page_title: Kassian Cephas
section_title: Professional works
hierarchical_section_title: Kassian Cephas / Photography career / Professional works
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Foto. Fotograaf Kassian Céphas bij de stupa's op de Borobudur English: Photograph by Kassian Cephas of the stupas on the top of Borobudur, Central Java, Indonesia
context_page_description: Kassian Cephas or Kassian Céphas was a Javanese photographer of the court of the Yogyakarta Sultanate. He was the first indigenous person from Indonesia to become a professional photographer and was trained at the request of Sultan Hamengkubuwana VI. After becoming a court photographer in as early 1871, he began working on portrait photography for members of the royal family, as well as documentary work for the Dutch Archaeological Union. Cephas was recognized for his contributions to preserving Java's cultural heritage through membership in the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies and an honorary gold medal of the Order of Orange-Nassau. Cephas and his wife Dina Rakijah raised four children. Their eldest son Sem continued the family's photography business until his own death in 1918.
context_section_description: His work first appeared for a wider public in 1888 in the publication In den Kedaton te Jogjåkartå by Isaäc Groneman. The book included 16 collotype prints of the art of Hindu Javanese dances. Groneman wished to generate interest in this culture in the Netherlands and requested permission from Sultan Hamengkubuwana VII for Cephas to photograph the dance scenes. The publication was originally prepared by the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, but the high cost of collotype prints forced the institute to abandon it. In keeping with the technological advances of photography, Cephas bought a new camera in 1886 which enabled him to capture pictures in 1/400th of a second. This allowed the subjects to be photographed more quickly rather than having to remain still for several moments. These pictures were often presented as farewell presents to European elites when they left Yogyakarta to return to Europe and to Dutch civil servants.
  In 1889, the Archaeological Union (Archaeologische Vereeniging) began efforts to study and preserve monuments of the Hindu Javanese civilization in Central Java. One of the locations having high priority in the union's efforts was the temple of Prambanan, part of the larger complex attributed to the legend of Loro Jonggrang. Cephas was assigned to photograph the site, while his eldest son Sem drew the buildings' profiles and ground plans. Groneman submitted the photographs and descriptions made by Cephas to the Royal Institute in 1891, but it would not be published until 1893 because of the high reproduction costs. The final publication included 62 collotypes depicting Prambanan and the surrounding temples.
  Cephas was also credited with photographing the Borobudur temple complex after its hidden base was discovered in 1885 by the union's first chairman. The base was briefly uncovered in 1890 to be photographed and then covered again in 1891. Because Cephas only received one-third of the original subsidy from the government, he was not able to complete the 300 photographs calculated to be needed for the project. Each photographic plate would have required one-half hour to develop with the dry gelatin process for a total of 150 hours. In all, only 160 segments of the base's reliefs were photographed, and an additional four photographs were made to provide a general overview for the site. The series was published 30 years later by the Royal Institute in a collotype collection.
caption: Cephas studies one of the 72 stupas at the Borobudur temple complex in 1890.
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