1315
however, a distinctive genre in 19th century India and
Japan played only a small role in Southeast Asia.
Photography associated with expeditions and gov-
ernment agents was a factor in the 1870s. Professional
photographer and painter Austrian Wilhelm Burger
(1844–1920) was part of the Austrian mission in Asia
from 1869–1870 and later marketed rather prosaic
stereoviews of Borneo, Singapore, Sulu and the Philip-
pines. James W.W. Birch (1826–1875) the fi rst British
Resident in Perak in 1873 an amateur photographer,
who sent views of his tours in Perak and Selangor to the
colonial offi ce in 1874 was murdered in 1875. British
Major J.F. A. McNair used illustrations drawn from pho-
tographs in his 1878 book on Perak and the Malays. His
countryman Civil Servant Leonard Wray (1852–1942)
a prolifi c amateur also documented Perak peoples and
places in the 1880s–1890s and was much valued for his
efforts. In 1883 J.F. Stiehm in Berlin published their
“Marine” series including views of Singapore and the
Philippines made by Gustav Riemer the purser on the
Austrian S.M.S.Hertha expedition of 1880.
Established studios become more common in the
late 1870s and expanded their inventory of views and
also trained a new generation of professionals. Henry
Schuren worked for Woodbury and Page in Batavia
before settling in Singapore in 1874 and was soon
after appointed offi cial photographer to King of Siam,
settling there in 1876. From 1883 August E. Kaulfuss
(1861–c.1909) worked for J.M. Nauta studio then be-
came a travelling photographer gathering views from
all over and was also offi cial photographer to Sultan
of Kedah.
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 increased
trade and tourism through Asia which benefi ted fi rms
such as that established by G.R. Lambert 1846–after
1886) a professional from Berlin who advertised his ser-
vices in Singapore in 1867 but effectively commenced
in 1877. During 1879–1880 Lambert was in Bangkok
taking over Henry Schuren’s stock and his position as
offi cial photographer to the King of Siam. Lambert left
the business operations by around 1886 and the work
was continued under Alexander Koch who recorded such
ceremonies as the Kuala Kangsar durbar in 1897 to mark
the creation of the Federated States of Malaya.
GR Lambert and Company built the most extensive
inventory of views of the Malay Peninsula, Borneo and
Sumatra including making the earliest images of Kuala
Lumpur and covering all major Malayan ceremonies
and events and also kept up with new developments in
instantaneous and dry-plate photography. The domi-
nance of such large and mass production studios in Asia
as elsewhere was checked by the emergence of the
snapshot family photographers including the amateur
photographic societies of the 1880s–1890s (Singapore
Photographic Society was established in 1887) but
compensated for in the new century by the profi table
postcard craze.
Images of the Philippines were regularly repro-
duced in British and French magazines such as The
Illustrated London News from the 1860s but relatively
little is known of the earliest photographers. A Spanish
Government agent Sinibaldo de Mas took up portrait
work in 1841 to earn extra income. Jules Itier was in the
Philippines from December 1844–January 1845 (where
he surprisingly records buying 25 new plates in Manila)
then in Mindanao, Sulu and Basilan until March. A
daguerreotype of the Intramuros is the earliest extant
Philippine view. Daguerreotypist C. Düben is known
to have been in Manila before 1853.
The GBR museum at Cavite holds a daguerreotype
portrait of William W. Wood an American who worked
in China as a clerk and newspaper editor from 1827–33
before relocating to Philippines in 1833 where he later
operated a photography studio in Manila by the 1870s.
His own work in daguerreotypy is unclear. The earliest
surviving Philippine images on paper include a cdv of
two Indio musicians in La Union by Pedro Picon circa
1860; a group of stereographs from an Oceanie series
with French captions of the Tinguian people of Northern
Luzon made in 1860 and a later group of stereos by an
unknown photographer of the 1863 earthquake. Swiss
born Pierre Rossier was sent to Manila by Negretti
and Zambra to photograph the volcano but would have
taken other subjects. T.W Bennett also marketed an
early stereograph series of views under the Spanish
title vistas fi lipinas.
Studios were established in the 1860s benefi ting
from the increased commercial activity in the region.
From the mid 60s until his death in Manila in 1874 the
British photographer Albert Honiss sold a wide range of
well-composed views to magazine publishers in Europe;
any connection to W.H. Honiss in Singapore in 1862 is
unclear. The Dutch photographer Francisco Van Kamp
who had exhibited in Amsterdam, took over the Honiss
studio in 1874 and later produced a set of views of the
1880 earthquake.
Ethnographic subjects were a staple for resident
and visiting photographers. The photographers aboard
the British Challenger Expedition of 1872–1876 made
or gathered a number of photographs of ethnographic
and scenic photographs in Manila and the archipelago
in 1875. William Wood made ethnographic cdvs and
examples with similar backgrounds appear in Belgian
author Jean de Man’s 1875 photographically illustrated
book Souvenirs d’un voyage aux Iles Philippines. In
1881 French ethnologist Alfred Marche (1844–1898)
photographed Negritos on his Philippines expedition
of 1879–1885 and the photographs were used for il-
lustrations in the journal Tour du Monde in 1886.
One of the most extensive ethnographic records was