Yip Cheong Fun

Yip Cheong Fun (Chinese: 叶畅芬 ;1903 - September 16 1989) was an influential Singaporean documentary photographer, best known for his photograph “Rowing at Dawn”, which was taken in 1957 in celebration of Singapore obtaining self-government, and which in his words, was to show “the dawn of a new day, new hope and new life for Singapore”.

Although better known and admired for his seascapes, Yip Cheong Fun has also taken a lot of other award-winning photographs depicting the different facets of Singaporeans’ life with his keen eyes and his humanistic understanding of the people and events around him. Yip was awarded the Cultural Medallion for his outstanding achievements and contributions to photography in 1984, as his works "identified with the Singaporean society and mirrored the nation's way of life and history".

Biography

Born in Hong Kong in 1903, Yip arrived in Singapore with his migrant parents when he was seven months old. His father died when he was four. Yip’s mother then had to find work to support herself and her son. But times were bad and she found it difficult to earn a livelihood; so she sent her six-year-old son to Dongguan, China, where relatives could take care of Yip. However, the relatives were uncaring and Yip was neglected in the subsequent four years. Some kind-hearted neighbors at the house in Gongchai Street in Chashan, Dongguan found the child starving and sick. They fed the boy for a while and contacted Yip’s mother in Singapore to inform her about the child’s condition. Yip was then brought back to Singapore where he stayed with his mother at Sago Lane in Singapore's Chinatown. Later, he studied at a private school in Chinatown.

Yip started off as a mechanic in his younger days and later joined United Engineers as a technician and engineering supervisor. He resigned from the United Engineers in 1943 when he discovered the firm was manufacturing arms for the Japanese military. He then started his own engineering workshops at Kreta Ayer Road and Kallang in 1942. In his later years, he worked for Tien Wah Press as an engineering supervisor. After retiring at 70, he worked at a sundry shop with his wife, Leong Lin, in Chinatown.

Yip was passionate about photography, which started as a hobby to him when he was in his twenties. While working with the United Engineers, he saved up enough money to buy his first camera – a Rolleiflex, so that he could take photos for his family album. From then on, his love for photography grew. His keenness to notice change and sensitivities to the surroundings helped him to record part of the cultural landscape in Singapore before the onset of urbanization.

During the Japanese Occupation, he volunteered for service as a leader of ARPs (Air Raid Personnel) in Chinatown. His photography was disrupted as the Japanese confiscated his camera. But Yip took up photography again when the World War II was over.

Yip’s interest in photography began as early as 1936. But it was not until 1964, when he became a member of the Photographic Society of Singapore, at age 50, did Yip pursue photography seriously and send his works for overseas competition. Over the years, Yip has won more than 50 world-wide awards. The selected Awards and honors are listed below:

1971: Received Honorary Excellence Distinction conferred by "Federation Internationale de l'art Photographique" (International Federation of Photographic Art)1974: Received an Honorary Fellowship conferred by the Photographic Society of Singapore1980: Elected as the Honorary Outstanding Photographers of the Century by the Photographic Society of New York, USA1984: awarded the Cultural Medallion for his outstanding achievements and contributions to photography.

As Vice-president of the Photographic Society of Singapore from 1966 to 1974, and as advisor to the Kreta Ayer Community Center Camera Club since 1976, Yip Cheong Fun played an active role in inspiring and guiding many young people in the art and techniques of photography. On September 16 1989 Yip collapsed on an MRT train at around midnight, after taking pictures of the Lantern Festival at the Chinese Garden, clutching a loaded camera on his hands as usual.

Approach to Photography

In the early 1950s, working with a mere handful of contemporaries, Yip Cheong Fun faced a lot of difficulties, as described by Choy Weng Yang, the former curator at the National Museum of Singapore. Some of the difficulties were: an unsympathetic environment, scantiness of reference material, inadequate equipment, and a lack of guidance and direction. Yip’s solution to all these problems was experimentation in the form of trials and errors backed by a passionate spirit. Yip has always sought to take photographs which go beyond the surface of superficial attractiveness. His photographs must carry a telling message forged by crucial elements such as content, composition, light and timing. In Yip’s words, “a good picture must have the right balance and composition.”

It was possible to improve a photograph after it was developed. Yip chose only to crop and to enlarge. He never used sophisticated darkroom techniques as he took care to avoid the temptation to make a photograph through the manipulation techniques. Instead, he leaned heavily on his own judgment, experience, and intuition, as commented by Choy Weng Yang. “Yip’s approach to photography is not that of the photojournalist who must make news, nor the fashion photographer who must flatter, nor the industrial photographer who must explain, nor the publicity photographer who must be an image maker. His is the artist’s approach free of the functional constraints and yet must reach out for something else. Yip decides to express a fragment of his imagination.”

Yip also took a sincere and humanistic approach in photography. Mr. Andrew Yip, who is one of Yip Cheong Fun’s four sons and who displays and sells some of his father’s works together with his own poems at a stall near the Chinatown Heritage Center, described Old Yip’s photographic works on the website he has created for his father. “He (Yip Cheong Fun) understood how photography can be a great medium not just to record truth and beauty, but to capture the defining moments of the changes that affect all of us in any human situation, and to interpret the dynamic interplay of the elements that constitute life and the human spirit.” Indeed, the humanistic approach to photography was shown throughout his seascape photography, black-and-white photography, child portraiture and documentary photography.

eascape Photography

In the 1950s Yip Spent a lot of time photographing the Chinese junks that brought him from China and Hong Kong to Singapore. Many of his photographs depict the sea and the lives of fishermen. In the Fifties, he was known as a seascape specialist. The shimmering lights and reflections on the sea’s face in many of his photographs became the hallmark of his seascape works. The photograph “Rowing at Dawn”, Yip’s most locally and internationally recognized photograph, was taken at Tanjong Rhu where many Chinese junks anchored during this period of time. Yip took a sampan with his friend in the heavy morning mist and captured this special moment using the camera Super Ikonta which he bought after the Japanese Occupation. The solitary boatman rowing in the misty morning light, in his view, was the symbol for the new Singapore which has just gained self-government in 1957. Yip celebrated the end of colonialism and “the dawn of a new day, new hope and new beginning for Singapore”, and was given the internationally-acclaimed title of Outstanding Photographer of the Century (Seascapes) by the Photographic Society of New York in 1980.

Child Portraiture

Yip Cheong Fun used to visit the Malay Kampongs at Geylang Lorong 3 after the early morning boat trips very often in the 1950s. And he would often take pictures of the children living there and gave them supplementary copies on the subsequent visit. One of the photographic works that Yip was very fond of was the one with a young boy looking straight into the camera with his hands placed on a wooden beam. His brother stood behind the child and held tightly onto the wooden beams as well. “4 hands and 2 eyes are all in one row,” Yip said while touching this precious piece of photograph, “what is most outstanding is the child’s eyes.” Although Yip did not reveal his feelings towards this photograph, the inclusion of a wooden beam that created distance and the four hands tightly holding on to it that created tension suggested some of Yip’s thoughts of childhood. Indeed, Mr. Andrew Yip, a psychologist, believed that Yip Cheong Fun’s work on child portraiture was affected by his early childhood which was filled with his memories of fleeing from floods, famine and wars in China and the difficult time living in Singapore with his mother. The photograph “Father’s Love”, where a father was trying to help his daughter to get down from a large piece of rock, would be deeply moving if one understood that Yip has lost his father at four.

Bridget Tracy Tan, Director of Gallery and Theatre in the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore, commented on Yip Cheong Fun’s child portraiture: "Yip was known as a child-portrait photographer in his time, made famous by his many images of children, some dark, some compelling, some uncannily exhilarating, and others still reserved, impenetrable…. The depth of Yip’s perception is as much about the children as it is about himself. If we read a burden of anxiety upon a face, we understand full well that Yip’s childhood was not an unblemished one. If we read the light of innocence and imagination upon a face, then we know Yip’s experiences bore the same if not as a child himself, then as that within his own children, all six of them. If we catch the outbreak of happiness through smiles and laughter, we know that this kind of joy is not limited to heady childhood, but lives on well into old age.”

Documentary Photography

Dr. Kelvin Tan, the president of the Singapore Heritage Society, said Yip Cheong Fun’s documentary photographs were “a powerful reminder of a way of life that is probably gone for ever.” Indeed, Yip has recorded a wide range of human activities that constituted a large part of Singapore’s cultural landscape in its early days. Indeed, we might see another Singapore when we look at a Taoist priest leaping through a wall of flame amid a flurry of “Hell Notes”, or the silhouette of a woman heaving a cart through a torrential downpour (See Photo 9), or an opium addict surrounded by waves of smoke, as described by the Straits Times journalist Corrie Tan.

The sensitivity to the changes in his social and physical environment, the persistence in recording the changes and the passion for photography had also enabled Yip Cheong Fun to document a large number of photographs showing the physical and social impact of urbanization. He visited the kampong sites more regularly. He took pictures on every aspect of life in Chinatown and its vicinity. “Chinatown was his passion and life; he would roam the streets, carrying a camera like a woman would carry a handbag,” said Mr. Andrew Yip describing his father’s passion for documentary photography. Yip used to stand on the same spot at New Bridge Road (New Bridge Road, along side Eu Tong Sen Street, was the meeting place of Chinese immigrants in the early 1950s) in 1955 and again in 1978 to take pictures of Chinatown. The changes in 23 years were apparent when we compared the two images.

Dr. Kelvin Tan, president of the Singapore Heritage Society, defined the documentary photography as having the specific aim of recording a present reality for future generations. “Singaporeans must be made to realize great photographs are not the sole preserve of Henri Cartier-Bresson or Alfred Stieglitz. We have our own masters too. More important, they documented our past, not someone else’s.” Ken Kwek, a leading feature writer of the Straits Times, wrote the need to revive the waning art form of documentary photography and expressed his concern that “Singapore is forgetting the photo artists who spent their lives capturing a cultural landscape that would be rapidly effaced in the name of economic progress.” Yip, in his view, was one of the few photographers who have “registered the pain of modernization” poignantly. He also used Yip’s late 1960s photograph of an old tree crumbling in the foreground of a burgeoning metropolis as an example of the emotional schisms of urbanization.

Contemporaries

David P.C. Tay, the 1982 Cultural Medallion recipient and President of the Photographic Society of Singapore has commented on Yip and his works: “Over the last two decades I have known Mr. Yip, I have been deeply impressed by his ability to express his experience through photographic prints, as well as to show us there is more to pictures than meets the eye.”

Ang Chwee Chai, the 1983 Cultural Medallion recipient, said, “Yip loves capturing the spirit and emotions of people in different moods, as well as the atmosphere of dawn. These have been reflected in many of his artistic works which he received much acclaim for his creativity and individuality.”

Yip has also learned from some of his contemporaries. His street style approach to documentary photography was influenced by his friend and contemporary photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson from France, who was famous for his photo-journalism.

The other contemporary photographers include Lee Lim who gained inspiration for his photography through Chinese painting, and Kouo Shang Wei who was fond of architectural photography and was also interested in the subject of Samsui Women.

Influence

Yip has many disciples and taught at both the Photographic Society and the Kreta Ayer Camera Club for decades. The former Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Mr. S. Rajaretnam studied photography with him. The former Chief Architect of the Housing and Development Board, Mr. Tony Tan was also noted to be his disciple. Photographers like Tan Yik Yee and Mr. Low Soon Leong who taught at the SAFRA camera club were also influenced by Yip’s works and teaching.

Yip has influenced not only the people who were enthusiastic about photography, but also the people who were interested in the preservation of Singapore’s memory of the past. Chong Wing Hong, for example, was one of them. As a veteran columnist with Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao, Chong compiled a book of essays to preserve his memories of Chinatown where he grew up in. Blooms in Glimpse: Story of Kreta Ayer is a 179-page book containing 34 essays in Chinese and 22 black-and-white photographs by Yip Cheong Fun. “He (Yip Cheong Fun) managed to crystallize my memories of Kreta Ayer in his pictures,” Chong said. Chong also emphasized one photograph taking by Yip that consists of a silhouette of a woman heaving a cart through a torrential downpour specially. He said that the person in the straw hat was a fitting symbol of Singapore, more apt than even the Merlion. Chong said, “The picture represents how Singaporean once braved the storms to build up this country, and it still represents our fighting spirit today.”

References

* Andre W. Keye. Chinatown: Different Exposures. Singapore: Fashion, 2004.

* Ang Chwee Chai. Foreword. Yip Cheong Fun’s Pictorial Collection. By Yip Cheong Fun. Singapore : C.F. Yip, 1986. 5.

* Bridget Tracy Tan. An Ingenious Reverie: the Photography of Yip Cheong Fun. Singapore: National Library Board, 2006.

* Choy Weng Yang. “The Photography of Yip Cheong Fun.” Yip Cheong Fun’s Pictorial Collection. By Yip

* Cheong Fun. Singapore : C.F. Yip, 1986. 140-141.

* Corrie Tan. “Remembering Yip Cheong Fun.” Life News. The Straits Times 1 April 2006.

* David P. C. Tay. Message. Yip Cheong Fun’s Pictorial Collection. By Yip Cheong Fun. Singapore : C.F. Yip, 1986. 6.

* Eisen Teo. “Glimpse of a Chinatown childhood.” Life News. The Straits Times 9 June 2006.

* Ken Kwek. “Revive Waning Art Form of Documentary Photography”. Rev. others. The Straits Times 22 December 2006.

* Master Lensman, Yip Cheong Fun. Videorecording. Singapore: Television Corporation of Singapore, 1986.

* Nureza Ahmad. “Yip Cheong Fun.” Updated 21 December 2007. < http://infopedia.nlb.gov.sg/details/SIP_465_2004-12-23.html>. Cited 17 April 2008. Singapore Infopedia, National Library of Singapore.

* “Photographer Yip Cheong Fun dies.” News. The Straits Times 19 September 1989.

* Thulaja, Naidu Ratnala. “New Bridge Road.” Updated 7 July 2003. < http://infopedia.nlb.gov.sg/articles/SIP_310_2004-12-17.html>. Cited 17 April 2008. Singapore Infopedia, National Library of Singapore.

* Tommy Koh (Editor in chief). Singapore: the Encyclopedia. Singapore: National Heritage Board with Editions Didier Millet, 2006.

* Yip, Andrew. Personal e-mail. 26 March 2008.

* Yip, Andrew. “About Yip Cheong Fun.” Updated 21 August 2006. < http://www.yipcheongfun.com/yipcheongfun.htm>. Cited 17 April 2008.

* Yip Cheong Fun. Yip Cheong Fun’s Pictorial Collection. Singapore : C.F. Yip, 1986.