100 years of image control: the case of J.C. Lamster’s films for the Dutch Colonial Institute

Abstract

Between February 1912 and February 1913, J.C. Lamster made a few dozen films for the Dutch Colonial Institute in the Netherlands East Indies. The films served as propaganda for audiences in Holland and were screened in non-theatrical venues, subordinated to introductions and explanations spoken before and during the films’ projection. The publication, in 2010, of a DVD and an accompanying book of Lamster’s work formed the occasion to reflect on the measures of control that the sponsor of the films, and the archive currently holding them, did or did not wish to exert over their screening and other forms of publication. The following article takes issue with a line of thinking related to today’s possibilities opened up by digital technologies that propagates a so-called ‘pull’ model of digitally enabled archival access. By taking as a case study Lamster’s film records and their particular characteristics, as well as the Colonial Institute and its particular way of handling them, I argue that digital archival access, unencumbered by archival contextualizations and other forms of knowledge transfer, not only fails to exhaust the possibilities digital technology offers, but also inhibits an archive’s users from adequately and productively understanding the cultural heritage archives are supposed to safeguard.