Surinaamse Caraïben op het erf van Tubbergen en Daam 1903 - 1910

Curator: Up next, we have Hendrik Doijer’s photography dating from around 1903 to 1910, entitled “Surinaamse Caraïben op het erf van Tubbergen en Daam”. Editor: Wow, that ethereal blue tint gives the image a kind of… distant, dreamlike quality. Like a memory resurfacing. It’s stark, yet there’s a gentleness, a melancholic stillness, to the way these people are presented. Curator: Yes, it's an interesting study in the indigenous portraiture of the era, very much rooted in what we might consider "Africain-art". Editor: Look at the figures…arranged with such solemnity! Their bare feet on the earth; this doorway creating what almost feels like a stage. I feel like the photographer is using that background not just as a backdrop, but to represent something symbolic, maybe their displacement. I mean, what are they ‘on stage’ for, being examined for? Curator: Photography was often used anthropologically at this time, yes. And note that not everyone appears barefoot. This photograph invites a sensitive discourse around how ethnic groups in Suriname lived alongside those involved with land owning or industrial interests. Editor: Right. And the expressions on their faces… especially the children. This solemn sense. Almost resigned, or as if in performance…it makes one feel so much for their perspective in the picture, if that makes any sense? Curator: That really makes you wonder what life on the margins would have been like during the turn of that century. Here we glimpse, if only for a moment, that life of perseverance on the very margins, looking straight at the lens. Editor: It really strikes me; looking back at us from the past, those silent stories hanging in the photographic paper and history, like ghosts or a forgotten folk tale that now lives in art for eternity. Curator: Nicely put. It just goes to show, even still images from so long ago can continue to bring so much conversation to our present moment.