1 - From Archaeological Document to Souvenir from the Colony and Back: the Social Life of Javanese Antiquity Photographs

This presentation will examine the circulation of the nineteenth-century Javanese antiquity photographs in different types of photographic albums from the collection of Rijksmuseum and Wereldculturen Museum in the Netherlands. Whilst I will consider the works of European photographers from the period in discussion, the article will focus on the archaeological photographs of  the first Javanese photographer Kassian Cephas (1845-1912).  Photographs from colonies rarely arrived in metropole’s archive institutions as individual prints but in photographic albums as their physical, organizational, structural and narrative context. Their material context demonstrates Cephas’s archaeological photographs gained popularity through the photographer’s commercial activities when they became “souvenirs” from colonies. Their online presence, almost a century later and through the possibility offered by online search engines, they become archaeological documents again under the subject category of “temple, shrine, Hinduism, Buddhism.” This article will discuss the change of their use value and meaning through the process of archiving, from antiquity record to travel chronicle and from geographical landmark back to archaeological document.