Tillema de Multatuli van de fotografie

Eleven thousand photos six miles of footage three hundred books and eighteen volumes of Indië Oud en Nieuw this is the historical legacy of Hendrik Tillema who was born in Friesland and worked his way up to a successful producer of carbonated drinks in the Netherlands EastIndies early last century He used his accumulated wealth to improve the life of the orang tekil the common man in Indonesia For example he published his own book about the lack of a sewer system and he saw to it that the local population was vaccinated one vaccinator does more for the pacification of Indonesia than an army of soldiers By means of a staggering amount of selfshot and collected material this oneman Third World movement qualified the limited positive image of our former colony that persisted until the forties