Ravi’s Photographs
In Book Three of the Kenyalang Series, Ravi is given a Vest Pocket Kodak. This is the same small folding camera that would soon earn the name 'the soldier's camera' in the trenches of Europe. He takes to it the way most seventeen-year-olds take to things: with more appetite than discipline.
I have used Artificial Intelligence to bring to life the areas of Borneo and Singapore that are no longer there. All images are based on real life images and postcards of the era and reproduced here to share with readers the world that has sadly vanished. I hope this page will help your understanding of Edwardian life east of Suez.
Below, the photographs have been grouped into separate galleries of eight; eflecting the fact that a Vest Pocket Kodak roll held only eight exposures. Each gallery represents one roll as it would have come back from the chemist and gone into the album: eight frames at a time, no more, no less.
1) Italian ice-cream vendor, Orchard Road.
2) The Orchard Road tram.
3) Sikh policeman directing traffic at the crossing.
4) Armenian Street bookshop front.
5) Letter writer and barber under the five-foot way.
6) Boat Quay with coolies crossing gangplanks at the godowns.
7) Motor car and bullock cart with a Malay policeman intervening.
8) The Tamil flower-seller's child among the marigold garlands.
9) Isabella laughing at something out of frame.
10) The Castle with Ahmad and Hamid.
11) A bumboat at Keppel.
12) The front of Raffles Hotel
13) Men on River Valley Road.
14) A Crashed Car.
15) Chinese men in a shop in the five-footway.
16) Singapore Swimming Club
17) Hamid asleep against the verandah post.
18) Bullock cart driver arguing over rambutans.
19) The Padang: Volunteers at drill.
20) Sandbags outside the signal office.
21) Red Cross point.
22) Troopship unloading.
23) Raffles Place godown.
24) Isabella and Ravi in the park with Miss Rozzario as chaperone.
25) Julian and Samuel in the sea at Tanjong Katong.
26) The table under the casuarinas.
27) The two idle cars. A touring car and a landaulette.
30) Red snappers over the driftwood fire.
28) Isabella, laughing, unaware.
29) Isabella on the rock shelf in a pose.
31) Ravi alone at the rocks taken by Samuel
32) Samuel and Julian with their coconuts.