The landscapes of the European colonies in the East and West Indies were a material and aesthetic invention: a product of practices of transplanting and reshaping land. Visual representations of these landscapes – from photographic still lives and plantation views, to maps and diagrams – did more than just visually reproduce a world wrought by colonisation, trade and forced labour.
Taking imagery of colonial plantations from the photographic archive of the Tropenmuseum as a starting point, Jill Casid revisits her ground breaking argument about the importance of landscaping as a technology of empire.
Jill Casid is Professor of Visual Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.