This album consists of 22 black and white photographs taken by Sultan Ismail Nasiruddin Shah, the 4th King of Malaysia who reigned between 1965 and 1970. The photographs show deserted streets in the capital city of Malaysia, taken shortly after the May 13, 1969 racial riots, a watershed in modern Malaysian history. A nationwide emergency was imposed two days later, on May 15, 1969, and a caretaker government was established after the suspension of the Malaysian parliament. A key figure in the modern photography scene in Malaysia, Sultan Ismail was the first Malayan photographer who received an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society (ARPS) of Great Britain in 1958. In 1959, he founded a Camera Club in Terengganu. He was also the Royal Patron of the Photographic Society of Malaysia when the society was established in 1956. For his services to the early modern photography scene in Malaya, he was made an honourable member of the Photographic Society of Singapore (PSS).
