Simply amazing photo captured with a click of the shutter on his camera to compose a perfect shot.  Awesome!

This masterpiece is the art and skills of our pioneer photographer, Yip Cheong Fun, fondly called him as “Old Man Yip”.  But of course, his nickname was used many years later as he aged.  Young Yip Cheong Fun in the photo below:

[I would like to thank Tay Anne who posted this comment on the blog on Sep 4, 2016:

“Portrait picture of Master Yip used in Pioneer Photographer Old Man Yip write up belong to Mr Foo Tee Jun.  Kindly correct it.”

As I was hitherto unable to contact Mr Foo for acknowledgement of his photo. Thanks to Tay Anne for contacting me and to alert me on this matter.  My apologies.  This is now corrected to express my appreciation to Mr Foo Tee Jun to share this photo of Old Man Yip on this blog. Warm Regards.]

Many black and white photos caught in his lens at a nick of a moment with his sentimental feelings in the eyes of his mind.   Its a special spiritual feeling in his heart and his mind which we know is impossible for very few gifted people to explain or describe them in words.

Everywhere “Old Man Yip” left his house, his cameras and accessories were attached with him since he fell in love with photography as a young boy.  His love and passion all his lifetime.

Time is of the essence.  That special moment as in meditation to share his emotion, his mood, his sentiments, love of beauty of nature to reflect on his photos.  He expresses in poem or paintings and soothing sentimental music without noisy color, far away from the maddening crowd.

Yip Cheong Fun (b. 1903, Hong Kong – d. 16 September 1989, Singapore), or “Old Man Yip”, was one of Singapore’s top pioneer photographers. He was the winner of more than 50 worldwide photography awards in his lifetime, identified as one of ten Honorary Outstanding Photographers of the Century (Seascapes) by the Photographic Society of New York in 1980 and awarded the Cultural Medallion for photography in 1984.

Early life

Yip started off as a mechanic in his younger days.  He became a technician and an engineering supervisor with the United Engineers in his adulthood. 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, where he employed lathe operators, mechanics, turners and fitters to fabricate engineering machines for sale. In his later years, he worked for Tien Wah Press as an engineering supervisor.

Yip was passionate about photography, which started as a hobby to him when he was in his twenties. His first camera was a Rolleiflex, which he bought as he wanted to take photos for his family album. From then on, his love for photography grew. It led him to capture Singapore’s landscapes and scenery before the onset of urban redevelopment. He took photos of harbours, plantations and kampungs. He also travelled to neighbouring Johor by train, just so he could take photos of the scenery there every weekend. The coming of World War II disrupted Yip’s hobby. When the Japanese confiscated his camera, his grief was palpable, but as soon as the war was over, he bought a new camera and took up photography again.

Yip began sending his pictures for competitions and exhibitions in overseas salons when he was in his fifties and won many awards. However, he remained an amateur all through his life.  In his later years, Yip and his wife ran a grocery store in Chinatown.  Although he started naming his shop Yip’s Photo Service when he reached the age of seventy, the shop only acted as a collecting agency for developing and printing of photos on behalf of Rainbow Photo Service and Kodak. It was a service mainly run by Yip’s wife, Leong Lin, who also used the shop as a grocery shop.

(Source:  Nureza Ahmad at Infopedia)

Mr Yip Cheong-Fun was a remarkable Singaporean who struggled against all odds and faced formidable challenges to emerge eventually as a world famous photographer. He 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. Oftentimes he used his pictures to tell stories and to depict the changing times and life-styles. He also understood that when creatively manipulated, photographs can present aesthetic ideas: that is, to show us beauty in common things or experiences through his lenses, or delineate the subtleties in quaint things or unusual experiences.

This Master Lensman was elected by the Photographic Society of New York as the “Honorary Outstanding Photographer of the Century” for his outstanding achievements, especially as the Seascape Specialist in the Twentieth Century. In his work over half a century, there were deliberate engagements with aesthetic forms in the way he used photography as a specialized medium for creative art.

Even if we were not present in the decades of Mr Yip’s practice, we live in that space through his lenses. And for those who lived through the early years in Singapore and other parts of the world, Mr Yip’s work provides not so much nostalgia or memory, but a new perception. In many of his images, we have been gifted with that “plenitude of the soul” we might not have known then, but that we now cherish, through the creative works of Mr Yip Cheong-Fun. Few artists in the world have left such a large body of creative works. Few artists in Singapore have been able to develop such a large collection of photographic images which form the most beautiful and important records of Singapore’s social history. Few in the world have been able to keep such a collection together over the long years and changing times and through a turbulent period of world’s history.

“Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It’s rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul. ”

– Gaston Bachelard
French Philosopher & poet, 1884-1962

(Source:  http://www.yipcheongfun.com)

” Teach me to live under the sun,
To learn, to work and to have fun.
Mould me like the potter’s clay,
Fill and inspire me each day.”

“Live then like the eternal sun,
Bright, warm and pure like its rays.
Light up the lives of everyone.
Love your folks and cherish them always.

Seek your true self; know your soul,
and feel the filial piety in your heart.
Then have a vision of your role and goal,
In school, home and society for a start.

By all means, enjoy life and have fun,
If it goes with caring and sharing that’s kind.
There’s fun in work for everyone –
If it does engage his passion and mind.

Be careful then how you live in joy or sorrow.
Dwell in humility and wisdom each day.
As you learn to number your days, you’ll know
That you may be the potter, not the clay.

Andrew Yip, Author, Chinatown – Different Exposures

A rainy day – Ang Siang Hill, Chinatown, Singapore  c 1950

Yip Cheong-Fun – Portrait of the photographer

What is the true measure of greatness in an artist in modern society?  Just four words – vision, creativity, empathy and humility.  Yip Cheong-Fun’s greatness as an international icon in photography is buttressed by these four fundamental traits in his personality.

Vision

To the pantheon of great photographers belongs Yip Cheong-Fun.  Throughout his life, he shared his vision and artistry and his knowledge of photography with people from all parts of the world.  Living in an era when the world had not fully understood the potential of this powerful medium and art form, he had to convince the unconverted that photography was more than just a hobby or pastime, more than just taking snapshots for family albums that required only placing a finger to press the shutters.  Even to photographic enthusiasts, he had to convince them that photography could be a powerful medium not only to depict truth or beauty, but also to interpret the dynamic forces of life and the intricate relationships and perplexing patterns of changes in our physical and social environments.  It was and still is a futuristic vision for this art form.  During his life time, Yip had witnessed two World Wars and attendant deaths, devastation, and Man’s inhumanity to Man.  His eyes had seen countless instances of violence and human conflicts, the rise and fall of empires, Man’s conquest of space and the oceans, and political upheavals both at home and beyond.  He saw the atrocities of the Japanese Occupation, and in disgust, resigned from United Engineers during the Occupation period when he found the firm manufacturing arms for the Japanese military.  But he also saw good things too, and celebrated in joy when Singapore attained independence and nationhood.  His most famous picture “Rowing at Dawn” was created by him to depict this joy and the celebration of the dawn of a new day, new hopes, new beginning and a new life for all.

The photographer, himself, had publicly stated that he lived in awareness through these times and identified with the events of the time, including seeing on TV the first man walking on the moon.  He promptly took numerous pictures featuring moon as a theme and the rhythm of life as well as Sunrise and Sunset.

The events shaped a vision which shone through is works.  It was a vision of his life and times, ever changing, constantly challenging, sometimes menacing, perplexing or dazzling, but never completely crippling or annihilating.  To him and this shines through most of his works, there is always a rainbow or some light somehow, somewhere; there is always a higher being or higher order to give hope to those caught in the storms of life and the surging seas of change and perils.  Within his limitations, he began to map out the dynamic changes at play, starting taking snapshots of the same locations for paired comparisons over a prolonged period of time.  It was a deliberate undertaking for sure.  On 2nd January 1937, he took some pictures of the Victoria Concert Hall from the then General Post Office (now Fullerton Hotel).  He took the same scene from the same spot on 2nd January 1947.  Now one can see that this man with a vision was serious about his craft and undertaking.  Another example.  He took a few shots showing the panoramic view of Chinatown from a tall building in 1955 in January, and again he repeated the process in 1978.  This time, he submitted the two pictures to the Singapore Governments for an exhibition and was awarded a prize in April 1978.

In the words od Dr. Kevin Tan, the President of the Singapore Heritage Society, Yip carried the camera like a woman would carry a handbag – it was an indispensable part of his whole life.  He took pictures for record purposes, in as much as he did as an artistic endeavor.  His collection of thousands of prints form some of the most important and beautiful documents of the social history of Singapore, taken over the last sixty years.  In his vision, there was always an infusion of confidence and hope for the future.

It is this vision that enables the photographer as an artist to express in his unique way the feelings and perceptions of life and its manifold changes.  His photographs seem to depict the scene directly, and yet there is a multiplicity of meanings within each photograph, providing a wide range of interpretations.  Sometimes, he used the landscape as a natural force in shaping individual character.  In doing so, his landscape photographs were deliberately transformed into ethnoscapes.  It is a vision like this that brings out the true greatness of human endeavor.

Source:  A Poetic Vision – The Photography of Yip Cheong-Fun by Andrew W.K. Yip