About this Item
Oblong quarto (11" x 13.5"), recent brown leather spine and corners, gilt rules at spine, with original black cloth over boards. 92 albumen photographs (9.25" x 10.5" or smaller), mounted on rectos of album pages (10.5" x 13"), additional blank leaves. Manuscript title on mount below most photographs. CONDITION: Very good, moderate wear to covers, tonality of prints generally quite rich, toning and light corner/edge wear to leaves; a few small tears to margins not affecting images. A rich and variegated album of photographs of Java by British photographers Walter Woodbury and James Page, documenting Batavia (now Jakarta), the capital of the Dutch East Indies, as well as interior provinces, in the late 1850s and early 1860s. The album embraces landscapes, portraits, and scenes of everyday life in both Batavia and the jungle. Human subjects include several young "Javanese actors"; at least two portraits of princesses; girls cooking, weaving, and painting fabric; Dayak warriors; and a "Puppet or shadow play." Also present are a "Street scene," the "Execution of rebels" in Batavia, in which eight bodies hang from the gallows and at least twenty-eight others wait, nooses already around their necks; several views of the Botanical Gardens and other locales in Buitenzorg (now Bogor), as well as of the architecture and stone reliefs at Borobudur. Landscapes include "Rice fields, showing system of irrigation," tea plantations, and several striking views of both "active" and inactive "craters" (volcanos). Walter Bently Woodbury (1834 1885) was born in Manchester, England, and traveled to Australia in his late teens, initially intending to join in the gold rush. He quickly realized that working as a draughtsman and surveyor would probably be more profitable. He continued pursuing photography on the side, and in the mid-1850s turned to it full time. In 1857 he went to Java with James Page, and the two founded the firm Woodbury and Page, photographing landscapes, architecture, and human interest subjects throughout Java. In 1859 the partners contracted with Negretti and Zambra in London to market their photographs in England. Woodbury returned to England permanently in 1863, and afterwards achieved lasting fame for his invention of the Woodburytype, a photo-mechanical process resulting in high quality images closely resembling original albumen prints. An excellent example of the work of an esteemed photographic firm operating in Java in the mid-nineteenth century. Seller Inventory # 7876
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