My first impression of Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn’s lithographs of the Javanese volcanoes – selected from his Java-Album and recently exhibited in Lava-Being. Stories from the Center of the Earth at the Graphische Sammlung ETHZ – is their resemblance to something like picturesque postcards of serene landscapes. However, the context in which they were created reveals a more complex and ambivalent story. Published in 1854 alongside written records of his expeditions in the Dutch East Indies, present-day Indonesia, Junghuhn’s images intertwine colonial ambitions of science and romantic European aesthetics.