Hindostaans meisje

Photographer Eugen Klein, who owned a photographic studio in Dutch Suriname, often took portraits of young South Asian, Black, and Indigenous women. Such portraits were sold as tourist souvenirs. This portrait, of a South Asian woman, likely indentured, appears to have been taken in a studio setting. Someone subsequently included the photo in an album and wrote “koeliemeisje,” or “coolie girl,” above and below the image of the sitter. “Coolie” is a slur for South Asian workers. The woman’s bright smile certainly conveys her personal charisma. It may also partly respond to the expectations of the photographer and photographic genre, which framed South Asian women as beautiful and friendly fixtures of what was increasingly advertised as a touristic Caribbean landscape. Smiles showing teeth were uncommon in portraiture of the time; viewers may have considered a woman’s smile particularly bold or suggestive.