Softex x Voice of Baceprot 'Hilangin Halangan SIRIHously'

When the brief arrived, the sell was simple: shoot Voice of Baceprot for Softex's newest campaign. What that sentence contained, however, was anything but simple.

VOB consist of Marsya on vocals and guitar, Widi on bass, Sitti on drums, are by now a phenomenon that needs little introduction. Metal Hammer called them the metal band the world needs right now. The New York Times, BBC, NPR, the Guardian have all taken notice. They are three young women from Garut, West Java, who met in junior high school and decided, quietly and without permission, to become one of the most talked-about bands on the planet.

The campaign, built around the wordplay of "SIRIHously," draws on Softex Daun Sirih's core promise: removing obstacles, seriously. And VOB, as a subject, is perhaps the most literal embodiment of that idea you could find. Everything about their existence is about refusing to let barriers define the outcome.

I approached the two key visuals as two sides of the same energy. The first is grounded and immediate. The girls with product in hand, close and present, the kind of frame that says we are right here, in your world. The green hits hard. Their expressions harder. There is an ease to it that took real work to arrive at, because ease with people this magnetic does not come from direction alone. It comes from listening.

The second visual opens up. The stage, built in post-production, gives the frame a scale that the first deliberately withholds. VOB performing is a different register entirely. Arms up, instruments out, the full force of what these three are capable of, made visible. The compositing work allowed us to place them in a space that felt earned rather than constructed.

What I wanted across both frames was the same thing VOB themselves embody: youth that is not soft, femininity that is not decorative, and conviction that does not ask for validation. Softex's campaign gave us the platform. VOB gave us everything else.

Nurulita Adriani
Advertising photographer of HIRA Imaji, Jakarta.