Output details

The Post Colonial Photo Studio - An exhibition about the stereotypical colonial portrait

Commissioned by the 2012 Action Field Kodra festival in Thessaloniki, Greece to curate this exhibition, Supartono brought together historical material and contemporary works by five internationally established photographic artists from Nigeria, Uganda, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, who revisit stereotypical colonial portraiture to question its validity and place in national history and culture. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue text pose questions around the authority of colonial photographic practices critically looking at what extent the photographic practices that developed in the colonial era around the interpretation/construction of the “other” have influenced practices in the post-colonial era. Towards this end, historical archival imagery (such as Julius Eduard Muller’s “Singkep Tin Company” series) from the colonial period was juxtaposed with postcolonial photographic propositions that directly or indirectly reference historical colonial photographs by appropriating or subverting colonial photographic mannerisms, patterns and commonplaces. Yee I-Lann’s study of “Malaysian-ness”, Dow Wasiksiri al fresco portraits of shoppers in a busy market in Thailand, Andrea Stultiens’s studio imagery from Uganda, Victor Ehikhamenor photographs of youths in Nigeria, and Angki Purbandono re-enactments of popular studio portrait themes in Indonesia provide critical interpretations of stereotypical (post)colonial photographic practices. Purposefully orchestrating these works in a dialectical relationship, the exhibition evidences the continuities, commonalities, synergies, or points of departure that colonial and postcolonial practices may share in the cultural history of different former colonies.

Funded by the ESPA Macedonia-Trace 2007-2013 Development Programme and the European Union, Action Field Kodra is a well established international arts festival that takes place in an disused NATO military camp.

An expanded version of this curatorial project was exhibited as part of the North East Photography Network’s festival of photography ‘The Social: Encountering Photography’ at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland (28 September – 23 November 2013).