museums AMEK GAMBAR: PERANAKANS AND PHOTOGRAPHY DOMINIC LOW GIVES US A GLIMPSE INTO THE PERANAKAN MUSEUMS UPCOMING PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE PERANAKAN MUSEUM. GIFT OF MR AND MRS LEE KIP LEE he first commercially viable form of captured their own likenesses and dress; their cities and photography was invented in France in their rituals. T 1839, and it quickly made its way to Southeast The exhibition includes studio and amateur Asia. Peranakans were among the first subjects captured photographs of Peranakans in Malaysia, Indonesia, and by photographers arriving from Europe. Amek Gambar Myanmar. In celebration of a donation of 2,535 (taking pictures): Peranakans and Photography presents photographs by Mr and Mrs Lee Kip Lee to the early photographs of the community, including the Peranakan Museum, Amek Gambar explores the oldest example in Singapore’s National Collection: a multifaceted role of photography in the lives portrait of a Peranakan family taken in 1857 or 1858. of Peranakans. European photographers established the earliest commercial studios in Asia, and almost immediately AMEK GAMBAR Peranakan Museum enterprising Asians learned the new technology and started studios of their own. Many Peranakans were 4 May 2018 to 24 January 2019 among those intrigued by this fledgling art. They Daily 10am to 7pm, Fridays 10am to 9pm Website | peranakanmuseum.org.sg Seeing Fedor Jagor, a German Stereoviews were popular in the and that the subject is a rich ethnologist, naturalist, and 19th century. Two photographs of Chinese merchant from Malacca Double photographer, travelled in the same image are taken at “who has Malay blood through the Southeast Asia in the late 1850s. slightly different angles and placed women”. Although it does not TITLE In 1857 and 1858 he took many side-by-side on a card. When specifically mention Tan Kim Tan Kim Ching and family. photographs of Singapore and its looked at through a binocular Ching, Jagor singles him out by PHOTOGRAPHER people. While here, he met viewer, they create an illusion of name in his travelogue published Fedor Jagor (1816–1900). prominent Peranakan tycoon Tan depth. This stereoview is the oldest in 1866. He also describes the REGION AND DATE Kim Ching. In the late 1860s, photograph on paper in Peranakan community at length, Singapore, 1857–58. Jagor’s stereoview photographs of Singapore’s National Collection. which altogether strongly suggests MATERIAL Singapore were published in A note on the back indicates the that the image is a portrait of Tan Albumen stereoview print. Berlin. photograph was taken in Singapore and his family. | ISSUE 1 • 01.