Twee jongetjes, een in traditionele Javaanse kleding, een zittend in een stoel in een wit shirt met een wit hoedje. c. 1914

This photograph of two boys was taken in 1915 by Frits Freerks Fontein. Look how he's captured them, one dressed in traditional Javanese clothes, leaning on the back of the bench, the other seated on it wearing a white shirt and hat. What must it have been like for Fontein to take this picture? The light is quite muted. It must have been some kind of cloudy day. It kind of feels like an accident in a way, like it just happened, but the way that those boys have been framed in this composition seems very purposeful. The materiality of the photograph, that brown hue, gives it a kind of melancholic feeling. Maybe the feeling comes from the boys' expressions too, a kind of childlike seriousness that evokes the weight of history bearing down on them. And I feel like this image speaks to the idea of cultural exchange and identity in a colonial context. The way they're framed, a Javanese boy and a Western boy, evokes questions about power, representation, and cultural exchange. Photographs like this remind me that artists are always responding to the moment.