#PC98
1872, 1896-7
Three albumen prints, each ca. 16,5x22 cm (6 ½ x 8 ¾ in). All mounted on period stiff card leaves with pen and pencil captions in French on the mounts. All titled and dated in negative. Overall a very good collection.
Three photos of the Javanese temples by prominent photographer of the Dutch East Indies Isidore van Kinsbergen, including the first photographic image of Borobudur temple after its restoration (dated 1872), and two photos of the Prambanan temple dated 1896-1897.
“Isodorus "Isidore" van Kinsbergen was a Dutch-Flemish engraver who took the first archaeological and cultural photographs of Java during the Dutch East Indies period in the nineteenth century. The photographs he produced during his visit to the colony in 1851 ranged in subject from antiquities and landscapes to portraits, court-photography, model studies and nudes. His monograph was published in black and white with a coloured quire of nearly 400 photographs. His photograph of Borobudur was the first picture of the monument that showed the results of the first restoration c. 1873” (Wikipedia).
“Boro-Boedoer (Borobudur) is still considered the true pinnacle of his archaeological work. Supplementing the Antiquities of Java series, the Batavian Society had commissioned Van Kinsbergen in 1873 to photograph the Borobudur. The manner in which he immortalized the various Buddha types on this world famous monument enraptured the Dutch scholar G.P. Rouffaer: “If ever the concept of God, as we see it, has revealed itself to the Hindus in the language of sculpture, that is it certainly in these depictions of the sitting Buddha.” ” (Hannavy, J. Encyclopaedia of Nineteenth Century Photography. New York, 2008, vol. 1, p. 1436).
