A fast ticket to the past, and he has never owned the camera.
Nieky
A professional photographer who never had his own camera.
Photographer & pop culture enthusiast · Jakarta
He spends his working life holding other people’s pictures up to a borrowed light. Issue forty-three is about tuberoses in a small vase at Eid, a censer swung by a priest, and the years in between when he could not name what he was smelling.
He has spent his working life on the far side of this rectangle. For once the camera is yours, and he is the one standing in the light.
He has been paid to look for years without ever owning the instrument. What he brought to the work was the noticing, which is the part nobody can lend you.
Nieky Arga · Jakarta · 2026
Nieky Arga is a professional photographer who has never owned a camera. He offers the line himself, early, in the flat tone other people use for a job title, and he is not asking for sympathy with it. The equipment was always going somewhere else afterwards. The looking stayed.
Which is a useful thing to know about him before the perfume arrives, because the perfume arrives the same way. It did not begin as an art form or a hobby. It began as maintenance. He wanted to smell nice. He wanted to cover his body odour, and he says so without decorating it. Then he saved up, blind bought a designer bottle he had never smelled, and the maintenance turned into something he now files beside eating and drinking. A necessity, in his accounting.
The rest of this issue is a light table. Somebody else’s transparencies, laid out on a lit surface, held up one at a time to see what is actually on them. That is the job he does for a living and it turns out to be the job he does with his own memory too: a scent arrives, he cannot place it, and he keeps it on the table for years until the light is right. He calls it a fast ticket. When he is happy he knows which bottle to reach for. When he feels blue he knows which one to wear to cry in, and he counts that as a legitimate use.
The file
The soundtrack · one album, played whole
He is a pop culture enthusiast and he does not treat that as a small thing, so we asked for an album rather than a shuffle. Play it while you read. It runs about as long as this page does.
It started as deodorant and ended as a necessity
At the beginning there was nothing romantic about it. I used fragrance only to smell nice and to cover my body odour. That was the whole reason.
Then I saved up and blind bought a designer perfume, without smelling it first, and it changed everything. After that, perfume became a necessity for me, like eating and drinking. When I am happy, I know which fragrance to wear. When I feel blue, I know which one to wear to cry.
Fragrance became a tool to express myself. Or, as I like to put it, a fast ticket to the past.
The loupe
Six frames on a lit sheet, none of them his. Drag the magnifier across them: whatever sits under the glass comes back sharp and colour true, and everything outside it stays where it was. This is his working day, reduced to one gesture.
Under the glass
Drag anywhere on the sheet · arrow keys also move the loupe
A vase at Eid, a censer at a funeral
There is a white floral scent that always takes me back to childhood. At Eid my father would put fresh tuberoses in small vases in the corner of our little home. The tuberose filled the room, and it was comforting. That smell is the house.
Years later I smelled Jo Malone Myrrh & Tonka and something in it was immediately familiar. The resinous part. Dark and solemn. I could not place it at all, and it stayed with me like that for a long time.
Then my grandmother died and we held a Catholic funeral for her. When the priest burned the incense in the censer, I was instantly reminded of Myrrh & Tonka. When I looked into it afterwards, I realised the fragrance had carried my memory back to childhood, to accompanying my grandfather to his final resting place.
Two vases
One room at each end of the slider. Drag it and the sentence below rewrites itself a word at a time, because that is what the memory did to him: the same room, the same corner, two different things burning in it. Stop in the middle and both are true at once.
The vase at Eid
His father, fresh tuberose, small vases in the corner of a small home. White, sweet, filling the whole room. Comfort with no explanation attached to it.
The censer at the funeral
A priest, burning incense, a church, his grandmother. Dark, resinous, solemn. The smell that had been waiting inside a bottle for years without a name on it.
At Eid, his father put fresh tuberose into a small vase at the corner of their little home, and the white flowers filled the room with comfort.
The second sniff
Between the bottle and the answer there were years. Here are eight rooms it could have been. Tap one and the meter tells you how warm you are, exactly as unhelpfully as memory does. Keep going until the room finds you.
He knew the smell was his. He could not tell you whose life it came from. Pick a room and see how much help that is.
A sample of Chypre Palatin, and then a bottle he won
Recently I got a small sample of MDCI Chypre Palatin and it blew me away. I immediately started exploring chypres after that. I consulted friends who are chypre enthusiasts and bought decants of a similar profile, because I wanted to understand the family properly before committing to anything.
Then I won a bottle of Flat Five from HoM Haute. “Wow!” was my first word when I tried it. I never expected to reach a point in my life where I would enjoy a perfume with such a classic scent.
Fragrance is a fast ticket to the past.Nieky Arga · on why he keeps buying them
Three on the table
He sent three pictures. Read left to right they hold the same shape as his answers: a room, a person in it, and the thing on the table that keeps the two connected.
The wide frame, which is the one clients ask for. He will tell you it is the least interesting picture on any sheet and he will shoot it perfectly anyway, because hard work pays off is not a slogan when it is also the invoice.
Closer. This is where the noticing lives, and it is the only equipment he has ever actually owned. Everything else on the shoot that day was rented, borrowed, or going home in a different bag.
The square. Nothing technically remarkable about it, which is exactly how he describes the moment the tuberose came back to him: no event, no announcement, simply a recognition arriving on time for once.
One spray, two pulse points, at the end
Rather than daydreams or curses, I close each day with a prayer and a single spray on two pulse points. Then I reflect on everything that happened.
It is not a big ceremony. It is the last honest thing I do before the day is finished, and the scent is there while I go back over it.
The fast ticket
His phrase, printed. Choose a mood and the board flips, letter by letter, to the place that mood takes him and the family he reaches for to get there. Four destinations, all of them his, none of them far away.
The right to decide, once you have gone and looked
Good taste is when a person has the absolute right to define their own preferences after a journey of exploration, regardless of how much time they have spent. Because in truth, everyone runs at a different pace.
Some people arrive at what they love in a year. Some people take ten. The right is the same at the end of it either way, and I do not think the clock has any authority over what somebody is allowed to like.
Everyone runs at a different pace
Four collectors, four speeds, and a fifth lane that belongs to you. Set your pace or leave it exactly where it is. The finish line is not a competition and the demonstration only works if you watch all five cross it.
Nobody has started yet. Five lanes, one finish line, and no prize at the end of it. Press start whenever you are ready.
All five arrived. Arriving is not the same as arriving first, and nothing at the finish line asks which you did.
Hard work pays off
Hard work pays off. That is the one I would defend.
I have worked as a photographer without ever owning a camera. Every piece of equipment I have used has belonged to somebody else, and I still built the work. Nothing about that came from having the right thing at the right moment. It came from turning up and doing it again, and it paid.
I would say the same about fragrance. I started because I wanted to cover my body odour. I saved, I blind bought, I asked people who knew more than I did, I bought decants until I understood a family, and eventually I reached a point where a classic composition made me say “Wow!”. None of that was talent. It was time, spent on purpose.
Hard work pays off.
Said by a professional photographer who never had his own camera.
Nieky Arga · Jakarta · Issue Forty-Three
There is a profound embrace between scent and remembrance. Alongside your hundreds of perfume bottles, be sure to gather sweet memories, so you may truly immerse yourself in the fragrance.
Interview by HoM Haute · Pictures made on borrowed equipment · Jakarta, 2026
Harum Oleh Memori
HoM Haute · Interviews · No. 43