Kelud volcano eruption no.6 ( Another view showing devastation- note the thick layer of lava over everything)

Ohannes Kurkdjian, was born in a small Armenian town in the Ottoman Empire and was a photographer in the Russian army before moving to Indonesia in 1886. In 1890 he established a studio in Surabaya from where he produced portraits, landscapes and ethnographic studies. His most memorable works reveal a profound engagement with the precarious peaks of Java’s fiery volcanoes. Kurkdjian’s photographs of the Mount Kelud eruption of May 1901 are imbued with an awe for nature’s sublime power to both inspire and wreak havoc. Within Javanese culture of the time the fiery eruption was seen as a symbol of a new dawn also marked by the birth, just a month later of Sukarno, who was to become Indonesia’s first president. For many, these events were prophetic of great change that would free Indonesia from its Dutch colonisers and return it to a state of cosmic order.