Plantage van suikerriet op de suikeronderneming Nieuw Tersana, Cheribon, voormalig Nederlands-Indië c. 1890 - 1935

This photograph of a sugarcane plantation in Cheribon, former Dutch East Indies, was captured by Onnes Kurkdjian, sometime between 1870 and 1900. I'm wondering what it was like for Kurkdjian, lugging a large camera through those fields? I mean, the light is so stark, almost bleached out. It feels like the air itself is heavy with humidity and labor. The workers look like they’re part of the landscape. There’s something about the composition too—the way the sugarcane stacks are arranged almost like sculptures, and the workers moving sugar canes, all of these details are an inquiry into the relationship between humans and the natural world. Maybe he saw the making of the image as a kind of process of understanding and revealing something about the nature of this place. We artists are always trying to find ways of seeing, thinking, and experiencing the world anew.