Portrait of a Dutch civil servant (assistent-resident J. Jongejans) and a local ruler of the Minangkabau

Jan Jongejans is one of the many officials who took photographs and donated their material to the Tropenmuseum. He had a successful, textbook career in the Netherlands East Indies. He was genuinely interested in the local population, as proven by the popular books he wrote later about his work. He started on the lowest rung as an official in the Lampong residency in South Sumatra, and was appointed district commissioner of Central Borneo and Sumatra’s western coast. He was next promoted to Assistant-Resident of Solok (Sumatra’s western coast), where he had to deal with Communist insurrections in 1927. He later became Assistant-Resident of Pedir (Aceh), and finally, resident of Menado and Aceh respectively.
He was also seconded to the East Indies Committee for Scientific Research (Indisch Comité voor Wetenschappelijke Onderzoekingen) to conduct research during the Central New Guinea Expedition (1920–21), where he was also responsible for the Dayak oarsmen and bearers. During the expedition Jongejans also had to research the ethnography of the population. An article in the newspaper Het Vaderland remembered him as follows when he died in 1939: ‘During his long and commendable career in Indonesia, Mr Jongejans made many friends, not least among the native population in the various regions [...]. He was gifted in that he could associate with people of every ilk, which can only be attributed to his sound character, his good humour and his “honesty”’.
And that is how we perceive Jongejans in the many photographs of him posing in an immaculate white suit with the locals. He is clearly fascinated by his work and enjoyed his contacts with the local population who he portrayed in respectful and spontaneous ways. He set up his own camera, decided on the composition and had an assistant take the actual photograph. The museum did not receive any photographs of his family or his private circle.

Jongejans used his photographs in his book, 'Uit Dajakland: kijkjes in het leven van den koppensneller en zijne omgeving', in which he recounted his time in Borneo. One of his recollections is of the
events that unfolded while he was taking photographs in a remote kampong. He would travel for days, if not weeks, and visited places where the population rarely saw white people.
'They did not seem to be afraid of the camera, so I immediately took some pictures of some of the ladies, but the fun ended that evening when they saw the plates developing and their ghostly figures appearing on the negatives. When I walked around the kampong with my camera the next day, not a single woman would pose for me, and the children were nowhere to be seen, but fortunately the men were more sensible. Like the Papuans, they were afraid I would steal their souls.'

He apparently recognised the value of his photographs while he was still alive. While on leave in the Netherlands in 1929, he donated 462 negatives and 250 lantern slides of Borneo (Kalimantan), Sumatra’s western coast, and New Guinea. In November 1939, shortly after Jongejans’ death, his widow donated another 155 negatives and 155 lantern slides of Aceh and Jambi. In March 2001 a daughterin- law wrote that while she was reorganising a cupboard she found photographs of her in-laws that had been made by Jan Jongejans: ‘[…] They are of value to the Tropenmuseum […] because they include several images of local inhabitants in traditional attire’.

Dijk, J. van. The government official Jan Jongejans (1883–1939). In: Photographs of the Netherlands East Indies at the Tropenmuseum. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 2012, p.71.

9 x 12cm (3 9/16 x 4 3/4in.)

Source: collectie.tropenmuseum.nl