Mr & Mrs Tan Gwat Bing

Title
Mr & Mrs Tan Gwat Bing
Year/Period
Early 20th Century
Region
Probably Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Object Type
Dimension
Image size: 13.9 x 9.4 cm,
Frame size: 16.7 x 10.7 cm
Accession No.
2019-00399
Collection of
Credit Line
Gift of Gael Newton and Paul Costigan, Canberra, Australia

This studio photograph shows Mr Tan Gwat Bing (1884-1949) and his wife posing in a studio surrounded by props including a porcelain dog. Tan Gwat Bing (1884-1949) was a Peranakan amateur photographer who often made excursions to take photographs and experimented with genres like still life, landscape and figure studies. Some of his salon style photographs were published in the Indies magazine De Orient. Tan Gwat Bing also had a business in the printing of of greeting and calling cards, broadsides, and commercial postcards in the 1920s. Photography was an abiding pastime for Peranakan amateur photographers in pre-independence Indonesia.