Baai van Manado 1870 - 1890

This albumen print, titled 'Baai van Manado,' was created by Woodbury & Page. While the exact date is unknown, it likely stems from their activity in late 19th-century colonial Indonesia. The photograph offers a landscape view of Manado Bay, a scene framed through the lens of European photographers operating within the context of Dutch colonialism. Woodbury and Page were known for their studio portraits of Europeans and Chinese elites, and their landscape photography served to promote the beauty, and thus the value, of the colony to a European audience. This image also evokes questions about the power dynamics inherent in the act of photographing a colonized land, as it presents a selective, potentially romanticized view that may obscure the complex realities of life for the local population. Consider how the very act of framing a landscape can be an assertion of ownership and control.