Jacobus Anthonie Meessen

• Illustration — Kali Mati, Padang, Sumatra, photographed by Meessen Meessen and his wife departed for the Indies in 1864, first arriving in Batavia, where Meessen established a photo studio in early 1867. He was one of the few photographers active in the Indies in the 1860s; contemporaries included Isidore van Kinsbergen, Adolph Schaefer, and the commercial firm of Woodbury and Page (operated by Walter B. Woodbury and James Page). Meessen hoped to eventually take images of the Indies' various lands and people. From May to August, he was in Sumatra, first in Padang and later in the Minang Highlands. There he offered various photographic services, including double and family portraits. When he returned to Batavia in September, he opened another studio, offering portraits and selling prints of landscapes. Three months later Jacobus and Johanna sold their belongings and moved back to Padang, where the Meessens established a photography studio. In their biography of the photographer, Mattie Boom and Steven Wachlin suggest that this was likely a commercial necessity, as Meessen may have been unable to compete with the Batavia-based Woodbury and Page. By November 1868 Jacobus was advertising his first album, titled Sumatra's Westkust (Sumatra's West Coast). Bound in Moroccan leather, the album contained more than sixty landscapes of Padang and surrounding cities (including Padang Panjang and Fort de Kock). By June 1869, his studio at the Sumatra Hotel was offering workshops, as well as images from northern Sumatra and Nias. Altogether, Meessen's photographic ventures in the Indies – and the resulting albums – cost some 34,000 Netherlands Indies gulden, which included camera equipment (though it is not known what model(s) he used), chemicals, transportation, and accommodations. Meessen worked alone, never taking a partner while in the Indies, and documented the land and people in the colony in his albumen prints. In his ethnographic photography of the indigenous peoples of the Indies, he often had to overcome superstitions which, the Bataviaasch Handelsblad wrote, "made taking images of the people outside Java almost impossible". Others were more enthusiastic, including the villagers of Nias: "Upon arrival I fired a few shots and flew the Dutch flag. Soon the villagers came and asked what I wanted. Once I told them, they promised their assistance. At exactly 5 a.m. the following morning I found some 60 warriors waiting for me on the beach."

• Illustration — Hand-tinted photograph of a njai by Meessen, c. 1867. He described the concubines as a "necessary evil". Reviewing the quality of Meessen's photography, Boom and Wachilin write that his Javanese pictures are among his best, whereas those from other islands are of more variable quality. They note considerable detail in his cityscapes. Meessen captured buildings that were popular with other photographers, including the Governor General's Palace and the home of Raden Saleh. Many of his studio portraits appear to be purely commercial, leading Boom and Wachlin to suggest that they were meant to fund Meessen's landscape photography. Some of his images, particularly the portraits, were hand-tinted. Meessen's photographs from the album he gave to King William III are kept in the Hague at the National Library of the Netherlands. This album features a travelogue regarding Meessen's photography, as well as images from six islands (Java, Sumatra, Bangka, Belitung, Borneo, and Nias) and various ethnic groups, including the Javanese, Chinese, Dayaks, and Malays. He includes commentary on several images of people, noting in an image of a njai (concubine): "[They are] a necessary evil for the military. They preserve, in and outside the barracks, the best discipline, and prove invaluable in expeditions or sea journeys." Two further photographs, one of the river Ciliwung in Batavia, and another of Kali Mati in Padang, are held at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies holds a copy of the De Bussy publication, and the Leiden University Library holds 281 prints, 7 of which are of disputed provenance, which were donated to the Royal Dutch Geographical Society by Pieter Johannes Veth in 1891. The four extant collections of Meessen's work are considerably fewer than those of his contemporaries such as Woodbury and Page, and his oeuvre has been little studied or collected.