The Edwards collection holds photographs of important photographers that worked in the Netherlands Indies. Photographers, such as Isidore van Kinsbergen (1821-1905), Kassian Céphas (1845-1912) and C.B. Nieuwenhuis (1863-1922), and the photo studios of Lambert & Co. and Woodbury & Page produced landscapes, town views and so-called type photography of Java and Sumatra. Thilly Weissenborn (1883-1964) is well-known for her impressive landscape photography. The collection also contains snapshots from her private life. These private photos form a supplement to the photographs in the KITLV collection.

Apart from photographs of the Indies archipelago, the collection also keeps nineteenth-century photographs produced in mainland Southeast Asia, such as Singapore, Burma, Penang and Malaka. These were produced by pioneer photographers such as Ernst August Kaulfuss (1861-1908), August Sachtler and Thomas Heritage. The booklet with 69 watercolors of animals, types and landscapes by naturalist and ethnographer Carl Benjamin Hermann baron von Rosenberg (1817-1888) complements his drawings in the KITLV collection.

The geographical focus in the Edwards collection is on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. The biggest part of the collection was produced in the nineteenth-century, therefore most photos are albumen prints. The collection contains one ambrotype, a unique photograph that cannot be reproduced through a negative. Early examples of single photographic prints, like the ambrotype have rarely been preserved.



The collection contains around 100+ Woodbury glass positives with images from the Dutch Indies created circa 1865 and an original projector (Woodbury Sciopticon). All the glass positives have been marked with the name 'Woodbury Lantern Slide'.