Isidore van Kinsbergen

Isodorus "Isidore" van Kinsbergen (3 September 1821 – 10 September 1905) 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 that 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.

Early life

Isidore van Kinsbergen was born in Bruges in 1821 (at that time, Bruges was part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands). Having studied painting and singing in Paris, he joined a French opera group that travelled to Batavia (the present day Jakarta) in 1851. After several performances the group left the Dutch East Indies, but Van Kinsbergen decided to stay there. He became interested in the new medium of photography, particularly in using the albumen print technique. He opened the first albumen print processing shop in Batavia.

Commissions In 1862, the General Secretary of East Indies Alexis Loudon invited van Kinsbergen to join the government mission to Siam (present day Thailand) in February 1862 to cover the 1860 Treaty of Friendship, Trade and Navigation between the Netherlands and Siam.

Although Brumund's publication included drawings of Borobudur, the Batavia Society still felt that it was incomplete. In April 1873, van Kinsbergen set off to the monument. Cleaning, digging and other technical difficulties delayed his start in taking pictures until August that year. The wet monsoon season further hampered his work, resulting in a series of only 43 photographs taken between August and December. The Society was disappointed with the number of photographs, although satisfied with the printing and artistic quality.

Photographic styles Isidore van Kinsbergen was known as a perfectionist. During his work in Borobudur, he selected the statues and panels which had been preserved best to take pictures of. He preferred a non-frontal angle, which shows a better depth of the relief and the skills of the relief maker. To stress its timeless beauty, van Kinsbergen blocked out the original background in the negative film instead of putting up a black curtain during photographing.

There are some criticisms of van Kinsbergen's photographs. He missed some details and sometimes his series was unbalanced. Trained as an artist, his works lacked archaeological descriptions, the main purpose of his contract. The printing quality, however, is beyond question and he had success showing the beauty of classical Javanese arts. His photographs were shown to the public both in the 1873 International Exhibition in Vienna and the 1878 World Exhibition in Paris. His works can be seen in several places, including the National Museum in Amsterdam.

Gallery