Towards the end of the 19th century, leisure travel by Western middle-class men and women became increasingly common, powering the widespread distribution of photographs of Asia. Tourists began to request such products from East-based commercial photographers to buy as souvenirs. In Singapore, this demand gave rise to the first high-street photographer in town, G.R. Lambert & Co. G.R. Lambert & Co. offered one of the finest collections of landscape views in the East, comprising about 3,000 subjects relating to Siam, Singapore, Borneo, Malaya and China. The firm was started by young Gustave Richard Lambert, a native of Dresden, who arrived in Singapore at the age of 21. By the early 1890s, G.R. Lambert & Co. had been established for more than a decade, making it the oldest photographic establishment in Singapore at that time.
