Better understanding: A visitor looks at one of the photos displayed at Rosa Verhoeve’s “Kopi Susu” photo exhibition.

Issues of one’s identity are almost always hard to navigate — even more so when someone is of mixed blood and struggles to fit into any of them.

Dutch artist and photographer Rosa Verhoeve certainly felt that way, having been born with Dutch-Indonesian ancestry after World War II.

Those which that ancestry, called the Indo people, have been found across Indonesia since colonial times. Many packed up to leave for the Netherlands after the war, although some stayed behind to start new chapters and families.

Verhoeve herself was born in 1959, two years after her parents boarded a ship in Tanjung Priok for the quaint town of Amstelveen. Some 50 years later, she returned to Indonesia to find more about what was only accessible through photographs and paraphernalia.

Thus, Kopi Susu (Coffee with Milk) was born. Unlike the iced drinks Jakartans seem to enjoy so much these days, the kopi susu here refers to a term for Indo people, a term Verhoeve heard from an old Javanese woman during a bus ride to Surakarta, Central Java.

Originally manifested in the form of a photo book of the same name, Kopi Susu was published in 2017 and an exhibition on it was inaugurated at Museum Bronbeel in Arnhem.

Verhoeve passed away peacefully on June 27, 2018 from colon cancer, content as she had finished her life’s work. As fate would have it, her photographs finally made their way to Jakarta and are being exhibited at the Dutch cultural center Erasmus Huis in Jakarta until Aug. 24.

The exhibition features approximately 39 photographs — collection of images shot in both Indonesia and the Netherlands representing Verhoeve’s dual identity and her struggle in finding acceptance and fitting in.

Artist Jan Banning, the exhibition’s curator and a friend of Verhoeve, told The Jakarta Post that the Indo identity was a “dark” matter for Verhoeve.

“Her mother, Lenneke Mullenders, was an Indo. She never wanted to discuss her past in colonial era Indonesia, so [Verhoeve] knew she was also an Indo but she didn’t know about the origins,” Banning explained.

The exhibition, Banning continued, was meant to represent the Indo identity in a visual way.

“It’s the combination of all these images that are vital. You could say it’s like a symphony, rather than individual pop songs.”

The photographs themselves vary in subject, from picturesque Indonesian scenery and mundane home scenes to family history.

Fitting in: A portrait of Dutch photographer Rosa Verhoeve featured during the “Kopi Susu” exhibition at the Dutch cultural center, Erasmus Huis, in Jakarta.

Banning, who was present when Verhoeve took her earlier photographs, said that she visited locations that were relevant to her family’s history as far as her research allowed.

For example, one of the earlier photographs is a picture of an old, worn down gate that was taken in Cideng, Central Jakarta. During the Japanese occupation, the site was home to the Tjideng internment camp, where Verhoeve’s mother had spent the latter part of WW II alongside many other Dutch families, including Banning’s mother.

Then there is a picture of crosses, which was taken in Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta, where Verhoeve’s father’s first wife Emilie was buried. Emilie, who died in childbirth in 1947, was also Lenneke’s sister.

“But it is not meant for documentary photography,” Banning said.

“It’s not ‘How can I best visually express what Tanah Abang is?’ But she tried to get to a personal story through the objective reality; she tried to build a subjective history.”

Throughout the exhibition, there is only one face shown in the photographs; another one is simply a photograph of a photograph. Banning noted that this allows the viewers to better identify themselves within the subject.

“During the start of her work, she went to places with significant family history and later on she developed it into more along the lines of association. The way I see it, it’s kind of a visual poetry; it’s not very pushy in the sense that it was very open for interpretation,” Banning said.

Curiously, the photographs do not come with captions or even titles, perhaps allowing the viewer to speculate about the meaning of the images.

A photograph of a young girl, for example, can be taken as what Verhoeve would have been had her parents stayed in Indonesia.

Another photo, of a presumably dead turtle perched on a tree branch, might be construed as her feelings of alienation and not fitting in.

“It’s an interesting point, because she explicitly said that. What she brought as her baggage when she started to work in Indonesia was this feeling of not belonging anywhere,” Banning explained.

Writer Hilde Janssen, who also accompanied Verhoeve and Banning throughout their journey in Indonesia, said that the photographer referred to herself as a cuckoo, settling into different nests and following others before moving on and starting the cycle all over again.

“She did that to familiarize herself with the Indonesia that she didn’t know, but she wants to see the reality of how life is rather than just stories. She tried to feel at home there and then move again, getting close to the life she might have had and wanting to be a part of it,” Janssen said.

As one walks through the exhibition, the last picture near the exit is of two statues of Indonesian dancers, sitting on a windowsill overlooking a quiet Dutch street.

Perhaps, Verhoeve had finally found peace in her Indonesian and Dutch heritage in the end. (hdt)

A tribute: Dutch photographer and exhibition curator Jan Banning looks at one of the photos displayed at Rosa Verhoeve’s “Kopi Susu” photo exhibition.

— Photos by JP/Valerie Halim