The allure of the east (Coast of Malaysia)

Abstract

Every year, from 1955 until the late 1960s, the photographers from the Photographic Society of Singapore would make annual pilgrimages to the towns on the East Coast of Malaysia, to take images of its ‘picturesque inhabitants’. As a result, hundreds of prints of Malay women, children and fishermen in kampong villages and on the beach circulated widely in exhibitions locally as well as internationally, all depicting the East Coast as a rural and bucolic destination. The photographers were largely male and Chinese. In this essay, I present close readings of selected photographs and the language used to describe the visits to discuss a racial and gendered gaze on a community in Malaysia. I argue that while the perception of the Malays as rural and simple folk might have begun as a hangover from colonial stereotyping, subsequent photographic representation manifested different desires. Rather than control and containment, the images made by the Singaporean photographers reflected a nostalgia for kampong life amidst the anxiety of rapid modernisation and the shifting roles of women in society. The influence of photographic pictorialism, with its emphasis on highly stylised photographs, further promoted the production of simplistic, emblematic images.

Keywords:

• Pictorialism
• Photography
• Singapore
• Malaysia
• Trengganu
• Orientalism
• camera clubs

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the peer reviewers, the editors and Dr Roger Nelson for their invaluable comments and suggestions for the final published essay.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Photograms of the Year was a popular publication among members of camera clubs internationally who would submit works for consideration. Each photograph was clearly credited and accompanied by a caption.

2 The country of Malaysia was formed in 1959. Prior to that, the region was known as Malaya. While I use ‘Malaysia’ throughout the essay when referring to the East Coast, ‘Malaya’ will appear in quotes from the earlier periods.

3 From 1950 to 1956, the PSS was called the Singapore Camera Club. The PSS still exists today, although with a much lower profile.

4 Pictorialism was a photography movement that emerged in Europe in the last 19th century. It expanded rapidly across Europe and America through the activities of camera clubs, mostly set up and managed by amateur photographers.

5 Assuming 36 exposures per roll of film.

6 ‘Kampong’ is the Malay word for village, and I shall continue to use the term as it reflects what was used among the photographers themselves.

7 My italics.

8 Cheong judged the 9th Singapore International Salon in 1960; Chen judged the 5th Pan-Malayan Photographic Exhibition in 1957; Liu gave a talk to the PSS members on composition in 1956. I have also discussed in greater detail the connection between painting and photography in Chapter 6 of my book Imagining Singapore (Brill, 2023).

9 For Gibson-Hill’s biography, refer to Bonny Tan, ‘A Malayan Treasure: The Gibson Hill Collection,’ in BiblioAsia, October 2008. https://biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg/vol-4/issue3/oct-2008/gibson-hill-malayan-treasure-collection/. Accessed January 20, 2024.

10 Rey Chow was one of the earliest scholars to consider this. See Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.

11 Yew’s article says 13 photographers made the trip, but Loke Wan Tho’s speech says 12. It is unknown which is correct.

12 For example, see the reports in PSS Monthly Bulletin 1965, vol 6 (5) and PSS Monthly Bulletin 1968, vol 9 (9), which had a schedule of the portraiture sessions with models arranged and paid for by the club. Also, Ho Koon Sang and Yip Cheong Fun, both senior members of the PSS, posed as labourers in Ho’s Cleaner, c.1958 and Labourer, c. 1958. Both works are in the collection of National Gallery Singapore.

13 ARPS was the commonly used acronym for Associate of the Royal Photographic Society, a prestigious title for the club photographers to gain.

 

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Charmaine Toh

Charmaine Toh is Senior Curator, International Art (Photography) at Tate London. She previously curated Living Pictures: Photography in Southeast Asia (2022–2023) at National Gallery Singapore. She is also the author of Imagining Singapore: Pictorial Photography from the 1950s to the 1970s (Brill, 2023).