BALI: Photography 1865-1939 provides a fascinating survey of the history of photography on Bali from the arrival of pioneering photographer Isidore van Kinsbergen as part of a government mission in December 1865, when Bali was almost completely unknown to the outside world, through to the first golden age of tourism on Bali in the 1930s that ended with the outbreak of World War Two.

Photo historian Scott Merrillees draws upon an extensive personal archive of early photographs, picture postcards, contemporary books, tourist guides and travel brochures, collected over more than thirty years, to consider the development of photography on Bali in pre-independence Indonesia.  This book examines who was photographing Bali from the mid-1860s to the late 1930s, what influences shaped how Bali was photographed and how it was presented to the world.