These are the pictures (dia-positives) Boeb took from family and friends in Indonesia half-way 1960. Boeb was an eager and gifted photographer. It looks like he used a 35 mm. camera and put a 50 mm. lens on it (there are no distortions as with a wide angle lens or contractions as with a zoom lens).
Men, women and children are having a good time. They have a chat, take a drink, have a meal. Some of them are playing a game of mayong. Servants are preparing some dishes. We get a view on a pond and a bassin made suitable for swimming. We also get a glimpse of swimming pool Tjibulan,1 at the base of Mount Puncak. Kids are having a good time. The weather is always nice.
One fine day they took a trip into the inland and stopped by to buy food from the villagers. On one slide is depicted the famous asiatic water buffalo (‘karbouw’). At the end of the day they visited a turkey farm (you can’t see them, for the vendors locked them up in cages).
Boeb also did some street photography in Jakarta (I think it is): scenes full of traffic, the Monday Market (‘Pasar Senen’),2 a kali (river). There is a guy who is traversing the muddy water. At a street corner a woman is selling food: ketupat, tempeh, ikan, maybe lontong.
I myself know the names of seven persons depicted in these pictures. The others are unknown to me. Slides 85-99 show Boeb’s sister-in-law with her three children. On the very last slide (100) we have Boeb with nephew Peter in his arms.
My favorite pic? Nr. 34.3 There is a lady (known to me) sitting in a deck chair who is reading Adam Knight’s ‘The Sunburned Corpse‘ (1954, that’s my birth year).
Most of the people we meet here had left Indonesia at the end of that year (1960). Boeb followed only one year later. In 1962 he emigrated to the US.
Click on any picture for an enlargement.
Footnotes
- It’s name has been changed nowadays. In 1968 it looked on a postcard like this. I’m not sure, maybe it’s the current Sentul Highlands Swimming Pool.
- This market, designed by Justinus Vinck and established in 1735, still exists and is one of the greatest in modern Jakarta.
- To most of us known as ‘aunt Milly’.