Recorded for Prosterity

Photos of the Indies by thilly Weissenborn,
Collected by Ernst Drissen
Foreword by Olaf J de Landell

The Plates

The following is a translated version, with small edits, of a publication originally published in Dutch in 1983.
As much as possible, the writing style of the author has been kept.

Foreword

In discussions and stories the name Thilly Weissenborn often vaguely flitted past me until on one day a series of photos awakened me. Magnificent, strongly narrative, extremely characteristic photographs of Indonesian landscapes and people.

How fortunate it is that people such as Thilly Weissenborn exist: who have their eyes open so much for beauty - how fortunate it is that such people also always have an apprentice who carries out their conviction like a disciple!

Thilly Weissenborn had many friends - also a married couple with a son: Ernst Drissen. He "received lessons" in due course from "Aunt Thil Weissenborn" in the early beginning of his interest for photography; he understood her and mastered that wonderful profession. Because of this, later when war raged over the magical land that was Indonesia, he recognized the scattered photographs of his former teacher and was able to save them.

Now we can see the unmistakable works of art. That a woman like Thilly came to the Indies, and there with clear eyes recognized the indescribable beauty of that land - that she by chance was a masterful photographer, a woman who had mastered all the details of her profession and thus was in a position to be able to record every subtle nuance of sweetness and threat, of wild mountains and contemplative dawns, always in that simple black and white!

How deeply must you love life and in so doing the country, in order to translate that fortune in such a fragile and nuanced way! And how, without hesitation, she was able to capture in her picture a single person or a small group in the difference. Always the tender beauty-conscious Indonesians in graceful movement or in stillness.

See how she was able to translate the kingdom of plant growth and brought together the diversity of forms! How she called up the distance of rivers and mountains with all their melancholy and jubilation to a clear presence. Note the animals and the unsuspecting children!

Timeless beauty. Like the people who appear in her photos - people and children who perhaps are already long gone - recently I beheld them myself in the same paradisiacal territory, in the valleys and in the sawahs that are stroked like velvet by the wind. There we are no longer individuals. Mankind becomes a small facet of the deep polished beauty that is called the Indies; and Thilly Weissenborn represented it masterfully, gave it voice and fragrance so that it cannot die.

With great piety and knowledge of his subject Ernst Drissen has collected this work together and made the sequence of images into almost a melody; one in memory of Thilly Weissenborn and for the unforgettable land that she found, saw and immortalised. A very important body of work in which I again and again experience deep joy.

Olaf J. de Landell

“… who was not yet able to be spurred on to pay a visit and who was indeed in a position to give life to the memory of all that beauty that this land gave him to admire and to enjoy … J. van Dyck in “Rambles through Preanger” 1922.

Photography is the only language
that is understood throughout the whole world
and because it brings together
all peoples and cultures, it forms a
band among the great family of all people.

Helmut Gernsheim

THILLY WEISSENBORN 1889-1964
Photographer in Java

In Society Street in Garoet above the local pharmacy Thilly Weissenborn set up her photographic studio “Lux”. She had become the owner in 1920 and managed several Soendanese colleagues whom she had trained herself, among whom Warna and Djojo were later the most important. It was something special in those times: a woman as photographer and “independent businessman”. Always very active and enterprising, she undertook many photographic trips throughout Java, but also beyond.

She was adventurous and had pluck; she was also respected, beloved and very skilled.

We had been living there in Garoet since my father, after twenty years, no longer worked as a planter on tea plantations. I attended a real school for the first time only after home schooling by my mother following the tested “Clerkx method”, and only there did I also meet Dutch-speaking classmates. Of the Soendanese friends on the plantations it is Omo who lives most dearly in my memory; he lived in the desa of Pamegatan, our last enterprise.

We considered ourselves very united, we children of the same country. His friendship and loyalty remained until the date of my departure from there. My parents had to move to Garoet in 1930, the most delightfully located town in Preanger in West Java, approximately thirty kilometres to the north of Pamegatan in the same paradisiacal region.

It was there that my twelfth birthday was celebrated. I didn’t just get the usual presents from my parents …. they also surprised me with a camera. On Thilly Weissenborn’s advice it was a Zeiss-Ikon box camera, with which I could take eight photos. Later in Holland, just after the war, I gave it to a school friend who married and went overseas. About 30 years later it appeared that she had kept the box camera! She gave it back to me. The surprise and my joy were almost greater than on my birthday in 1933. It now stands on show in my bookcase as a sort of jewel. Pointing to it, I often say: “That’s how it all began.”

After that birthday I began to take photos keenly because I knew that within half a year we would depart for Holland which was unknown to me. Would I ever come back again afterwards? Yes, that question kept me very occupied. I photographed everything that was dear to me and that I wanted to “take with me”. Only later did I realise that at that time intuition had pointed me towards the right path in the choice of subjects.

I brought my films to “Lux” myself and before I could pick up my prints a few days later, I always had to go to Thilly’s office. We sat there at her desk and she gave me all sorts of tips about how I should do things differently the next time, particularly in relation to the rules of composition and distribution of space. She also gave me compliments for what I had done well, as a good teacher should.

They were unforgettable and irreplaceable lessons, whose importance I frequently experienced later. My “achievements” appeared to impress her and once I was in Holland the “lessons” continued via the sending to and from of my photos. “Aunt Thil” enjoyed it; in her heart she always remained an amateur in the literal sense of the word!

Thilly Weissenborn taught me how to “see consciously”, regardless of how young I was, and that is quite different to “looking”. This book that I hereby present to you is about her, my first guide in my hobby which began then and later also became my profession.

Thilly Weissenborn’s photographic work – she was technically skilled but particularly artistically talented – is of a high standard in my opinion. Her photos aren’t “old-fashioned”, but in fact “old-fashioned good”. Her subjects alone will never become old-fashioned because it is certain that even today Lake Bagendit, Wine Merchants Bay and Mount Tjikoeraj, the rice paddies, coconut trees and the rustling bamboo forests in Java are the same and just as sweet and imposing as they were years ago. That isn’t nostalgia, it is timeless reality.

Once you have been introduced to Thilly’s work, you recognise it again without much effort, by the style and presentation, by the photographic interpretation of “mood” and the geographic beauty of Indonesia. The complete mastery of technique was her firm foundation. Because of it, she was also in a position to reflect in her work her sense of everything that was striking, beautiful and essential. Her photography was not only a business-like registering, but much more an intuitive approach and rendering of what she encountered.

“Photography is not done with the camera but with the eye and heart” is a saying with which I agree. Thilly Weissenborn provided her artistic vision, which was made possible by technical mastery. She frequently accentuated the magnificence of the landscape by including human figures regardless of how unobtrusive, as a measure in the picture, not for the people themselves.

With her professional skills and intuitive eye she also knew how to represent the “light”, the contrasts in her subject – so important for the reproduction of atmosphere. In part she achieved this by the picture itself, but particularly also in the darkroom: by selecting the right gradation of paper when printing, and targeted intervention by the continued exposure of parts of the negative. In black and white photography, this is a technique that provides accents and leads to particular effects when applied functionally and with careful consideration. In particular, the manipulation of possibilities in the darkroom ultimately determines the composition, contrast effect and reproduction of mood, and how we experience a photographic work emotionally.

You can have photographed a beautiful landscape or a characteristic head of an old person or an attractive well-formed young woman - but everything succeeds or fails with what you are able do in the final analysis with the printing of the negative. Artistic feeling is a necessity, but also to no lesser a degree the technical expertise to give expression to it. The interaction of these factors determines whether or not the creation is a success.

Like the great ones in her profession, Thilly Weissenborn was also a “calligrapher” with light. Indeed the word photographer means depicting with light. The Greek foos means: “light” and grafein: “write, express”. Her studio had the name “Lux”, which in Latin also means “light”; she played with it daily under the black hood of her camera and in the darkroom to show what she wanted to tell us.

Thilly was happy with life as it came, both in her work and in contact with others, whether this had a business or personal flavour. Most of the time they went hand in hand, as she had no difficulties in that regard, being open, honest, spontaneous and cordial. Not aware of her talents in work and dealings with others, she didn’t even know how good she was. Spontaneous, impulsive and rather nonchalant, but quite strict in relation to her achievements which is clearly expressed in her photos.

Alongside her work she received commissions from scientists, government agencies, private individuals, businesses and publishers of books, magazines and tourist reading material. Her archive of negatives expanded so much that it became a valuable source from which many a request could be met. That archive and her inventory appeared to be almost completely destroyed after the war with Japan. When I visited Thilly Weissenborn once more in the fifties in Baarn, she still had an old Leica, several glass negatives and a couple of old films taken in favourite spots. The films were made available to me so that I could take some prints from them. You find them in this book.

Who was Thilly Weissenborn actually?

Marie Da Paula Weissenborn, an older sister of Thilly’s, had a daughter who became a dentist. That niece gave me a description of her aunt, and I think it is appropriate to recount it below. Where necessary I have corrected facts, data and names of places and supplemented it because, after reference to archives and drawing from additional sources, I was able to track down the correct details.

She writes:

Thil Weissenborn was the youngest of six children of the married couple Herman Weissenborn and Paula Roessner (naturalised Germans). She was born in Kediri (East Java) on 22 March 1889 and had two sisters and three brothers: Alex, Else, Maria Da Paula (my mother), Oscar and Theo. My grandfather Weissenborn had a coffee plantation in Kediri. In 1892 Grandma moved to The Hague with the children, followed a year later by her husband, who travelled with Alex one year later to Tanganyika, where he had bought a plantation.

Else, Oscar and Thilly had an artistic nature. Else went to study photography in Paris and set up her studio in 1903 at 51 Conradkade in The Hague, where she found her way into the circle of prominent professional colleagues. Her clientele came from affluent circles, including vacationers from the Indies. Grandma was her assistant and also the business factotum.

Tante Thil was a jolly person and suffered the least under the financial circumstances after the death of her father in 1901. She attended a girls’ school, had many friends, played tennis fervently and learned the profession with her sister Else. Together with her brother Theo, who finished his studies in Delft, Aunt departed in February 1913 for Java with destination Bandoeng; it was to this location because Oscar was probably stationed at one of the nearby cultural enterprises. From there she moved to Soerabaja where Theo had set up as an engineer.

Thilly was a jovial girl, from what I’ve heard in stories, and made friends easily. On several occasions she came to stay with my mother at the business near Pekalongan and photographed family arrangements for Grandma Weissenbornnin in Holland.

After Soerabaja came her period in Garoet. She began to do a lot of landscape and nature photography there alongside portraits of people.
I remember that she was often requested by businesses. At that time it appears that people often sent photos to the home country and Aunt made friends everywhere. She was also well-liked and made welcome because of her love of sports, among other things on the tennis court.
I believe that this period must have been her golden years.

Her character was extrovert, she was spontaneous, gladly helped anyone, had a warm heart, was cheerful, in short many couldn’t understand that she remained unmarried. She had been brought up as a “decent” girl. Flirting was allowed but never displaying any sign of being in love. Yet there was a drive for a certain degree of freedom in order to be able to spread her wings better. She let work and pleasure merge together. She was also socially active, to phrase it in modern terms.

For a time she had George, the son of her tennis partner Nico Wijnmalen, a young widower, at her house. I know almost certainly that she was mad about Uncle Nico but respected his bachelor tendency. The relationship remained a platonic friendship until the war. What I remember from the time when I often visited Garoet – after my arrival as a dentist in Java – as “the niece” is that Nico and Thil presented as a unit. They belonged together in this platonic relationship. Nico was as careful as Thil was uninhibited. He was respected, also in the club (played billiards well), was the axis of tennis life in Garoet and thoroughly trustworthy.

After the war, Aunt let me read a letter from Nico, in which he wrote: “Thil, we have both survived it, I was a fool, and now know that we can’t be separated”, etc – a complete marriage proposal. Aunt Thil was as happy as a young girl, but said: “I don’t need that, I’m almost sixty, he can get something better, but I’m happy enough with this”.

That was Aunt Thil all over. Nico, however, arranged, a betrothal without her knowledge, shepherded her to the registry office in Bandoeng,
I think it was situated in a school and … she was the abducted bride. It was the marriage of the day. Uncle Nico all over. I always found this a touching story, like something in a fairytale that can also exist in these times. Uncle and Aunt remained together happily, also spreading a lot of happiness when they lived as “pensioners” in Baarn and that is the period that I experienced with them.

After Thilly’s death, Uncle became very quiet. At that time I tried to give something back to him because I knew that would put Aunt at rest. Bless her soul!

Every day Uncle came to eat and afterwards I watched TV with him if there was anything good to see. I particularly couldn’t bear to miss tennis matches and football …! Then he made coffee. A sort of ritual.

As I see it Aunt Thil always remained a young girl, brought up in a particular era that left its mark on her. She lived and played openly, never thought herself important, was never hindered by ponderousness, was in essence naïve.

That was also her charm and we, the younger ones, had a lot of fun with it. She was never aware of her artistic talents; however she threw her heart and soul into her work! She was a decent person, who knew how to live and gave a lot of love.

Together with Uncle Nico, who survived her by six years, she rests at the cemetery in Baarn.

In this open hearted sketch by her niece, you have been able to get to know Thilly Weissenborn better.

While searching for possible existing work in the photo archives of the Royal Institutes for the Tropics in Amsterdam and for Language, Land and Culture in Leiden, I spotted photos from the “Kurkdjian Studio” in Soerabaja. In style and presentation they bore such a striking similarity to those of Thilly Weissenborn that I presumed that she probably could have been employed in that firm. I was aware that before her arrival in Garoet she had enjoyed further training in a large city in Java, but I didn’t know where. In one of her private albums there were two large photographs and indeed a group photo, in which she was shown and of another photograph which she had been busy retouching.

One day I carefully loosened both photos from the album page. On the reverse side of the group photo I saw the text: “Management and personnel of the Kurkdjian Studio” – unfortunately without a date. Quite a discovery after all the investigation up to that point! My suspicion was confirmed: Thilly Weissenborn had thus indeed completed her training in Java at the famous photo firm of the Armenian photographer Kurkdjian.

It is not so surprising that one indeed sees her photos as those from the renowned studio (see for example page 64 of “Travels through an incomplete past” by Pierre Heijboer, 1980 edition).

Approximately thirty people were associated with that firm in Soerabaja (the Helmig firm!), including the management.

Since 1897 the studio had been run by an Englishman, G. P. Lewis, a skilled professional. Thilly was employed in this studio until 1917. As far as technique is concerned, she learned a lot but her style, the reflection of her character and feminine nature, are more playful, dynamic, subtle and not as static as that of her teacher Lewis. After Kurkdjian’s death in 1904, the firm was taken over by the pharmaceutical import company Helmig in Soerabaja.

In 1912 Dr Denis G. Mulder set up business in Garoet as a medical practitioner. He became a specialist for general light therapy. His long-term goal was to become increasingly more proficient and for his medical approach to gain recognition. For that reason, in 1913 he constructed the “Garoet Sanatorium” for rest and recuperation in Ngamplang, four kilometres to the south of Garoet. With himself as medical director and eight European nurses the sanatorium was opened in 1915.

In 1920, Dr Mulder became regional government doctor stationed in Bandoeng and set up the “Medical Radiological Institute” there. The Garoet Sanatorium was sold to the “Netherlands Indies Hotel Association”, expanded with much new construction and from that point on was called “Hotel Ngamplang”.

Dr Mulder was a passionate amateur photographer and came into contact with Thilly Weissenborn through his contacts in,and through his sisters who were friends of hers. An important acquaintanceship for her future career: the doctor-amateur photographer recognised her artistic qualities and when he set up the “Garoet Pharmacy and Trade Enterprise Ltd” he brought Thilly to Garoet because he saw a future for her as a photographer in Preanger. As a component of the company a photo studio was set up. Thilly was given management of it. Thus the G.A.H. Photo Studio “Lux” came about. On his departure for Bandoeng in 1920 Dr Mulder gave ownership of the studio to Thilly Weissenborn and that was then the beginning of “Photo Studio ‘Lux’, Th. Weissenborn – Garoet”.

In October 1922 she went back to Holland for the first time. It became a rather long stay, principally with her family in The Hague. Her arrival here had to do with the poor health of her mother who died a month later. After a period of vacation and business training.Thilly returned with ambition and a desire to work further in her beloved Garoet, where she would remain for twenty years.

This town, with the local name for the arrowroot plant, lies on a plain at an altitude of approximately seven hundred metres in the beautiful, sweet mountainous landscape of the former Priangan Residence and was a very popular vacation spot, surrounded by five impressive mountains, partly volcanoes. The climate is splendid and very healthy thanks to the high altitude and cool mountain air. Countless excursions, walks and automobile trips were possible there. They are considered to be the most beautiful in Java. There were outstanding hotels with all creature comforts, including “Papandajan” (with a hundred rooms and two tennis courts) and “Villa Dolce” (sixty rooms and swimming pool).

Garoet was also situated for excursions in the most heavily visited area in Java. There were craters, sulphur springs, lakes and fishponds in the nearby vicinity. There was a lively pasar with an abundance of natural products and implements of all types and everywhere one could hear the Soendanese language, which sounds so musical. There was a society with the apt name “Intra Montes”, where the planters also gathered and where parties were held. National holidays and the “adoe domba” (ram fights) were held on the aloen-aloen, which was enclosed by the masigit (mosque), the official residences of the Assistant Resident and Regent and by the European Primary School with rubber trees (ficus) that waved in a friendly way to the high-crowned banyans, their brothers on the opposite side.

There were sports fields, tennis courts, an area for horse races and football at Haoerpanggoeng and automobile rental agencies that did good business thanks to the tourists. The red-coloured buses of “Mata Hari” maintained a service between Garoet and Bandoeng. The station lay in the centre and at a short distance from the hotels.

On the western side flowed the Tjimanoek river like a silver ribbon winding its way through the plain; the Provincial Hospital lay on the other bank and on the near bank the swimming pool “Sanding”, that could only be reached on foot or by bicycle over a hard path between the sawahs. There was a textile factory, the “Preanger Weaving Mill” on the land of the former soap and perfume factory of G. Dralle in Goentoerweg.

Twenty kilometres away, at the foot of the volcano Papandajan, lay the hotel “Tjisoeroepan”, formerly the Hotel “Villa Pauline” of Mrs Van Horck. From there the journey frequently began to Papandajan crater. “Hacks Radium Hotel” is also worthy of note, one of the best mountain hotels in Java; the King of Siam was a guest there. If one wanted to go to the bubbling sulphur springs of the Kawah Kamodjan, then the journey began here. Four kilometres from Garoet: the Hotel “Ngamplang” with its abundance of greenery and flowers, trees and vegetable gardens, its swimming pools, riding school, golf course and tennis courts, reading room, library, its own post office and magnificent kitchen.

Well-known artists and prominent persons stayed there, such as King Leopold of Belgium with his wife Astrid in 1928, the film actress Renate Müller, the actors Hans Albers and Charlie Chaplin. “Ngamplang”, the creation of Dr Mulder had expanded to a respectable hotel that lay on a hill with a magnificent view towards the northern slopes of the majestic almost three thousand metre high mountain Tjikoeraj, which had watched for so long over the town below called Garoet and of which Thilly Weissenborn could not get enough.

The “Ngamplang”, “Kamodjan” or “Tjisoeroepan”. Everything has been razed to the ground. Her primary school is still there. On the spot of the photo studio “Lux” … she now sees a new building. But it was on this spot that Thilly Weissenborn, ever more renowned and appreciated, unfolded her multifaceted photographic activities in the twenties and thirties.

Even now former residents of Garoet and former planters are able to find the way to the centre with the Chinese, European, Japanese and Bombay tokos. Even now they find the same “Toko Ek Bouw” with grocery products and the bakery belonging to Khoe Pek Goan. There, close by, was Ban Hoo Hin with foodstuffs, the wood business, Toko Kajoe of Sen Seng Bouw, “Babah Gemoek” and “Toko Batavia” belonging to the father of Nietje Tan. She was in my class – just like Nora from the bakery!

There at Ek Bouw, a woman went inside during her visit to Garoet in 1980, spoke to the Chinese man behind the counter and said that she was “Non” (the girl) Van der Veen from the former, nearby business Daradjat. In a letter to a friend she says further: “He looked very surprised and called out something behind him … but when I looked around and everything was the same as thirty years previously it became too much for me. Tears flowed into my eyes and I fled from the shop.”

Outside her husband let her cry herself out. “Then we went to the bakery of Njonja Khoe Pek Goan. There, too, everything was exactly the same Madam’s son listened to me. I told him who I was and in fluent Dutch he invited us to have a cup of “kopi toebroek”, black coffee and to have biscuits. His wife and son also still spoke good Dutch. The old mistress had passed away a long time ago. We also received two large boxes of the fresh-sweet treat “Dodol Garoet”!

This former Garoet resident rides around everywhere with her husband and confirms with pain that a lot has been destroyed. The canari trees in the street have disappeared, where “Intra Montes” stood there is now a cinema and there isn’t even one hotel any longer, not “Papandajan” or “Villa Dolce”.

In her studio she did portraits and children’s photos, but she could also photograph “business subjects” with technical perfection: buildings, interiors, furnishings, local art objects. Landscape and outdoor scenes as well as photos of different peoples were more her personal work, however they really caught the attention of publishers and tourists. Thilly was not only sent for by businesses in Preanger but also received invitations to photograph high society: in 1921 at Ngamplang the participants at the fourth “Medical Congress in the Far East”, the visit by the greying, eighty-year old Clemenceau and Governor-General Fock with his retinue, the reception in 1936 of the Soesoehoenan of Soerakarta, who stopped in Garoet and took up residence in the “kamar matjan”, the luxury apartment for important guests at the Hotel “Papandajan”.

In the last months of his term of office – the beginning of 1921 – Governor-General Count van Limburg Stirum asked for her to prepare a report at the Palace at Buitenzorg and the Tjipanas estate, the country residence at Sindanglaja. It turned into two albums with large photographs. An admirable commission.

Almost all photo illustrations in the book Garoet and surroundings – Rambles through Preanger (three hundred pages, 1922 edition) are by her.

Many of Thilly’s photos graced the magnificently produced editions of the magazine Tourism (a publication in English) and Beautiful Bandoeng, the organ of the association “Bandoeng Forward”.

In 1922 Louis Couperus went on a trip to Sumatra, Java and Bali for the Hague Post. His travel letters are collected in the book Eastwards. In it he also talks about his sojourn in Garoet at the Hotel “Papandajan”, and thanks Mr Hacks for his “good care, hospitality and escort” and Thilly Weissenborn for “the magnificent photographs” that she presented to him as a gift. He says that her photos are executed with great artistry and reflect the moods of nature in poetic lighting. In Eastwards, all but three of the photographs were taken by Thilly Weissenborn.

We also encounter her work in important works such as The Indies in Word and Image (1924), Batavia Year Book (1927), Atlas of the Netherlands Indies (1926), Cultural History of Java in Picture (1926), The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Netherlands Indies by G. Gronggrijp (1934), Eastern Beauty by Jan Poortenaar, Under palms and banyan trees (Poortenaar and Dr Coolhaas), Netherlands Indies Album on the Occasion of the Government Jubilee of Queen Wilhelmina (1923). In addition, Bali (1933), a booklet by Marie van Zeggelen. Van Stockum’s Travel Guide for the Netherlands Indies (1930) by S A Reitsma, appointed as the first mayor of Bandoeng in 1920. The travel guides Come to Java that appeared regularly in the 1920s by the travel bureau at World Peace and The Indies (Tropical Netherlands after 1927), illustrated weekly magazine for the Netherlands and its colonies, equally deserve mention …

She was able to express herself best in her photographic work. Only there was she able to do justice to her artistic creativity.
Unfortunately Thilly’s name is all too frequently not mentioned. In the magnificent book Bandoeng by Hein Buitenweg more than ten photos are by her. For only one is “Photo ‘Lux’ Garoet”, mentioned. Fortunately this is made up for by the sensitive poem on page 153 that he wrote on the occasion of Thilly’s death in 1964.

She also compiled many albums with her photos, also for private customers, who were leaving Garoet or Preanger, or were sending an album to their families. She published (also for the “Netherlands Indies Hotel Association” and the KPM) a good two hundred different postcards and folders with large-format photos (Bali!), all in outstanding photogravure and accompanied by Dutch and English texts. Collectors now have them in their collections.

Thilly Weissenborn maintained contact with professional and amateur colleagues of great stature, including the geologists Dr Stehn and Dr Kemmerling, archaeologist Dr Van Stein Callenfels, G F J Bley, the elder statesman of planters in Java and an expert on kapok, who was an exceptionally good photographer. He died at Buitenzorg in West-Java well into his eighties during the Japanese period. She also advised and helped beginner and advanced amateurs and taught them the tricks of their hobby.

In her enthusiasm she also immediately publicised the 8mm narrow film format (introduced by Kodak in 1934) through which filming came within the realm of amateurs, and if you followed her instructions you obtained good results because she also provided the necessary accompaniment. Thilly also filmed, albeit sporadically. I have barely any familiarity with the results.

In 1937 Thilly Weissenborn is in the Netherlands again for a vacation. She visits family, but also friends and acquaintances who live there again or who are on leave. Those contacts are dear to her and she has many of them! Back in Garoet again she takes up her work with full enthusiasm, together with her loyal personnel. (Warna, her assistant in the darkroom suddenly became mentally ill in 1935 after a severe attack of angina and influenza.)

Then, five years later comes the war with Japan. Until 1943 Thilly manages to stay out of the camps but eventually ends up in the women’s camp Kareës in Bandoeng on 7 September along with other women from Garoet. She is registered under number 25673. In November and December the great transfers in the camps take place. She, too, is transferred and in fact to Buitenzorg. “She was a modest and inconspicuous campmate, with whom there were never any difficulties”, according to the former head of the camp Kareës, Mrs van Iterson-de Hartog, currently residing in The Hague.

In August 1945 Japan surrenders. A chaotic period follows: the Bersiap-period. During the first police action (20 July – 5 August) Indonesians destroy and set fire to Garoet. There is frightful havoc; the sight of Garoet is dismal. Thilly’s “Studio Lux” is also completely destroyed. She has survived the camp. In Bandoeng she meets Nico van Wijnmalen again. It is Christmas 1947 when Tilley marries him, the man with whom she has for so long shared both wealth and woe. The couple live in Bandoeng. They have both found work there. At the “RAPWI”, the “Pelita” foundation and the Netherlands Commissariat.

In mid 1956 the decision is taken to leave Java, although that is difficult, and say farewell to everything where forty-five years of their life have been spent. There is no other choice.

Even before the end of the year Thilly and Nico are living in Baarn. My childhood friend from Garoet, Harry, keeps me posted: “Aunt Thil and Uncle Nico have come to Holland!” After several months I decide to pay them a visit – without advance warning. After twenty-three years, when I ring the bell I am not recognised. I set Aunt Thil briefly and clearly on the right track. It works and once she has recovered from the shock, Uncle Nico is immediately sent home from the billiards table. I still see him riding up Beech Lane on his bicycle. The reunion becomes an intimate party among good friends. Perhaps also because she finds out that her hobby remained my hobby and her profession also became mine.

That meeting is our last contact.

Margarethe Mathilde Weissenborn dies in Baarn on 28 October 1964, seventy-five years of age after a short but serious illness … thirty-one years to the day that my father bought the Zeiss-Ikon box camera for my birthday from her in Garoet.

In her legacy of work she remains with us to a certain extent and, in addition to many others, she has also made an important contribution to registering and preserving the many, many beauties that 'De Gordel Van Smaragd' has to offer continuously. Thilly Weissenborn’s contribution deserves to be placed in the public eye.

Postscript

Because this book deals with facts that occurred before 1942, I believed I could permit myself to write “The Indies” instead of “Indonesia” and to use the old spelling for place names such as “Tjisoeroepan” for “Cisurupan”, “Djilantik” for “Jilantik” and so forth. I would further like to declare that I felt the need to add Thilly Weissenborn to the names of important photographers in the former Netherlands Indies so that she is not consigned to oblivion.

Finally: I would like to thank all those who, by helping me with information, the unconditional loan or even gifts of photographs, were of great service to me, and I would particularly like to express my gratitude to Olaf J de Landell who, quite recently, described the revisiting of his country of birth during his two visits in such a captivating and sensitive way, for his readiness to write the foreword.

‘s-Hertogenbosch, June 1983

Ernst Drissen

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The Plates from the book

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