This coloured portrait photograph shows a nyonya, adorned with bejewelled hairpins, earrings and necklace. Her baju panjang is fastened by a set of keronsang bintang. Photographs were sometimes painted, usually by an artist who first applied Chinese ink or oil paint to the negative before further working on the print. With the advent of colour negative film in the 1950s, hand-tinted photographs fell out of vogue. Ranging from formal studio portraits to albums of snapshots of everyday life and stately ancestral portraits, this large group of photographs reveals the many forms of photography available and gives insight into the various aspects of the lives of Peranakans.
