Family photographs from Dutch East Indies: Visual repatriation and nostalgia

Foto: Yayoi Collectie Tropenmuseum

Museums are increasingly embracing new digital possibilities for collaborating with communities. This presentation examines the digitization project, Foto zoekt familie (photo seeks family) at the Tropenmuseum in the Netherlands, which aimed at visual repatriation of family photographs from the former colony Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). The presentation makes use of Svetlana Boym’s distinction between restorative nostalgia and reflective nostalgia in order to examine memory work around the photographs performed by postcolonial migrant communities in the Netherlands.

Randi Marselis, Associate Professor in Cultural Encounters, Department of Communication and Arts, Roskilde University