![]() ![]() ![]() In his memoirs, Thomson has described his activities as follows:ĭuring the ten months I spent in Penang and Provinces Wellesley, I was chiefly engaged in photography-a congenial, profitable and instructive occupation, enabling me to gratify my taste for travel and to fill my portfolio, as I wandered over Penang settlement and the mainland hard by, with an attractive series of characteristic scenes and types, which were in constant demand among the resident European population. 4 The firm also offered a choice of 250 postcards, selling 250,000 of them a year. was advertising a collection of some 3,000 images. Technological advances allowed quick and unlimited printing from a single negative, and photographers responded with mass documentation of landscapes, architecture and peoples to form photographic archives that could be drawn upon at any time for sales. 3 They were circulated in books, albums and as postcards, and by all accounts, enjoyed a roaring trade. These photographs ranged from panoramic landscapes and architecture photos to studio portraits-often of racial types-and still lifes. Kleingrothe were responsible for creating an entire archive of ethnographic types and landscapes of Southeast Asia, providing European viewers with their first impressions of the region. and Sachtler & Co., and photographers like John Thomson and C.J. As a result, numerous enterprising European photographers travelled through the region, making a wealth of images for photographic consumption. ![]() Increasing interest in the Far East was accompanied by a growing demand for photographs. Singapore was a part of the British Straits Settlements and an important trading port that saw a rapidly growing population from the mid-19th century. ![]() Through a close reading of The Nature Museum, I reflect on the success of such a strategy by Zhao.Įarly photographic history in Singapore has been largely determined by her colonial history. In the process, it will look at the documentary status of the photographic archive, its relationship with power and its subsequent potential for writing historiography. 2 This review uses The Nature Museum as an entry point to consider the use of photographic archives as an artistic strategy in contemporary art. Described as "a fascinating exploration of Singapore's natural history through historical and fantastical narratives created by The Institute of Critical Zoologists", The Nature Museum was first presented at 72-13 as both exhibition and performance for the Singapore International Festival of Arts in September 2017 then adapted and presented at the Rockbund Art Museum from October 2017 to February 2018 The Fast Forward Festival in Athens in May 2018 and most recently at the Asia Pacific Triennale (APT) in Brisbane from November 2018 to April 2019, as a collaborative presentation with fellow Singaporean artist Donna Ong. 1 Multiple variations of the work were subsequently developed and presented with a new title The Nature Museum. While many of his previous works had referenced old photographs, The Bizarre Honour was the first time he chose not to show a single image of his own, but to display archival photos The Bizarre Honour marked a significant shift in Zhao's artistic practice, namely through his use of a photographic archive. Notably, the use of such photographs created a heightened sense of history and geography, lending to the installation a gravitas and legitimacy through a specificity of time and location. A large and complex installation occupying a two-storey house in a residential neighbourhood, hundreds of photographs of palm trees, rubber plantations, snake charmers and tiger hunters were displayed with expedition notebooks, taxidermied animals, animal traps, plastic fruit and more ( Figure 1). Combining old photographs with found objects and texts, the artist presented a wunderkammer of natural history in the style of a private museum. In February 2017, the public was given unique access to Zhao's archive, when he presented The Bizarre Honour as part of Art Week Singapore. Often sourced through eBay, his personal archive of images currently numbers in the thousands, from 19th-century original silver gelatin prints to 20th-century commercial postcards, with a strong focus on natural history. Singaporean artist Robert Zhao has been collecting old photographs of Singapore for the past 15 years. ![]()
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