonshine and gamble. Despite a nationwide ban on any form of gambling, dead roosters and betting are inextricably linked. It's always men though, the women's role is reduced to selling snacks and palm wine, as well as having to cope with lost household income.

Much like their potential consequences, the fights are hectic and brutal. They are meant to be won by skilful use of the taji, a razor sharp blade attached to the roosters leg.

Bets are taken during the fierce pairing negotiation, although mostly yelled during the fight in a spectacle that seems like absolute chaos, but chaos mastered by its participants.

This personal project is the result of watching dozens and dozens birds die all over Lombok. I neither really chose nor relished those spectacles, but after the most white boy thing to do in Indonesia, Ross and his family generously cared for me after my motorbike accident.

Together with the other man in charge, known to everyone as Mr. Styles, he was running the regional cock fighting syndicate. Probably down to pity for my misery mixed with pride for their hustle, he took me under his wing and allowed me to photograph the mad world of tabuh rah.