Figure 1.-- K.F. Wong (1916-88) was an iInternationally renowned photographer who recorded the people and traditions of Borneo, most particularly Sarawak. Here we see children splashing about in their river playground. �

Ken Foo Wong was born in Sarawak (1916). This was a British-controlled Muslim sheikdom in northwest Borneo. He developed a passion for photography as a youth, focused on genre work. And he has left a wonderful record of Borneo and Singapore during the colonial and and early independence era. As an ethnice Chinese, his work was curtailed during the Japanese World War II occupation of Singapore and Borneo. (The Japanese considered the Chinese as hostile and conducted ruthlessly killing operations in Chinese communities. One of the most ruthless was conducted in Singapore. A person of Chinese ethnicity taking photogrphs would have attracted potentially fatal attention.) Wong is perhaps best known for his beautiful photographs of the Iban and Dayak people of Sarawak illustrating their traditional lifestyle. Here we see th children playing in their river playgtound (figure 1). This and other work estanlishes him as a pioneer of art photography in Southeast Asia. He was drawn to Singapore with its Chinese population and rapidly developing economy. He resumed his exhaustive photographic work after the War. A 1946 photo of Japanese prisoners of war in 1946 shows them clearing a Singapore street. Other images capture realistic scenes of everyday life in bustling markets, religious temples, governmnt offices, busy factories, street lifes, and boats and the waterfront, captured with an impressive elegance. Most are unremarkable, byt images of everyday life, only few other photographers were capturing these images, and certainly not with Wong's elegance. After the War, Sarawak and Singapore joined the Malaysian Federation, but Singapore sibsequently decided on independence.

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Created: 11:48 PM 3/19/2018
Last updated: 11:49 PM 3/19/2018