Yip Cheong Fun (叶畅芬, 1903-1989) was a distinguished and influential Singaporean documentary photographer. Renowned internationally for his seascapes, Yip also recorded through his photographs the many different facets of Singapore life with his keen eye and humanistic understanding of his surroundings. His sensitivity to change also helped document the cultural landscape in Singapore before urbanization. [Kwek, 2006, 1]

Born in Hong Kong in 1903, Yip arrived in Singapore with his parents when he was seven months old. His father died when he was four and he then stayed with his mother at Sago Street in Chinatown. When Yip was six, he was sent to Dongguan, China by his mother as it was difficult to make a living in Singapore. However, Yip was neglected by his supposed care-givers in the subsequent four years. Fortunately, he was taken in by kind-hearted neighbours and they contacted Yip’s mother. Yip was then brought back to Singapore where he later studied at a private school in Chinatown. [Ahmad, 2007, 1]

Yip was passionate about photography. It started as a hobby to him when he was in his twenties. Working as a technician and an engineering supervisor, he managed to save up enough money to buy his first camera – a Rolleiflex - so that he could take photos for his family album.

His interest was disrupted when the Japanese confiscated his camera during the Japanese Occupation; but it did not die and he continued to pursue photography after the Second World War. [Ahmad, 2007, 1]

Yip became a member of the Photographic Society of Singapore in 1964 at fifty years old, and became the society’s vice-president in 1966 (until 1974). He was also Advisor to the Kreta Ayer Community Centre Camera Club in 1976, and played an active role in inspiring and guiding many young people who are interested in photography. [Andrew Yip, email interview, 26 March 2008]

Approach to Photography

In the early 1950s, working with a mere handful of contemporaries, Yip Cheong Fun faced a lot of difficulties, including an unsympathetic environment, scantiness of reference material, inadequate equipment, and a lack of guidance and direction. [Choy 1986, 1]

Yip’s solution to all these problems was experimentation in the form of trials and errors backed by a passionate spirit. Yip always sought to take photographs which go beyond superficial attractiveness. His photographs must carry a telling message forged by crucial elements such as content, composition, light and timing. In Yip’s words, “a good picture must have the right balance and composition.” [Choy, 1986, 1]

It is possible to manipulate a photograph after it is developed. Yip chose only to crop and to enlarge, and took care to avoid changing photographs. He relied heavily on his own judgment, experience, and intuition. “Yip’s approach to photography is not that of the photo-journalist who must make news, nor the fashion photographer who must flatter, nor the industrial photographer who must explain, nor the publicity photographer who must be an image maker. His is the artist’s approach free of the functional constraints and yet must reach out for something else. Yip decides to express a fragment of his imagination.” [Choy, 1986, 1] [“Master Lensman, Yip Cheong Fun”, 1986, videorecording]

Yip took a humanistic approach to photography. Andrew Yip, one of Yip’s four sons describes how his father “understood how photography can be a great medium not just to record truth and beauty, but to capture the defining moments of the changes that affect all of us in any human situation, and to interpret the dynamic interplay of the elements that constitute life and the human spirit.” [Andrew Yip, 2006, http://www.yipcheongfun.com/yipcheongfun.htm]

Indeed, the humanistic approach to photography was shown throughout his seascape photography, child portraiture and documentary photography.

Seascape Photography

In 1950s, Yip spent some time photographing the seascape, of the fishermen and the successors of the Chinese junks which first brought him from Singapore. The shimmering lights and reflections on the sea’s surface in many of his photographs became the hallmark of his seascape works. [Ahmad, 2007, 2]

The photograph “Rowing at Dawn”, Yip’s most recognised photograph, was taken at Tanjong Rhu where many Chinese junks anchored during this period of time. Yip took a sampan with his friend and captured this special moment in the heavy morning mist using a Super Ikonta which he bought after the Japanese Occupation. The solitary boatman rowing in the misty morning light, in his view, was the symbol for the new Singapore which has just gained self-government in 1957. Yip celebrated the end of colonialism and “the dawn of a new day, new hope and new beginning for Singapore”. [“Master Lensman, Yip Cheong Fun”, 1986, video-recording]

Child Portraiture

Yip also used to visit the Malay Kampongs at Geylang Lorong 3 after the early morning boat trips very often in the 1950s. And he would often take pictures of the children living there and gave them supplementary copies on the subsequent visit.

One of the photographic works that Yip was very fond of was the one with a young boy looking straight into the camera with his hands placed on a wooden beam. His brother stood behind the child and held tightly onto the wooden beams as well. “4 hands and 2 eyes are all in one row,” Yip said while touching this precious piece of photograph, “what is most outstanding is the child’s eyes.” [“Master Lensman, Yip Cheong Fun”, 1986, videorecording]

Although Yip did not reveal his feelings towards this photograph, the inclusion of a wooden beam that created distance and the four hands tightly holding on to it that created tension suggested some of Yip’s thoughts of childhood. What is most special about this picture is that the brother has only four fingers on each hand. This unusual scene has captured the intense feelings of tension, suffering and pain. [Andrew Yip, interview, 16 April 2008]

Indeed, Andrew Yip believed that his father’s work on child portraiture was affected by his early childhood which was filled with his memories of fleeing from floods, famine and wars in China and the difficult time living in Singapore with his mother. The photograph “Father’s Love”, where a father was trying to help his daughter to get down from a large piece of rock, would be deeply moving if one understood that Yip has lost his father at four. [Andrew Yip, email interview, 29 March 2008]

Bridget Tracy Tan, Director of Gallery and Theatre in the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore, commented on Yip Cheong Fun’s child portraiture: “Yip was known as a child-portrait photographer in his time, made famous by his many images of children, some dark, some compelling, some uncannily exhilarating, and others still reserved, impenetrable…. The depth of Yip’s perception is as much about the children as it is about himself.

“If we read a burden of anxiety upon a face, we understand full well that Yip’s childhood was not an unblemished one. If we read the light of innocence and imagination  upon a face, then we know Yip’s experiences bore the same if not as a child himself, then as that within his own children, all six of them. If we catch the outbreak of happiness through smiles and laughter, we know that this kind of joy is not limited to heady childhood, but lives on well into old age.” [Tan, 2006, also mentioned in email interview with Andrew Yip, 29 March 2008]

Documentary Photography

Yip influenced not only the people who were enthusiastic about photography, but also the people who were interested in the preservation of Singapore’s memory of the past. Chong Wing Hong, for example, was one of them. As a veteran columnist with Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao, Chong compiled a book of essays to preserve his memories of Chinatown where he grew up in. Blooms in Glimpse: Story of Kreta Aye is a 179-page book containing 34 essays in Chinese and 22 black-and-white photographs by Yip, having managed to “crystallize my memories of Kreta Ayer in his pictures.” [Teo, 2006, 1]

Chong also emphasized one photograph taking by Yip that consists of a silhouette of a woman heaving a cart through a torrential downpour specially. He said that the person in the straw hat was a fitting symbol of Singapore, more apt than even the Merlion. Chong said, “The picture represents how Singaporean once braved the storms to build up this country, and it still represents our fighting spirit today.” [Teo, 2006, 1]

Kelvin Tan, the president of the Singapore Heritage Society, notes that documentary photographs are “a powerful reminder of a way of life that is probably gone for ever.” He defines the documentary photography as having the specific aim of recording a present reality for future generations: “Singaporeans must be made to realize great photographs are not the sole preserve of Henri Cartier-Bresson or Alfred Stieglitz. We have our own masters too. More important, they documented our past, not someone else’s.” [Kwek, 2006, 2]

Yip is perhaps one such ‘master’. Through his camera, he has recorded a wide range of human activities that constituted a large part of Singapore’s cultural landscape in its early days. For instance, through his pictures, we see “another Singapore when we look at a Taoist priest leaping through a wall of flame amid a flurry of “Hell Notes”, or the silhouette of a woman heaving a cart through a torrential downpour, or an opium addict surrounded by waves of smoke.” [Tan, 2006, 1] [Kwek, 2006, 1]

In 2006, Ken Kwek wrote of the need to revive the waning art form of documentary photography and expressed his concern that “Singapore is forgetting the photo artists who spent their lives capturing a cultural landscape that would be rapidly effaced in the name of economic progress.” Yip, in his view, was one of the few photographers who have “registered the pain of modernization” poignantly. He also used Yip’s late 1960s photograph of an old tree crumbling in the foreground of a burgeoning metropolis as an example of the emotional schisms of urbanization. [Kwek, 2006, 1]

The sensitivity to the changes in his social and physical environment, the persistence in recording the changes and the passion for photography had also enabled Yip to document a large number of photographs showing the physical and social impact of urbanization. For instance, Yip stood on the same spot at New Bridge Road in 1955 and again in 1978 to take pictures of Chinatown, documenting the changes over twenty-three years.

Yip passed away on 16 September 1989. He collapsed at Lakeside MRT station at around midnight, clutching a loaded camera after taking pictures of the Lantern Festival at the Chinese Garden. But as seen from above, his influence remains and continues to prevail even after his passing. His mastery of photography can be attested to the numerous local and international awards won, including the Cultural Medallion awarded by the National Arts Council in 1984.[i] [Ahmad, 2007, 2]

A photography enthusiast myself, researching Yip was an illuminating experience. Yip’s photographs reveal a Singapore totally different from the one I am more familiar with. My favourite photograph by Yip the one called “Father’s Care”. The love and care the father shows his daughter makes the photograph comes alive. Almost as if defying his difficult childhood, he managed to capture this warm tender moment, a moment worth pondering upon, especially during present times of extreme materialism.

The author is a first-year student studying applied mathematics and computer science in NUS. She enjoys poetry, photography, walking and running. Taking up a scholarship to study in Singapore meant placing herself at the boundaries of two different cultures. While remaining a proud citizen of China, she is at the same time grateful to Singapore.

More information on Yip and his photographs can be found at An Ingenious Reverie - The Photography of Yip Cheong Fun, a website maintained by his son, Andrew Yip.

References

Ahmad Nureza. “Yip Cheong Fun” Updated 21 December 2007. (http://infopedia.nlb.gov.sg/details/SIP_465_2004-12-23.html) Cited 17 April 2008. Singapore Infopedia, National Library of Singapore.

Andre W. Keye. Chinatown: Different Exposures. Singapore: Fashion, 2004.

Ang Chwee Chai. “Foreword” Yip Cheong Fun’s Pictorial Collection. By Yip Cheong Fun. Singapore: C. F. Yip, 1986, p. 5

Choy Weng Yang. “The Photography of Yip Cheong Fun” Yip Cheong Fun’s Pictorial Collection. By Yip Cheong Fun. Singapore: C. F. Yip<, 1986, pp. 140-141.

Corrie Tan. “Remembering Yip Cheong Fun.” Life News. The Straits Times 1 April 2006.

David P. C. Tay. “Message” Yip Cheong Fun’s Pictorial Collection. By Yip Cheong Fun. Singapore: C. F. Yip, 1986, p. 6.

Ken Kwek. “Revive Waning Art Form of Documentary Photography”. Rev. others. The Straits Times 22 December 2006.

Master Lensman, Yip Cheong Fun. Videorecording. Singapore: Television Corporation of Singapore, 1986.

“Photographer Yip Cheong Fun dies.” News. The Straits Times 19 September 1989.

Tan, Bridget Tracy. An Ingenious Reverie: the Photography of Yip Cheong Fun. Singapore: National Library Board, 2006.

Teo, Eisen. “Glimpse of a Chinatown childhood.” Life News. The Straits Times 9 June 2006.

Thulaja, Naidu Ratnala. “New Bridge Road.” Updated 7 July 2003. (http://infopedia.nlb.gov.sg/articles/SIP_310_2004-12-17). Cited 17 April 2008. Singapore Infopedia, National Library of Singapore.

Tommy Koh (Editor-in-chief). Singapore: the Encyclopedia. Singapore: National Heritage Board with Editions Didier Millet, 2006.

Yip, Andrew. E-mail interview. 26 March 2008.

Yip, Andrew. “About Yip Cheong Fun.” Updated 21 August 2006. (http://www.yipcheongfun.com/yipcheongfun.htm). Cited 17 April 2008.

Yip Cheong Fun. Yip Cheong Fun’s Pictorial Collection. Singapore: C. F. Yip, 1986.

[i] (1971) Honorary Excellence Distinction conferred by Federation Internationale de l’art Photographique (International Federation of Photographic Art); (1974) Honorary Fellowship conferred by the Photographic Society of Singapore; (1980) One of ten Honorary Outstanding Photographers of the Century (Seascapes), Photographic Society of New York, USA; (1984) Cultural Medallion, National Arts Council, Singapore.