A Changing Scene: The Framing of Architectural Otherness of the Dutch East Indies in Nineteenth- and Twentieth - Century Colonial Photography

Abstract

This paper examines the changing scene of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century colonial photography in the Dutch East Indies (today Indonesia). The mid-nineteenth century collection of Woodbury & Page Photographers Java gives us insight into a mixing of vernacular and European architectural languages as experimented with in numerous buildings and colonial settlements throughout the archipelago. A prolific commercial studio, Woodbury & Page Photographers Java was established in Batavia in 1857 by two Englishmen, Walter Woodbury and James Page, following their brief and unsuccessful stay in Australia. Contrastingly, the early twentieth-century photography of the Dutch architect Pieter A. J...