Ingang c. 1902

Tan Tjie Lan made this photograph, 'Ingang', at an unknown date. Look at this building, it's really all horizontals and verticals. It's a solid thing, a long, low construction, but then, that tree in front, this kind of gangly vertical reaches up and breaks that flatness. I’m thinking about that tree and those two figures standing outside the schoolhouse as a way of disrupting the perfect geometry of the building itself, right? Like a formal disruption. I imagine Tan Tjie Lan working, and thinking about the light, and how to catch that light and make it mean something, how to compose the perfect picture. What about the people at the school? Were they curious? Did they notice?   Think about the way the photographer saw this school house, and about all the other ways that it could have been seen. In the end, they all feed back into each other, adding layers of meaning and history to the artwork.