Asia Photo Books

Falconer, J., Regeneration A reappraisal of photography in Ceylon 1850-1900, Londen 2000. Softcover 24 x 25 cm. 94 pag. met 97 zwart-wit foto's.

"Drawn from the extensive photographic archives of Ceylonese material held privately and publicly within the UK, this exhibition examines the first fifty years of photography in Ceylon. The bewildering array of subjects encompasses both the epic and everyday, from sublime panoramas of mountain landscapes to the exquisite detail of an individual bread-fruit. Formal and vernacular portraiture is displayed alongside busy street scenes reflecting the coexistence of secular and religious life. Sequential images trace the development of key industries such as tea, coffee, cinnamon and plumbago - from the initial clearing of land to the preparation of goods for export.A catalogue was produced to accompany the show, reproducing all the works in the exhibition with an introductory essay by the curator John Falconer in collaboration with Ismeth Raheem".

DEDO GADEBUSCH,R., Tropical Arcadia Frühe fotografie in Ceylon, Berlijn 2009. Softcover 22,5 x 23 cm. 76 pag. met 44 zwart-wit foto's. Tekst in het Duits. German text

"The exhibit titled Tropical Arcadia – Early Photography in Ceylon features albumen prints and stereoscopic photography from two Berlin private collections of work of the 1870s through the 1890s.

The exhibition leaves no doubt about the outstanding quality of colonial photography in British Ceylon. The works shown are concentrated on picturesque landscape photography and portraits of plants and these areas are supplemented with still lifes of tropical fruit.Picturesque landscape photography in particular harkens back to a long tradition in South Asian photography. However, botanical studies in the form of self-consciously artistic photo portraits were an almost entirely unknown commodity in the photography of the Indian subcontinent before the 1870s.Two studios in particular dominated in the island’s photographic production at the end of the nineteenth century. In addition to the work of William Louis Henry Skeen, who ran one of the most productive photography studios in Ceylon as of the late 1860s, the work of the studio of Charles Thomas Scowen was specialized in botanical photography to an extent incomparable with their island contemporaries. Scowen’s work was promoted by the company Colombo Apothecaries starting in the 1890s and many of his pictures were taken in ancient royal Peradeniya Garden, which the British rededicated as a botanical garden around 1820. This was the area where Scowen established his studio. His commercial success and the popularity of just such photographs are perhaps the consummate examples of British affinity for gardens and landscaping."

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