Onthulling van het monument te ere van Titus Asch van Wijck, 1904 1900 - 1910

This postcard documents the unveiling of a monument to Titus Asch van Wijck, Governor of Suriname, in Paramaribo in 1904. The photographic print, mounted on card, shows a crowd gathered around the monument, and a separate portrait of van Wijck himself. The decision to create this object—a mass-produced postcard—speaks volumes about colonial power. Photography, a relatively new technology at the time, would have been used as a means to disseminate a certain image of authority. The image would have been reproduced using industrial printing processes that were far removed from the slow, skilled labor of traditional craft. The card's layout, with its decorative Art Nouveau borders, further emphasizes the aesthetic values of the colonizers. All of this draws our attention to the ways in which materials and making can be used to assert dominance, and to obscure the labor and social realities behind them.