2 - Activating the City of Surabaya – Historical Photographs in Indonesian Museum Contexts

Historical photo-objects from Surabaya, taken around 1900 and in the first decades of the 20^th century, have been ‘safely’ stored in Dutch archival collections from the National Museum of World Cultures over decades. Depicting the colonized city from a distant camera standpoint, these early photographs show Surabaya as an emptied city in which people, traffic, social colonial suppression stay hidden. Instead, the photographs represent Surabaya as a successfully colonized city of “rust en orde”. However, these photographic collections have been reproduced analog and digitally, reaching large and heterogenous audiences. As digitized images, they have entered new historical narratives and Indonesian reception environments – museums, exhibitions as well as social media platforms. Based on their presentation in two Indonesian museums (Museum Surabaya and Museum Sepuluh Nopember), this paper will discuss the photographs’ semantic and medial reinterpretations within these displays, in which the historical photographs are being framed by narratives of continuity and progress as well as heroism and national pride.