eBook

Photography, Modernity and the Governed in Late-colonial Indonesia

2015

Overview

The essays in Photography, Modernity and the Governed in Late-colonial Indonesia examine, from a historical perspective, how contested notions of modernity, civilization and being governed were envisioned through photography in early twentieth-century Indonesia (c. 1901-1942), a period when a liberal reform program known as the Ethical Policy was being implemented under the Dutch colonial regime. This volume is the first English-language study of the Ethical Policy. It is also the first study to examine 'ethical' ways of seeing through photography, a medium whose proliferation among a mass audience as well as amateur practitioners coincided with a reform era that brought significant social and political change to colonial Indonesia. The essays in this collection, by leading scholars in the field - Susie Protschky, Jean Gelman Taylor, Rudolf Mràzek, Henk Schulte Nordholt, Karen Strassler, Pamela Pattynama, Joost Cotè and Paul Bijl - reveal how the camera evoked diverse, often contradictory modes of envisioning an ethically-governed colony, one in which the promises of 'modernity' and 'civilization' were contested notions. Photographs made by and for Indonesian men and women, Chinese, and Indo-Europeans provide unique insights into the concerns of historical actors whose views on the Ethical Policy have rarely been canvassed. Photographs taken by European authorities also provide new perspectives on how the reform program was conceived and implemented by the governing classes.

• Publisher: Routledge
• ISBN: 9789089646620, 9089646620, 9781041184157, 1041184158