Portrait of Dutch East Indies Everyday Life in Woodbury & Page’s Photographic Works

This study using photographic analysis as ethnohistory method try to compared portrait photographs of native and european communities in the Dutch East Indies from the work of photographers Walter Bentley Woodbury and James Page. Woodbury and Page were one of the important photographers in the history of Dutch East Indies photography. In their short time in the Dutch East Indies, Woodbury and Page collaborated to create a Woodbury & Page photography company that produced a variety of photographs including family photographs and portraits of native and european people living in the Dutch East Indies. Trough the Woodbury & Page photography archive which is now belong to Leiden University library archives, this research tries to describe the social relations between native peoples and european communities in Dutch East Indies. Portrait photos in the 1850-1870s were still dominated by portrait painting style. Nevertheless, the body language and expressions emitted by the subject of photos when posing formally facing the camera illustrate various things. By analyze many photos from many kind of peoples there and with helped by historical records, this paper try to describe the social life in Dutch East Indies at that time. Keywords: body language, ethnohistory, photo archive, portrait