Fabrieksgebouw met de ingang van het laboratorium van suikerfabriek Meritjan te Kediri op Java c. 1925 - 1930

Editor: Here we have a gelatin-silver print from between 1925 and 1930 by Isken: *Fabrieksgebouw met de ingang van het laboratorium van suikerfabriek Meritjan te Kediri op Java*, or, *Factory with the entrance to the laboratory of the Meritjan sugar factory in Kediri, Java*. There's a stark kind of beauty in this industrial landscape. What jumps out at you? Curator: It speaks of ghosts, doesn't it? Shadows and whispers caught in silver. I see a carefully constructed facade – almost neoclassical in its bearing - trying to civilize the industrial beast within. Did you notice the playful dance of the trees framing this rigid architecture? Almost as if nature is conspiring to soften the edges of progress. Editor: I hadn’t really considered the contrast, but now that you mention it, it's pretty obvious. Do you think that the trees and landscape could suggest any particular agenda of the artist? Curator: Perhaps Isken sought a visual reconciliation, a dialogue between man and nature at a time when industry was aggressively reshaping the world. Java, in that period, was undergoing intense transformations, grappling with the fruits—and costs—of modernization under Dutch colonialism. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, what was actually being ‘processed’ at the Meritjan sugar factory: sugar cane or colonial ambition? Editor: That gives the image an interesting edge that I wasn’t seeing before. So it's less about the architectural details and more about these broader questions that it hints at? Curator: Exactly! Art often invites us to wander beyond the literal. These historical photos can act like time capsules, no? Filled with unanswered questions, and layered perspectives just waiting to be rediscovered. Editor: Thanks, that was such an illuminating take on it. Curator: My pleasure. Always a joy to dust off the echoes of history.