The Haven Kanaal (Harbour Canal) was Batavia’s (now Jakarta) main entry point from the sea, where passengers disembarking from ships had their first glimpses of the city. The bridge shown on the left of the photo connected the harbour to the old Batavia Castle, which was built by the Dutch governor-general Jan Pieterszoon Coen in 1627 and demolished by his successor H.W. Daendels in 1809. Locals used to call the bridge ‘Jembatan Berak’ (“dung bridge”), a reference to the unsanitary conditions in the area.Woodbury and Page was a photo studio founded by Englishmen Walter Bentley Woodbury and James Page in Batavia (now Jakarta) on 5 June 1857. The younger Woodbury brothers, Henry James and Albert, joined the enterprise subsequently. It remained active right up to 1908, even after the departure of its original owners. In addition to studio portraits, Woodbury and Page also travelled around the Dutch East Indies, capturing a range of subjects which included royal personages, the common people, landscapes and scenes of everyday life. Though they were not the earliest photographers in Java, their prolific works are now considered classic and lauded for providing valuable insights into Indonesia in the colonial era.Apart from being an avid photographer, Woodbury was also famous for inventing a photo developing technique, which was patented as the Woodburytype on 23 September 1864. He took out no less than 20 patents between 1864 and 1884 and was dubbed the ‘Einstein of photography’ by his peers.
