•  
  •  
 

Abstract

This article examines captions found in the various personal albums in the KITLV photo collection (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde / Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Carribean Studies). The article shows that two types of captions can be distinguished: descriptive or identifying and commentary or refective captions. These captions are an important part of the albums’ materiality and composition. Hence, captions turn the albums into autobiographical objects for both compiler and intended audiences. It is argued that photo albums and their image content should not be read separately from the captions either physically or digitally in image databases.

References

Edwards, Elizabeth and Janet Hart. 2004. “Introduction; Photographs as objects”, in: Elizabeth Edwards and Janet Hart (eds), Photographs, objects, histories; On the materiality of images, pp. 1-15. London/New York: Routledge.

Nordström, Alison. 2004. “Making a journey; The tupper scrapbooks and the travel they describe”, in: Elizabeth Edwards and Janet Hart (eds), Photographs objects histories; On the materiality of images, pp. 81-95. London/ New York: Routledge.

Papavasileiou, Eleni. 2015. “5 from private to public; The David Macgregor maritime photographic collection”, in: Elizabeth Edwards and Christopher Morton, Photographs, museums, collection; Between art and information, pp. 83-98. London/New Delhi /New York /Sydney: Bloomsbury.

Pattynama, Pamela. 2012. “Tempo doeloe nostalgia and brani memory community; The IWI collection as a postcolonial archive”, Photography & Culture 5(3): 265-280.

Poole, Deborah. 1997. Vision, race, and modernity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Protschky, Susie. 2012. “Tea cups, cameras and family life; Picturing domesticity in elite European and Javanese family photographs from the Netherlands Indies, ca. 1900-42”, History of Photography 36 (1): 44-65.

Protschky, Susie. 2014. “Personal albums from early twentieth-century Indonesia”, in: Geal Newton (ed.), Garden of the East; Photography in Indonesia 1850s-1940s, pp. 48-55. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia.

Rose, Gillian. 2010. Doing family photography; The domestic, the public, and the politics of sentiment. Farnham: Routledge.

Rouffaer, G.P and W.C. Muller. 1908. Catalogus der Koloniale Bibliotheek van het Kon. Instituut voor de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Ned. Indië en het Indisch Genootschap. ’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff.

Sassoon, Joanna. 2004. “Photographic materiality in the age of digital reproduction”, in: Elizabeth Edwards and Janet Hart (eds), Photographs objects histories; On the materiality of images, pp. 196-213. London/New York: Routledge.

Consulted albums and provenance and archIve

UBL KITLV A169. Restjes na de zondvloed. Scrapbook made by G.M.G. Douwes Dekker. Donated to the KITLV in 1979.

UBL KITLV A569. Tiger album compiled by E.G.A. Lapré. Sold through a dealer to the KITLV in 1998.

UBL KITLV A907. Travel album compiled by J.H.C. Kuylaars. Donated to the KITLV by a dealer in 2004.

UBL KITLV A1070. Friends booklet compiled by S. Nasruddin. Sold through a dealer to the KITLV in 2004.

UBL KITLV A1186. Tante Kit’s 100ste verjaardag, compiled by the Van der Plas family. Donated to the KITLV in 2008.

D H 754. Brieven van Gerret Pieter Rouffaer (1860-1928), Hendrik Herman Juynboll (1867-1945), Jan Laurens Andries Brandes (1857-1905), Willem Bastiaan Tholen (1860-1931) en E.C. Ekker.

Download

Share

COinS