Around 1951, Ng Soo Lui (b. 1934, Singapore) received a camera from Huang Da Li (b. 1925, Guangzhou-d. 2006, Singapore) who would go on to become her husband. It was a gift and gesture of courtship, an invitation for Ng to become his “photography buddy”.
It is unclear for how long Ng was active in taking photographs. From 1990 onwards, using her penname of Si Jing 思静, Ng started publishing a series of articles on Lianhe Zaobao. Most of them involved her recollections of growing up in the Chinese quarter of Singapore, with a focus on the Cantonese milieu that her family belonged. Not only did she touch on her brief involvement in salon photography and how she served as the model to Huang’s photographic work, Si Jing also wrote about the ways in which photography became an intrinsic part of the social life of young people then. Her writings traversed the popular, artistic and commercial practices of photography in Singapore from the 1930s to the 1950s.
In 2002, Si Jing donated photographs from her personal collection to the National Museum of Singapore. This story map narrates Si Jing’s life using her writings and photographs to reconstruct her experience of photography.
[This story map is created by Zhuang Wubin for the National Library (NL) Digital Fellowship 2023. Zhuang would like to thank Toh Hun Ping, Esther Ng and the NL research librarians for their assistance. Images used in the story map are part of the collection of the National Museum of Singapore, National Heritage Board / Gift of Wu Sijing.]
Primary Sources
[黄大礼资料夹]. | [Huang Dali zi liao jia].
Huang, Da Li 黄大礼. Xuebei buyi 血碑补遗 [Supplementary notes to Tombs in Blood]. Singapore: Youth Book Co., 2008.
Si Jing. Lotus from the Mud: I Was a Majie’s Foster Daughter. Translated by Geraldine Chay, Wong Hooe Wai, and Wong Marn Heong. Singapore: Asiapac Books, 2002.
Si Jing. Down Memory Lane in Clogs: Growing up in Chinatown. Translated by Laurel Teo. Singapore: Asiapac Books, 2002.
Additional References
Lianhe Zaobao
Choo, Lian Liang. Chasing Rainbows. Translated by Ann Sim. Singapore: Straits Times Press, 2015.
Nelson, Roger. “Photography as a Collaborative Practice in Southeast Asia”. In Living Pictures: Photography in Southeast Asia, edited by Charmaine Toh, 318–25. Singapore: National Gallery Singapore, 2022.
Seng, Yu Jin. “The Primacy of Painting: Institutional Structures of the Singapore Art World from 1935 to 1972”. Master’s thesis, National University of Singapore, 2006.
Teng, Siao See, Chan Cheow Thia, and Lee Huay Leng, eds. Education at Large: Student Life and Activities in Singapore, 1945-1965. Singapore: Tangent, 2013.
[A detailed bibliography can be found in my forthcoming article.]
zhuang wubin | 庄吴斌 
You must be logged in to post a comment.