Walter B. Woodbury: Portrait of Javanese People

Supartono, Alexander

Abstract

“We shall visit the Princes’ Lands where all the native princes live, and all the magnificent ancient temples are,” wrote Walter Bentley Woodbury (Manchester, 1834-Margate, 1885) to his mother in England in September 1857. The Manchurian photographer travelled from the colonial capital Batavia (present day Jakarta) in West Java to the East with over twenty coolies carrying the cumbersome equipment of the wet collodion process, which he adapted to the tropical climate with great commercial success. This trip to the “Princes’ Lands” was not only to photograph Javanese sultans and their family members. Woodbury aimed to record local “custom and type” across the archipelago of the Dutch colony. This typological project was commercially driven. Available for general purchase in the format of cartes-de-visite, albumen prints and photographic albums, these portraits catered to the orientalist curiosity of a European clientele in the colonies and the metropoles. The series reproduced here depict “abdi dalem” (palace workers) and “prajurit keraton” (palace soldiers) of the Yogyakarta Sultanate in Central Java, photographed in their “exotic” ceremonial outfits against a plain backdrop. Mementos of a glorious royal past, these portraits equally confirmed the heightened social status of palace workers within the nineteenth-century Javanese feudalistic society and now serve as symbolic evidence for their descendants who continue to proudly hold such positions despite the lack of financial advantage.

Citation

Supartono, A. (2022). Walter B. Woodbury: Portrait of Javanese People. In P. Prodger (Ed.), An Alternative History of Photography (88-89). Prestel

• Online Publication Date: Sep 30, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022
• Deposit Date: Apr 29, 2025
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 88-89
• Book Title: An Alternative History of Photography
• ISBN: 97837979138782
• Keywords: Walter Woodbury, Java, Colonial, Photography
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/4248049
• Publisher URL: https://prestelpublishing.penguinrandomhouse.de/book/An-Alternative-History-of-Photography/Phillip-Prodger/Prestel-com/e590493.rhd