‘What was going on there?’ Dutch photo-collections of Curaçao 1900-2010: Rediscovery, Kingdom reconfirmation and alienation

Dutch photographical collections concerning the Dutch Caribbean have so far receivedlimited attention. As a part of the research project ́Traveling Caribbean Heritage ́ this thesisanalysed photographs made in Curaçao between 1900 up to 2010 that have been collectedand stored in different Dutch institutions. Using photographs as sources, this research triedto obtain insight into the sociocultural and (post)-colonial perspective of Curaçao asmaintained by Dutch photographers or institutions and how this changed due to sociopoliticaland socioeconomic developments between 1900 until 2010. This resulted in four separateperiods for frame analysis. The main research question stated: ‘​What was considered mosttelling about Curaçao according to different -mainly Dutch- photographers(individuals and institutions) and how did this change over the course of a hundredyears? ́ ​This question anticipated on Goffman ́s definition of frame-analysis as simply asking ́what is going on right now ́? according to the subjective involvement of who is ́asking ́ (inthis case the photographer). The Dutch visual discourse of Curaçao was reconstructed by amosaic-like methodology consisting of content analysis ( ́tagging ́), frame analysis anddiscourse analysis in which ́icons ́ were approached as main themes. This resulted in an ́iconic complex ́ (Dutch visual discourse) which demonstrated that the Netherlandsmaintained to approach Curaçao and its peoples as ́the (inferior) other ́, while differentagencies of recolonisation (1920-1950), kingdom reconfirmation (1954-1969) and alienation(1969-2010) seemed detectable.