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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 November 2024
The National Gallery of Australia in Canberra has the largest holding outside the Netherlands of photographs from the Dutch East Indies. Gael Newton, former Curator of Asia-Pacific Photography at the Museum, is largely responsible for the development of this collection. This essays looks at how the collection was developed, from both philosophical and logistical perspectives. ▶2.1 ▶2.2
The idea for a survey of the first century of medium’s history outside the axis of London, Paris, and New York had begun in 1998 when Raimy Ché Ross, an intern from the Australian National University art history program, pointed out how few Asian photographers were represented in the NGA’s photo collection—indeed how relatively few images of Asia were held. Wonderful nineteenth-century holdings of work by Felice Beato in India and China were a treasure of the collection as were a number of prints by Japanese contemporary photographers. Small groups of work by Asian photographers past and present, and images of Asia by iconic foreign travelers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Ernst Haas (color images of Balinese dancers) were acquired over the next decade. ▶2.3
Finding work by Asian photographers, either past or contemporary, other than from Japan, was hampered by the fact that only a few of the Euro - America dealers I had dealt with held any range of works. Paths for dealing directly with dealers in Asia, if they existed for photography, were few and remained so throughout the project. Relationships with several new galleries or dealers in Euro-America were established, as well as in India and Japan. Throughout the project, the global visibility of contemporary Asian photomedia artists rapidly escalated but that area was outside the scope of the project.
On Boxing Day 2006 I pinned a map of the Asia-Pacific to my wall and sat down at my home computer in Canberra to start searching out actual photographs, contacts and websites. That is how the rich and comprehensive colonial Indonesian books and photographs collection of Dutch rare book and print dealer and scholar, Leo Haks, were first located and eventually acquired in 2007. The Haks collection was compiled mostly from within Europe.
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