customers in documenting the massive scale of agribusiness, particularly in the golden economic years of the Indies in the early to mid twentieth century. From around 1900, a trend toward more picturesque views and sympathetic portrayals of indigenous people appeared. This was intimately linked to a government sponsored tourist bureau and to styles of pictorialist art photography that had just emerged as an international movement in Europe and America. As photographic studios passed from owner to owner, old images were given new life as souvenir prints sold at hotels and resorts and as reproductions in cruise-ship brochures.
Amateur camera clubs and pictorialist photography salons common in Western countries by the 1920s were slower to develop in Asia and largely date to the postwar era. Locals, however, took up elements of art photography. Professionals George Lewis and Thilly Weissenborn (the only woman known from the period) and amateurs Dr Gregor Krause and Arthur de Carvalho put their names on their prints and employed the moody effects and storytelling scenarios of pictorialist photography. Krause was one of the most influential photographers. He extensively published his 1912 Bali and Borneo images in magazines
Atelier O Kurkdjian Bromo eruption of December 1915 gelatin silver photograph 17.7 x 24 cm purchased 2007
(opposite) Gotthard Schuh Mother and child, Bali from Island of the gods 1941 gelatin silver photograph 60 x 49.7 cm purchased 2013
Kassian Céphas Young Javanese woman c 1885 albumen silver photograph 13.7 x 9.8 cm purchased 2013
EXHIBITION | ARTONVIEW 21