Autore Ignoto

Introduction

The artwork in question represents one of the oldest and most precious visual testimonies of colonial Singapore in the mid-19th century, depicting the famous Thian Hock Keng temple located along Telok Ayer Street. Dating back to the 1850s, this rare photographic print stands at the dawn of photographic exploration in Southeast Asia, a period when the inventions of Daguerre and Fox Talbot began traveling beyond European borders to document the new horizons of the British Empire and global trade routes.