Fotoalbum van een onbekende Nederlandse familie met connecties in Suriname en Nederlands-Indië (1) c. 1900 - 1925

Curator: At first glance, this vintage photo album's cover really pops! The explosion of shapes, colors, and patterns… it’s a feast for the eyes! Editor: Indeed. It has such an evocative charm, like a relic of a bygone era infused with an eagerness for new visual vocabularies. But how interesting – beneath the stylish decorative surface, we are beholding the secrets from some long lost Dutch family with distant ties to the colonies of Suriname and Indonesia… Quite amazing, right? Curator: The album dates from roughly 1900 to 1925. Look at this playful, vibrant Art Deco aesthetic—geometric forms dance across a burlap-colored backdrop. The overall impact is rather arresting, isn’t it? What catches your eye particularly? Editor: The non-repeating nature of it all is captivating. Usually decorative designs are based on repetition but the combination of geometric objects with some abstract shapes gives it such a unique aesthetic. Each shape seems intentionally placed to offset the others. If you closely at each of these geometric icons and let it linger there in your conscious awareness, you will become increasingly intimate with it and find something to associate it with… Like this black, eight-rayed emblem seems to stand for the ancient astrological symbol of the sun, right? Curator: It absolutely feels like a coded language from the early 20th Century. It embodies that period’s eagerness to establish itself at a watershed of culture and taste, eager to embrace new aesthetic and intellectual experiences. Perhaps there is also an element of exoticism present here, perhaps an aspiration of the colonizer society that defined the family portrayed in the photographs. It all resonates with the historical context! Editor: Definitely. I also feel a touch of humor infused in it all, though subtle. The non-rigid arrangements, the lack of perfect symmetries—almost feels subversive in the most adorable way. The colors might seem bold but the use of rough and unpolished raw material such as the linen fabric suggests that this exuberance is all tempered with self-restraint… It almost brings tears to my eyes… Curator: This image serves as a powerful bridge to a different world. We might never uncover the specific identity of the family it came from. Yet we can reflect upon its echoes, how a visual motif reveals psychological and historical threads, both universal and uniquely bound to that time and that family's fate. Editor: Precisely. It makes you reflect upon all these people and their histories. But, now… I want one just like it!