This portrait of a uniformed military officer, the Quartermaster of the Royal Artillery (a section of the British Army), was taken at the Chinese-run Pun Lun Studio. The name of the studio can be seen at the bottom left of the photo mount. Such studios set up by non-Western photographers were popular in the later decades of the 19th century. Well-to-do families and individuals, mostly wealthy businessmen or European traders and government officials, visited these studios to have their photographs taken. Such a trend could also be seen as a continuation of traditional portraiture as a privilege of the affluent. Photography was introduced in Singapore in the decades following the arrival of the Europeans in the region. Early photography in Singapore consisted primarily of images for documentation and mass dissemination. Advancements in technology such as the advent of albumen prints in the mid-19th century made photography a commercially viable sector in the Singapore economy.
