Arbre du voyageur, c. 1895

“Traveller’s Tree, Singapore”. Arbre du voyageur, Singapour. Circa 1895.

• Date : circa 1895
• Auteur : Gustave Richard Lambert (1846-?)
• Support : tirage sur papier albuminé, env. 24 x 30 cm
• Collection : BNF, Paris

Version haute définition : 2400 x 3087 pixels.

Ravenala madagascariensis.

Lambert & Co., G. R., commercial photographers in Singapore, 1867-c.1914. Founded by the German-born Gustave Richard Lambert (b. 1846), the firm was by the end of the 19th century the largest and most successful studio in South-East Asia, maintaining branches at various times in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Sumatra. It was appointed photographer to the king of Siam in 1880 and was also extensively patronized by the British colonial authorities to record political occasions and official visits. Although Lambert’s personal presence in Singapore was sporadic, under the management of Alexander Koch the studio assembled the most extensive photographic documentation of the area, with a catalogue of views covering almost the entire Malay Archipelago. The firm’s work forms a particularly valuable historical record of the growth and developing topography of the colonial centres of Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Its fortunes waned in the 1910s and it closed during the First World War.

[John Falconer, The Oxford Companion to the Photograph, Oxford University Press, 2005.]

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