Portret van een Indonesische jongen 1857 - 1880

This albumen print, titled "Portret van een Indonesische jongen," was produced by the studio of Woodbury & Page. The appeal of photography in the colonial context was partly as a tool for documentation, offering an apparently objective rendering of people and places. The albumen process itself involved coating paper with egg white and then silver nitrate, making it sensitive to light. The resulting print has a distinctive sheen and a fine level of detail, capturing the textures of the boy’s patterned clothing and the ornate chair beside him. Photography was embraced for its mechanical accuracy, yet this image also reveals how deeply subjective the medium could be. The photographer has chosen to portray the boy in a manner that reflects both local tradition and European conventions of portraiture. Examining the choices made in the production of this image allows us to consider the complex interplay of cultures and the selective nature of photographic representation.