Yip Cheong Fun - Seascape Photography

Seascape 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.