Charles J. Kleingrothe

Charles J. Kleingrothe (24 September 1864, Krefeld25 February 1942, Frankfurt), known professionally as C. J. Kleingrothe, was a German photographer who spent nearly 30 years as a photographer in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia), and nudes. His photos often captured power dynamics and social class differences, particularly between Europeans and Sumatrans. Many of his photos were commissioned by plantation companies and the colonial empire. When photographing locals, Kleingrothe tended to dress and position them in highly exoticized ways and sold the resulting prints as postcards.

Kleingrothe briefly returned to Europe in the early 1900s and had built up enough of a reputation as an artistic photographer that his albums quickly became valuable. He gifted an album bound in crocodile skin to Queen Wilhelmine of the Netherlands. He returned to Germany permanently in 1915 and retired to Bad Nauheim. He became a landlord and opened a cinema and tobacco business but relocated to Frankfurt with his second wife, Maria, around the time World War II broke out. Kleingrothe died on February 25, 1942, from influenza and atherosclerosis.

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