Jacobus Anthonie Meessen

Jacobus Anthonie Meessen was a Dutch photographer who took more than 250 portraits and landscapes of the Dutch East Indies between 1864 and 1870. Born to a carpenter in Utrecht, Meessen worked in that trade in the Indies before marrying in the Netherlands in the early 1860s. He returned to the colony in 1864, intent on documenting its land and people. He worked mostly in the capital of Batavia, Java, and Padang, Sumatra; he also photographed Bangka, Belitung, Borneo, and Nias.