Terrein met gebouwen Possibly 1935

This photograph of buildings in a landscape was made by an anonymous photographer, at an unknown date. The buildings and flags suggest a colonial context. It is worth asking how the scene constructs a particular image of colonial authority. Note how the architectural style of the building on the right borrows from indigenous building techniques, a roof made of thatch. Juxtapose this against the flag, and the more western style building in the background. These visual cues, combined with the ordered landscaping, hint at an attempt to create a fusion between the colonizer and the colonized. Photographs like this would have circulated in colonial administrative circles, and in the Netherlands themselves, as a means to promote a particular vision of colonial life. They offer invaluable material to historians who study the social and institutional history of colonialism. It prompts us to ask what the public role of the art is, and what the social conditions were that shaped its production.