Albert Glaser kaartend met twee vrienden op een boot, Langkat Sumatra 1895 - 1905

Curator: This albumen print, dating from between 1895 and 1905, is titled "Albert Glaser kaartend met twee vrienden op een boot, Langkat Sumatra" and is attributed to Heinrich Ernst & Co. It depicts Albert Glaser playing cards with two friends on a boat in Langkat, Sumatra. My first impression is of stillness, and quiet anticipation – they seem completely absorbed, cut off from the world around them. Editor: There is a curious quality of the constructed about this image: an encounter staged by the colonial studio to reflect specific modes of colonial authority and recreation. The photograph offers a romantic visual economy which is directly opposed to that of indigenous experience under colonial regimes. It reminds me how photography itself becomes part of the colonial machinery here. Curator: I agree that it serves to uphold the image of leisure, of supposed sophistication within a tropical environment. These men, dressed entirely in white, create a deliberate visual contrast to the local environment. And yet, despite the staging, there's also something deeply human. Notice the gestures. The concentration on their faces and how each holds his cards, their arrangement almost mirroring some private language of shared experience. The game is a powerful symbol for order, structure, shared intention... a fragile pocket of civilization. Editor: Right, civilization enforced on foreign materials. The table around which they sit, that rattan, the woven shades above them are naturalised and used in a western idiom to denote an easy sophistication, where they have actually been fashioned by the very people whose world these men seek to order and consume. It's fascinating to consider what resources—both human and material—were deployed to produce this single, seemingly simple image, so seemingly simple that we would pass it without thinking. Curator: This adds another layer to its meaning, thinking about the exploitation encoded into even a snapshot such as this, making their insular game even more charged with significance. Editor: Ultimately, an albumen print like this operates as both an artifact and a document: an archive of colonialism’s representational practices. The way it stages an imagined social structure in reality creates another system on top of whatever situation was taking place beforehand. Curator: Indeed, the print is far more than a picture. Editor: Quite. Now, let’s move to another object in the collection...