Thilly Weissenborn: Photographer of the Netherlands East Indies

Thilly Weissenborn (1883-1964) was one of Indonesia's first woman photographers of significance. She was born in Java but schooled, like most Netherlands colonials, in The Hague. At the age of eighteen, Thilly returned to Java where she trained in the famous Atelier Kurkdjian before opening her own studio in the province of Preanger. For more than two decades, she supplied the colonial government's tourist bureau with photographs featuring Java's exotic-looking scenery and Balinese temples and dancers. She also supplied Dutch dignitaries, colonial officials and wealthy Dutch families with souvenir albums featuring scenic photographs and Bali's governors and royalty. I argue that although her growing obsession with light was a feature shared by many contemporary American photographers, her photographs differed from theirs by dint of their connection to Netherlands colonialism. I further argue that this is most evident in their focus on the beauty of the landscape and the seeming tranquillity of life under colonial rule, but also their strong allusions to the Mooi Indie style of paintings popular among Dutch settlers. In the twenty-year period leading up to Japan's invasion of Indonesia, Weissenborn's images were widely sought after and reproduced by the Dutch East Indies Tourist Bureau; however, their strong connection to Netherlands colonialism means that they are today not just regarded ambivalently by photographic historians, but are frequently overlooked.