Jakarta 100 Years Ago
Through the window of early photography, Scott Merrillees has brought the long lost world of Jakarta back to life in his book, BATAVIA in Nineteenth Century Photographs, which presents the most comprehensive photographic record ever published of the city coming from the late 1850s, when the earliest known photographs were taken through to the closing years of the 19th century.
Published by Southeast Asia specialist, Archipelago Press, an imprint of Singapore-based Editions Didier Millet, the book’s 155 rare photographs – many never before published – were sourced coming from leading institutional along with private collections in Europe along with Australia along with coming from the author’s personal collection, all carefully reproduced in original sepia tone.
The sophisticated photographs found in that will volume are all the more surprising, considering that will they were taken during the age of the wet collodion plate, a thin piece of glass coated using a wet along with sticky chemical emulsion that will was sensitive to light. The glass plates were a very early form of photographic “negative” along with are right now almost non-existent along with impossible to find. They often broke because they were very thin along with fragile or were wiped clean by the photographer so they could be re-used. The glass plate negatives were used to print photographs on very thin paper coated using a solution, including egg whites (i.e. “albumen”) thereby were known as “albumen prints”.
Reproduction quality along with clarity are so detailed that will you can make out pebbles, shadows along with tire marks on the road, ripples along with reflections on water, blades of grass along a pathway along with the leaves of trees finely etched against the sky. In an 1880 photo of the Museum of the Batavian Society of the Arts along with Sciences, the present-day National Museum, the open windows without bars reveal priceless collections visible inside.
Of particular note are the captivating albumen prints coming from the Woodbury & Page collection, which includes images of Batavia’s landscape along with colonial buildings. Working in partnership, Walter Woodbury along with James Page established a photographic firm in 1857 that will continued to produce along with sell images long after Woodbury’s return to England in 1863, along with Page’s untimely death in 1865.
Notwithstanding the exponential along with unchecked expansion of today’s megacity, an unexpectedly high number of Batavia’s 19th century landmarks survive to the present day, although the structures have often been completely rebuilt, roofs reshaped along with ornamentation eliminated over the last 150 years; the Chicken Market Bridge over Kali Besar in Kota, the Portuguese Church on Jl. Pangeran Jayakarta, Jakarta’s oldest building still used for its original purpose, along with the Yin De Yuan temple on Jl. Kemenangan, one of the oldest surviving Chinese temples in Jakarta. the item could be fascinating to see these old buildings in “before along with after” format placed adjacent to the same scene today.
In one photograph of Koningsplein (today’s Medan Merdeka), the reader can almost feel a refreshing breeze blowing unimpeded across the huge open empty grassy plain, an area so gigantic that will the item took 1.5 hours to walk around. In those days, visitors even complained that will the city was spread over so large an area that will the item was “uncozy,” lacked “cohesion” along with that will one needed to take horse carriages everywhere because of the great distances that will had to be covered!
from the chapter entitled Molenvliet (Mill Way), right now Jl. Gajah Mada along with Jl. Hayam Wuruk, can be a wonderful series of portraits of Batavia’s premier 19th century hotels – such as the grand Hotel des Indes – accompanied by details so intimate along with kinetic that will the reader, looking voyeuristically back in time, can hear the tinkling of china from the bustling dining rooms, the clip clop of horses out from the broad forecourts, the splash of the water fountains from the spacious gardens as orchestra music can be carried on the evening breeze. These internationally known hotels were the choice of visiting dignitaries along with the centre of splendid functions for the elite of Batavia’s colonial society.
Unfortunately, many handsome buildings, such as the Harmonie Society club house, completed in 1815 – famous as a venue for grand balls along with state functions – were demolished to widen streets or make way for office or shopping complexes. One wonders how much more attractive the city could be today, along with what an asset their presence could mean for the tourist industry, had these graceful old edifices been spared.
The photographs are given a deeper dimension from the text with impressions along with commentaries coming from visitors, officials along with travellers. We learn of many intriguing insights over the span of decades into how hotels, restaurants, social clubs, haberdasheries, bakeries, watchmakers, jewellers, lavishly appointed shops along with department stores came into being, rose to prosperity along with ultimately suffered misfortune, their European owners along with native staffs disappearing namelessly into the mists of time. The rise along with fall of an establishment’s fortunes can be often accompanied by a rich chronicle of the lascivious scandals along with gossip of the day. Detailed biographies of successful Dutch entrepreneurs as well as the genealogies of their forbears who settled, lived along with died from the East Indies through generations are also provided.
Scott Merrillees’ unquenchable curiosity along with dedication has resulted in a collection of achingly nostalgic photographs of excellent quality that will succeeds admirably – both in image along with words – in transporting the reader back to a Jakarta of an earlier age that will can be right now little understood along with has largely vanished.
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Jakarta 100 Years Ago
Jakarta 100 Years Ago