Two Workers

This photograph was taken by Singaporean photographer Tan Lip Seng. Tan is arguably the most important photographer in the region developing colour derivative and photo montage techniques. His works in the 1960s were a result of various experiments meticulously combining multiple colour transparencies into one to achieve the desired montage within one frame.Tan spent 42 years as a medical photographer at the National University of Singapore. Many of his works have won numerous awards internationally and show a strong graphic and stylistic sensibility. Tan is also the first Singaporean to be awarded a fellowship by the Royal Photographic Society of the United Kingdom in 1970 for his colour works. Conferred the Cultural Medallion in 1985, Tan recently published a retrospective of his works, ‘Light & Shadow: Tan Lip Seng’s 50 Years of Photography’ in 2009.