by.U 'Cuma Kamu Yang Bisa'
There is a particular kind of energy that only exists between two people who are completely different, yet somehow orbit the same universe. That tension was what I was after when I took on this campaign for by.U.
The brief centered on Ayu and Bayu. Two characters who represent the breadth of today's young digital generation. Ayu is the girl everyone knows: popular, capable, relentlessly driven, playing mobile games not for leisure but because going pro is a plan she is actively executing. Bayu is something else entirely. He dresses differently, cuts his hair differently, and has staked his entire social life on an Instagram grid and a dream of one million followers. He is also, quietly, completely devoted to Ayu.
What drew me to this project was what lived underneath the brief. "Cuma Kamu Yang Bisa" is about personal agency. The idea that your connection, your content, your ambitions belong to you. Ayu and Bayu gave that idea a face. Two very different faces.
The first key visual captures the simplest version of that dynamic: the two of them side by side, scrolling and browsing the way teenagers actually do. Comfortable. Absorbed. Theirs. The second pulls Bayu into his element. Camera up, locker room behind him, performing the version of himself he most wants the world to see. Funny and sincere at once, and I did not want to flatten either quality.
The third frame belongs entirely to Ayu. School is out, and she is deep in a game. Not performing. Just playing. That focus says more about her character than any posed portrait could. The fourth is the one I return to most: Ayu pushing for rank, Bayu beside her not as a distraction, but as support. For a boy chasing a million followers, he is very good at making himself secondary when it matters.
Across all four frames, I tried to hold two things at once: the warmth of characters you immediately recognize, and the cool of a visual language that does not talk down to its audience. Cute, but never soft. Young, but never naive.
Nurulita Adriani
Advertising photographer of HIRA Imaji, Jakarta.