Plantage Accaribo Possibly 1913

This stereo card, or photograph, titled Plantage Accaribo was made by Theodoor Brouwers sometime between 1875 and 1932. Photographs like these were often produced as a way of documenting and sharing images of distant places, and this one offers us a glimpse into the Dutch East Indies. What is striking is that, while the photographic technology used to produce this image might seem far removed from craft, it is nonetheless deeply implicated in modes of production. Consider the amount of labor that went into the cultivation of this land, the bodies bent over in the fields. This is labor captured on film, a testament to the economic activity of this plantation, and the human effort on which it depended. Ultimately, appreciating photographs like Plantage Accaribo, requires us to look beyond the image itself. By understanding the processes of both image making, and of colonial production, we can fully understand the layers of meaning embedded in this object.