Pad met manden 1863 - 1869

This photograph of a garden in Java, Indonesia, was taken by the commercial photography studio of Woodbury & Page at an unknown date. The garden appears carefully cultivated with plants in baskets and a small structure in the background, all set against the backdrop of a densely vegetated hillside. Woodbury & Page, like other European photographers in Asia, catered to the colonial market, producing images that reinforced European perceptions of the exotic "Orient" but photographs like this one also served an economic purpose, documenting the resources and agricultural potential of the Indonesian landscape for Dutch colonial interests. The photograph is not merely a neutral depiction of a garden, but a visual statement about the colonial project and its impact on the environment and local labor practices. To fully understand this image, we must look to historical archives, colonial records, and studies of economic botany to uncover the complex relationship between photography, colonialism, and environmental exploitation in 19th-century Indonesia.