Pagina 52 van fotoboek van de Algemeene Vereeniging van Rubberplanters ter Oostkust van Sumatra (A.V.R.O.S.) c. 1924 - 1925

Curator: Page 52 from a photo album of the General Association of Rubber Planters on the East Coast of Sumatra, or AVROS, dating from around 1924-1925. This gelatin-silver print captures a scene on a rubber plantation and resides here at the Rijksmuseum. Editor: My first impression? The image exudes a somber mood. The uniformity of the trees, almost spectral, creates a sense of confinement despite being an outdoor setting. There's a definite chill to it. Curator: Indeed. This image comes from a time when Sumatra's landscape was undergoing intense transformation due to colonial agriculture. The seemingly natural vista is in fact a carefully planned, industrialized space. Editor: You can feel it. The orderly arrangement, the near-identical appearance of the trees... it hints at control, a reshaping of nature for profit. Even the two figures standing within the grove—are they overseeing or simply laboring? Their placement feels symbolic. Curator: They’re almost certainly supervisors or overseers. Photography like this was often commissioned by the plantation owners themselves to portray efficient, well-managed operations to potential investors or shareholders back in Europe. A carefully curated vision of colonial enterprise. Editor: And that's precisely what's unsettling. What looks like an innocent landscape hides a history of exploitation. Rubber, for those of us familiar with the iconography, became almost synonymous with colonial violence in some areas of the world. Is that a bit of the ghost of that hidden in the aged tone of this print? Curator: It's interesting you bring up the tonal quality of the image, the warm brown of the aged paper. That was, I believe, intentional to create a somewhat romanticized aesthetic – Pictorialism as a trend. However, with our contemporary understanding, it perhaps clashes ironically with the harsher realities behind it. It exposes how carefully crafted these portrayals of colonial industry truly were. Editor: Absolutely. The trees themselves, repeated like a visual mantra, become symbols of both resource extraction and the imposition of a foreign order on a previously existing environment. The lack of dynamism, that near stillness...it's haunting. Curator: The image, then, stands as a complex artifact. A tool of promotion in its own time that today opens up conversations about power, representation, and the lasting impacts of colonial endeavors. Editor: I'm leaving with a sense of unease, actually, and a strong curiosity about the lives and perspectives absent from this particular framing. It definitely makes one think more deeply about what's intentionally presented versus what's ultimately revealed.