This photograph showing native Malays in Singapore posing in front of their wooden huts was taken by Scottish photographer John Thomson. Such wooden and attap huts formed distinct Malay kampongs (villages) which became a powerful point of focus for the Malay community. Thomson travelled to the Far East in the mid 19th century to document landscapes and daily lives of the locals. Thomson arrived in Malaya in 1862 and was one of the earliest travel photographers who brought photography to Singapore and Malaya following the arrival of the Europeans several decades before. Such photographs were then published in Europe and became one of the earliest forms of photojournalism. Such photographic documentation has also allowed us much insight about life in Singapore under British colonial rule.
