Producing Malaya: The Photography of Carl A. Gibson-Hill

Much has been written on the subject of colonial photography but, despite the importance of British Malaya to the British Empire, it has received relatively little scholarly attention. In this article I present an analysis of Malaya, a book of photographs taken by Carl A. Gibson-Hill with an accompanying text written by Gerald Hawkins. Gibson-Hill, a former director of the Raffles (now National) Museum of Singapore photographed the region in the late 1940s and early 1950s, a time of crisis and the beginning of the end of direct colonial control of what became the independent Federation of Malaya (later Malaysia) and Republic of Singapore. His book reflects the socio-political condition of its times as well as the individual circumstances of the artist.