Photographic holdings for Southeast Asia encompass the countries of Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam, with Cambodia and Vietnam being the most heavily represented in the collections. Many of the discrete collections that encompass this geographical area include images of two or more of the countries mentioned above, reflecting not only the travels and whereabouts of the photographers or the compilers of the albums, but also the geo-political boundaries of nineteenth-century colonial territories such as French Indochina (Cambodia and the regions of Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina in north, central, and south Vietnam respectively), British Burma (Myanmar), and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). A strong thread running throughout this material is the omnipresence of colonial culture, most often manifest in a military context, whether overtly pictured or marginalized on the edges of the images.
The 200 photographs by Dr. Charles Edouard Hocquard contained in the four albums of Le Tonkin (92.R.79) are an example of a work centered on the military presence in Vietnam. Hocquard, a French army doctor, arrived in Tonkin in 1884, the same year that Tonkin became a French protectorate. His photographs record the time immediately after the Tonkin War, when France was engaged in a struggle with the Chinese rulers of Tonkin for control of the Protectorate. Military scenes depict troops, encampments, and forts as well as buildings and roads damaged in the war. Hocquard also turned his camera to the cities, villages, and architecture of Vietnam and its native inhabitants and daily life.
The building of colonial infrastructure in Vietnam is documented in photographs from the early 1870s attributed to Georges L’Hermitte showing the construction of the Palais du Gouvernement in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), for which he served as the architect (96.R.41). Another collection (2003.R.1) comprising 60 photographers by one or more unidentified photographers documents the construction of the first railroad in Indochina, built between 1881 and 1886, designed as the first part of a larger network for transporting raw goods from the countryside to Vietnam’s ports and thence to Europe.
Three albums compiled by a French pilot in the service of Aéro Mre. d'Indochine during the 1930s (93.R.94 and 2001.R.21) contain photographs of French Indochina (present day Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos), documenting both urban and rural scenes. These albums cover a range of subjects that present a later record of the French colonies: French institutions and industry in Indochina, civil engineering projects, military posts and forts, natural landmarks and views of the countryside, various local people, scenes of daily life and traditional agriculture, temples, tombs, pagodas, and street, market, and river scenes.
In Burma, the colonial presence is recorded in an album of photographs taken by Colonel Robert Blackall Graham, a participant in and eyewitness to the events surrounding the Third Anglo-Burmese War (2019.R.26). Photographs of the war and the British army are mixed among those depicting the sights and peoples of Mandalay and Burma. Another album compiled by a Lieutenant Atkinson around 1889 (2011.R.18) documents early moments in Burma’s British colonial history such as Prince Albert Victor’s visit in December 1889, as well as the military and personal life of the compiler. Other images, such as that of a tree under which King Mindoon Min purportedly signed a treaty with the British, images of dacoits or gangs of robbers, the jail at Myngyan, and a portrait of Sir George Stuart White, a brigadier during the Third Anglo-Burmese War, who was knighted for subduing the dacoits, reference key events in the colonization process. A late-nineteenth century booster book, possibly by Watts & Skeen, contains cyanotype views of businesses, government buildings and local monuments in Rangoon and Mandalay (2018.R.6).
Thailand stands alone among the Southeast Asian nations as never having been colonized by a Western power. Photographic holdings for the country primarily comprise views of Bangkok by nineteenth-century photographers Francis Chit and H. Worsley Rolfe (2002.R.19; 2002.R.18). Views of Bangkok are also present in the travel slides of the American architect John Lautner, who traveled extensively between 1960 and 1991 (2014.R.3).
In addition to the colonial presence and images of native inhabitants and of daily life, another major thread that runs through the Southeast Asia photograph collections is documentation of antiquities and archaeological sites. The holdings for Cambodia are especially rich and include views of the temple complex of Angkor Wat and the walled city of Angkor Thom and its central temple, the Bayon, by Émile Gsell, Urbain Bassett, and John Thomson (various accessions).
Among the ancient sites of Indonesia there are numerous views of the Buddhist temple of Borobudur by European photographers Isidore van Kinsbergen and Woodbury & Page (2002.R.3; 2002.R.6; 2002.R.26). Kassian Cephas, the first native Javanese professional photographer, documented Borobudur in 1872 and again from 1890 to 1891 and photographed the Hindu Candi Lara Jonggrang temple complex at Prambanan from 1889 to 1890 before the monuments underwent extensive restoration (2002.R.40). Additional holdings by Cephas include a portfolio of 64 collotype prints of the ruins of the Hindu temples of Ciwa and Buddha (Parambanan, in Central Java) (2009.R.15).
Image: Kassian Cephas (Javanese, 1845-1912). Prambanan Temple sculptures, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Ca. 1890. Albumen print. Getty Research Institute, 2002.R.40.
The antiquities of Burma are represented in the Oswald Nagler’s images (2019.R.29) taken between 1957 and 1961 of the ancient city of Pagan (Bagan) in the Mandalay Region.
Lastly, as with all formerly colonized regions, portraits of native peoples and local inhabitants form a significant portion of the photographs of Southeast Asia. These images range from informal outdoor portraits to occupational portraits and to formal studio portraits.
An advertising photomontage for Émile Gsell’s Saigon photo business (93.R.89) comprising some sixty carte-de-visite-sized portraits of Southeast Asians laid over larger photographs of Saigon and Angkor Wat epitomizes the Western interest in The Other where most of the sitters represented are not identified by name but by attributes, such as race or profession. Conversely, officials, royalty, and other personages are often, but not always, named. Examples of portraits of known Southeast Asians include Gsell’s portrait of Nguyễn Hữu Dô, the high-ranking Vietnamese court official who was instrumental in the French conquest of Vietnam in the 1880s (2011.R.20), and the portraits of Phan Thanh Giản, First Ambassador to France, and Second Ambassador Pham Phú taken by Jacques-Philippe Potteau in Paris in 1863 (2011.R.19).