Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T05:42:17.790Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cosmopolitan Visions: Ethnic Chinese and the Photographic Imagining of Indonesia in the Late Colonial and Early Postcolonial Periods

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2008

Karen Strassler
Get access

Abstract

The history of photography in Indonesia reveals Chinese Indonesians—members of a marginalized, transnational minority—as active participants in the project of nation making, rendering visible the cosmopolitan origins of national formations. In the early postcolonial period, Chinese Indonesian amateur and studio photographers acted as cultural brokers who mediated global currents and reworked colonial-era conventions to forge new national visual idioms. The specific cosmopolitanisms of these two distinct groups of ethnic Chinese photographers yielded divergent iconographies that have remained important strands in Indonesia's visual and political culture, in which a nostalgic ideology of the “asli” (authentic, original, or indigenous) competes with an outward-looking vision of Indonesia as a location from which to participate in global modernity.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , May 2008 , pp. 395 - 432
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Adam, Ahmat. 1995. The Vernacular Press and the Emergence of Modern Indonesian Consciousness (1855–1913). Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Aguilar, Filomeno V. Jr. 2001. “Citizenship, Inheritance, and the Indigenizing of ‘Orang Chinese’ in Indonesia.” Positions 9 (3): 501–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1998. “Cosmopolitan Patriots.” In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, ed. Cheah, Pheng and Robbins, Bruce, 265–89. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Behrend, Heike. 1999. “A Short History of Photography in Kenya.” In Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography, 161–65. Paris: Revue Noire.Google Scholar
Berger, John. 1972. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation.Google Scholar
Berticevich, George C. 1998. Photo Backdrops: The George C. Berticevich Collection (Exhibition catalogue). San Francisco: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.Google Scholar
Breckenridge, Carol A., Pollock, Shelden, Bhabha, Homi K., and Chakrabarty, Dipesh, eds. 2002. Cosmopolitanism. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breuer, Miles J. 1945. “The Most Civilized Hobby.” American Annual of Photography 60:77–80.Google Scholar
Buckley, Liam. 2000. “Self and Accessory in Gambian Studio Photography.” Visual Anthropology Review 16 (2): 71–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheah, Pheng. 2007. Inhuman Conditions: On Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheah, Pheng, and Robbins, Bruceeds. 1998. Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Chirot, Daniel, and Reid, Anthony, eds. Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the Modern Transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Clifford, James. 1998. “Mixed Feelings.” In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, ed. Cheah, Pheng and Robbins, Bruce, 362–70. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Coppel, Charles A. 1977. “Studying the Chinese Minorities: A Review.” Indonesia 24:175–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coppel, Charles A. 1983. Indonesian Chinese in Crisis. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cushman, Jennifer W., and Gungwu, Wang, eds. 1988. Changing Identities of Southeast Asian Chinese since World War II. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press.Google Scholar
Freedman, Maurice. 1979. “The Chinese in Southeast Asia: A Longer View.” In The Study of Chinese Society: Essays, by Freedman, Maurice, ed. William Skinner, G, 3–21. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Graham-Brown, Sarah. 1988. Images of Women: The Portrayal of Women in Photography of the Middle East, 1860–1950. London: Quartet Books.Google Scholar
Greenough, Sarah. 1991. “‘Of Charming Glens, Graceful Glades, and Frowning Cliffs’: The Economic Incentives, Social Inducements, and Aesthetic Issues of American Pictorial Photography, 1880–1902.” In Photography in Nineteenth-Century America, ed. Sandweiss, Martha A, 259–81. New York: Harry N. Abrams; Fort Worth, TX, Amon Carter Museum.Google Scholar
Groeneveld, Aneke, et al. , eds. 1989. Toekang Potret: 100 Years of Photography in the Dutch Indies, 1839–1939. Amsterdam and Rotterdam: Fragment Uitgeverij and Museum voor Volkenkunde.Google Scholar
Haks, Leo, and Wachlin, Steven. 2004. Indonesia: 500 Early Postcards. Singapore: Archipelago Press.Google Scholar
Hannerz, Ulf. 1990. “Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture.” Theory, Culture and Society 7 (2): 237–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harker, Margaret. 1979. The Linked Ring: The Secession Movement in Photography in Britain, 1892–1910. London: Heinemann for the Royal Photographic Society.Google Scholar
Heidhues, Mary Somers. 2003. “Bystanders, Participants, Victims: The Chinese in Java and West Kalimantan, 1945–46.” Paper presented at the conference “Changing Regimes and Shifting Loyalties: Identity and Violence in the Early Revolution of Indonesia,” Amsterdam, Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, June 25–27.Google Scholar
Kartini, Raden Adjeng. 1964. Letters of a Javanese Princess. Trans. Louise Symmers, Agnes. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Knaap, Gerrit. 1999. Kassian Cephas: Photography in the Service of the Sultan. Leiden: KITLV Press.Google Scholar
Kwartanada, Didi. 1997. “Kolaborasi dan Resinifikasi Komunitas Cina Kota Yogyakarta Pada Jaman Jepang 1942–5” [Collaboration and re-Sinification among the Chinese community of Yogyakarta during the Japanese era, 1942–45]. Master's thesis, University of Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta.Google Scholar
Leonardus, Agus. 1982. “Lomba Foto: Bukan Tujuan Utama” [Photo contests: Not the primary goal]. Buletin HISFA, 15–16.Google Scholar
Lindsey, Tim. 2005. “Reconstituting the Ethnic Chinese.” In Chinese Indonesians: Remembering, Distorting, Forgetting, ed. Lindsey, Tim and Pausacker, Helen, 41–76. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, Gretchen. 1995. From the Family Album: Portraits from the Lee Brothers Studio, Singapore, 1910–1925. Singapore: Landmark Books.Google Scholar
Lombard, Denys. 1990. Le Carrefour Javanais: Essai d'histoire globale [The Javanese crossroads: An essay in global history]. 3 vols. Paris: Editions de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.Google Scholar
MacDougall, David. 1992. “Photo Hierarchicus: Signs and Mirrors in Indian Photography.” Visual Anthropology 5 (2): 103–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackie, James. 2001. Introduction to Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese, ed. Reid, Anthony, xii–xxx. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
McGregor, Katherine E. 2007. History in Uniform: Military Ideology and the Construction of Indonesia's Past. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
McKeown, Adam. 1999. “Conceptualizing Chinese Diasporas, 1842–1949.” Journal of Asian Studies 58 (2): 306–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McVey, Ruth, ed. 1992. Southeast Asian Capitalists. Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mignolo, Walter D. 2000. “The Many Faces of Cosmo-polis: Border Thinking and Critical Cosmopolitanism.” Public Culture 12 (3): 721–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mrázek, Rudolf. 2002. Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newhall, Beaumont. 1982. The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present. New York: Museum of Modern Art.Google Scholar
Oetomo, Dede. 1989. “The Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia.” In The Ethnic Chinese in the ASEAN States: Bibliographic Essays, ed. Suryadinata, Leo, 43–98. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.Google Scholar
Oetomo, Dede. 1991. “The Chinese of Indonesia and the Development of the Indonesian Language.” Special issue, Indonesia 51: 53–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ong, Aihwa, and Nonini, Donald M.eds. 1997. Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Nationalism. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pinney, Christopher. 1997. Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pinney, Christopher. 2003. “Notes from the Surface of the Image: Photography, Postcolonialism, and Vernacular Modernism.” In Photography's Other Histories, ed. Pinney, Christopher and Peterson, Nicolas, 202–20. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poole, Deborah. 1997. Vision, Race, and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Purwanto, Bambang. 2006. Gagalnya Historiografi Indonesiasentris? [The failure of Indonesia-centric historiography?] Yogyakarta: Ombak.Google Scholar
Rafael, Vicente L. 2005. The Promise of the Foreign: Nationalism and the Technics of Translation in the Spanish Philippines. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Reed, Jane Levy, ed. 1991. Toward Independence: A Century of Indonesia Photographed. San Francisco: Friends of Photography.Google Scholar
Reid, Anthony. 1997. “Entrepreneurial Minorities, Nationalism and the State.” In Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the Modern Transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe, ed. Chirot, Daniel and Reid, Anthony, 33–71. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Reid, Anthony, ed. 2001. Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Ricklefs, M. C. 1993. A History of Modern Indonesia since c. 1300. 2nd ed.London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robbins, Bruce. 1998. “Introduction Part I: Actually Existing Cosmopolitanisms.” In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, ed. Cheah, Pheng and Robbins, Bruce, 1–19. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Salmon, Claudine. 1981. Literature in Malay by the Chinese of Indonesia: A Provisional Annotated Bibliography. Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme.Google Scholar
Salmon, Claudine. 1992. Le Moment “Sino-Malais” de la Literature Indonesianne [The “Sino-Malay” moment in Indonesian literature]. Paris: Cahiers d'Archipel.Google Scholar
Salmon, Claudine, and Lombard, Denys. 1980. Les Chinois de Jakarta: Temples et vie collective [The Chinese of Jakarta: Temples and communal life]. Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme.Google Scholar
Schulte Nordholt, Henk, ed. 1997. Outward Appearances: Dressing State and Society in Indonesia. Leiden: KITLV Press.Google Scholar
Schulte Nordholt, Henk. 2004. “De-Colonizing Indonesian Historiography.” Working Papers in Contemporary Asian Studies no. 6, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University.Google Scholar
Shiraishi, Takashi. 1997. “Anti-Sinicism in Java's New Order.” In Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the Modern Transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe, ed. Chirot, Daniel and Reid, Anthony, 187–207. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Sidel, John. 2003. “Liberalism, Communism, Islam: Transnational Motors of ‘Nationalist’ Struggles in Southeast Asia.” International Institute for Asian Studies, Newsletter no. 32, 23.Google Scholar
Siegel, James T. 1997. Fetish, Recognition, Revolution. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skinner, G. William. 1963. “The Chinese Minority.” In Indonesia, ed. McVey, Ruth, 103–10. New Haven, Conn.: HRAF Press.Google Scholar
Skinner, G. William. 2001. “Creolized Chinese Societies in Southeast Asia.” In Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese, ed. Reid, Anthony, 51–93. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Soedjono, Soeprapto, Marah, Risman and Rusli, Edial. 1999. Tinjauan Fotografi Salonfoto Indonesia dalam Konteks Pengembangan Seni Budaya Nasional [Approaching the photography of salon photo Indonesia in the context of the development of national art and culture]. Yogyakarta: Lembaga Penelitian Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta.Google Scholar
Soelarko, R. M. 1956. “Pengantar Berita Gaperfi No. 1” [Introduction to Gaperfi news, no. 1]. Kamera 1 (1): 1.Google Scholar
Strassler, Karen. 2003. “Refracted Visions: Popular Photography and the Indonesian Culture of Documentation in Postcolonial Java.” Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Suryadinata, Leo. 1971a. “The Pre–World War II Peranakan Chinese Press of Java: A Preliminary Survey.” Southeast Asia Paper no. 18, Ohio University Center for International Studies.Google Scholar
Suryadinata, Leo. 1971b. “Pre-War Indonesian Nationalism and the Peranakan Chinese.” Indonesia 11:83–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suryadinata, Leo. 1992. Pribumi Indonesians, the Chinese Minority, and China. 3rd ed.Singapore: Heinemann Asia.Google Scholar
Suwardi. 1985–86. Seni Lukis Sokaraja Ditinjau Dari Obyek Pelukisnya [Sokaraja painting approached from its painters' objects]. Yogyakarta: Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta, Proyek Peringkatan Pengembangan Pendidikan Tinggi, Fakultas Seni Rupa dan Desain.Google Scholar
Taylor, Jean Gelman. 1997. “Costume and Gender in Colonial Java, 1800–1940.” In Outward Appearances: Dressing State and Society in Indonesia, ed. Nordholt, Henk Schulte, 85–116. Leiden: KITLV Press.Google Scholar
Thee, Kian Wie. Forthcoming. “Indonesianization: The Economic Effects of Decolonisation in Indonesia in the 1950s.” In Economic Decolonization in Indonesia in Regional Perspective, ed. Lindblad, J. Thomas and Post, Peter. Leiden: KITLV Press.Google Scholar
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Twang, Peck-yang. 1998. The Chinese Business Elite in Indonesia and the Transition to Independence, 1940–1950. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Van Klinken, Gerry. 2005. “The Battle for History after Suharto.” In Beginning to Remember: The Past in the Indonesian Present, ed. Zurbuchen, Mary, 233–58. Seattle: Singapore University Press in association with Washington University Press.Google Scholar
Wachlin, Steven. 1989. “Large Scale Studios and Amateur Photography.” In Toekang Potret: 100 Years of Photography in the Dutch Indies, 1839–1939, ed. Groeneveld, Aneka et al. , 121–64. Amsterdam and Rotterdam: Fragment Uitgeverij and Museum voor Volkenkunde.Google Scholar
Wachlin, Steven, Fluitsma, Marianne and Knaap, G. J. 1994. Woodbury and Page: Photographers Java. Leiden: KITLV Press.Google Scholar
Wendl, Tobias. 1999. “Portraits and Scenery in Ghana.” In Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography, 142–55. Paris: Revue Noire.Google Scholar
Werbner, Pnina. 1999. “Global Pathways: Working Class Cosmopolitans and the Creation of Transnational Ethnic Worlds.” Social Anthropology 7: 17–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Lea E. 1960. Overseas Chinese Nationalism: The Genesis of the Pan-Chinese Movement in Indonesia, 1900–1916. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.Google Scholar
Willmott, Donald. 1960. The Chinese of Semarang: A Changing Minority Community in Indonesia. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar