Chapter 7 - Art Photography in Indonesia: J.M. Arastath Ro’is, Trisno Sumardjo, and Zenith Magazine

Summary

Claire Holt, a dancer and an expert on Indonesian art, was born in Latvia but lived most of her life in New York. She started her research about Indonesian traditional dance at the end of the 1930s, and returned to Indonesia in the mid-1950s to observe the changes and development of art in Indonesia after World War II. Holt experienced two important periods of Indonesian cultural development, before and after the country gained independence from the Netherlands and Japan. It is very important to notice the significance of Holt’s photography during her research in Indonesia. Her research produced more than just a history, more than just documents mapping the art and culture of Indonesia from ancient times to modern. Amongst her colleagues she was considered a teacher and a mentor, and was often photographed herself with a camera in hand. Holt made and collected thousands of valuable photographs for her research. Enthralled with dance, her photographs document the rich diversity of dance forms across the archipelago, as well as many monuments, temples, and religious artifacts. In addition to these traditions, however, Claire Holt also recorded the early development of Indonesian modernist painting by capturing the portraits and paintings of artists such as S. Sudjojono, Affandi, Hendra Gunawan, Oesman Effendi, Zaini, Salim, Basuki Resobowo, Trisno Sumardjo, Wakidi, Djoni Trisno, But Muchtar, Mochtar Apin, and many others. Many of these photographs—of the ancient ruins and the emerging trends of modernist art—became part of her influential book, Art in Indonesia: Continuities and Change (1967). ▶7.1

Claire Holt, obviously, was not the first researcher who recorded the nature and culture of Indonesia through the lens of a camera. Long before her first encounters with Indonesia, in 1844 daguerreotypist Adolph Schaefer photographed Hindu Javanese sculptures and the Borobudur temple. Two British collaborators, Walter Woodbury and James Page, were also extremely well known for their photographs made across Indonesia. Woodbury and Page established a photo studio in Harmonie, Batavia (now Jakarta). They arrived in Indonesia in 1857, commissioned to document traditional rituals as well as various communities, developments, and ancient structures across the archipelago. Similar to Claire Holt, for Woodbury and Page the camera was a tool to investigate, survey, conquer, and demystify Indonesia, largely for a Western audience. ▶7.2