Brug bij Stabat (boven) en weg door het oerwoud op Sumatra (onder) before 1898

Carl J. Kleingrothe captured these images of a bridge near Stabat and a road through the Sumatran jungle in a yet undetermined year. Kleingrothe’s photographs offer a glimpse into the colonial landscape of early 20th-century Sumatra, then part of the Dutch East Indies. The upper photograph depicts a government bridge, an emblem of colonial infrastructure designed to facilitate resource extraction and control. Juxtapose this with the lower image, which shows a road carved through the virgin forest. Here we see not only a literal path, but the brutal intrusion of colonial power. The clearing of the forest to make way for roads reflects the broader narrative of environmental exploitation and cultural disruption inherent in colonial projects. Kleingrothe’s images provoke a reckoning with the legacy of colonialism, its lasting impacts on both the land and its people. They speak silently to the unacknowledged trauma of a community.