The Banda Journal highlights the legacy of centuries-long colonization and exploitation in the remote Indonesian Banda Islands. An archipelago comprises of twelve small islands surrounded by vast sea, Banda was the setting of some earliest European ventures in Asia and played a key role in global economic history. It is because Banda was once the world’s only source of the highly prized nutmeg, an aromatic spice functioned as preservative and believed as cure for various illnesses in the Middle Ages. The race for the valuable spices sent the Portuguese navigating the Cape of Good Hope, led Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America, and saw the birth of the world’s first multinational trading company: the Dutch East India Company. In Banda, like in many other places, the spice race resulted in the islanders’ misery. And these days, Banda Islands is nothing more than just a backwater.

From 2014 to 2017, photographer Muhammad Fadli and writer Fatris MF documented stories from the Banda Islands through a repeated visits and stays. The result is a book filled with photographs combined with writing, hoping to give an insightful view from various facets of life on the islands, its past and its present state.