online version of 2014 catalogue
We have uploaded a 2025 online version of the 2014 catalogue for Garden of the East.
Category Archives: asia-pacific
John Thomson: photographer
photographer, geographer and traveller
Uploaded pages on John Thomson (born 14 June 1837–died 29 September 1921).
This includes a slightly revised essay I wrote for an Peranakan Museum Singapore exhibition and publication in 2028/2019. My emphasis was on John Thomson’s experiences in Singapore and how this shaped his later photography career. Click here
Honouring Leo Haks
I have uploaded a set of pages honouring Leo Haks, a collector and researcher of Indonesian photography. It was his collection that the National Gallery of Australia purchased as the basis for new collections and subsequently the exhibition: Garden of the East. Click here for the link to the Leo Haks pages.
Picture Paradise: Asia Pacific photography
Asia Pacific photography research
I have uploaded a 2025 online presentation of the catalogue for the 2008 exhibition, Pacific Paradise, at the National Gallery of Australia. It was fun to revisit these images and to think on those times spent bringing these collections together. Click here.
Travel with Indonesian photography
South-East Asia photography research
I have revised and added to an essay that was previously published in 2022 on Indonesian photography. In revisiting this work I was reminded of Leo Haks, the wonderful collector who we now miss and who was so much at the centre of how this collection came together. I hope to honour him soon with an essay and special online page or two.
My essay on Indonesian photography is online — click here.
International Women’s Day 2025
IWD 2025 — searching for peace. The image above by Daisy Wu. In these troubles times, we need to be positive and seek peace and harmony. Caption for the photograph: All quiet on the western front, 1955. Click here for more
Oceania: From Melbourne to Papeete
Revisiting a 2019 entry to an exhibition catalogue
This piece was a difficult piece to write. The requirement was to survey 19th century photography across the Pacific in a few hundred words. Many hours were spent reducing the entry and making decisions on what to leave out — reluctantly! If I ever find the time I may revisit this and make it a much longer piece with all the extras inserted back in. Wishful thinking maybe? Here’s the original piece.
George Silk
The iconic 1942 New Guinea photograph
I have uploaded a piece on the iconic George Silk 1942 photograph of the Papuan carrier Raphael Oimbari assisting Private George Whittington. I have also included research “After The Photograph” using a selection of memorial sculptures that have been influenced by the Silk photograph. Click here for the online essays.
Thilly Weissenborn
photographer of former Dutch East Indies
Have uploaded information about this early 20th century woman photographer
with links to a special photo-web presentation/translation on a 1983 book originally published in Dutch. Have also included links to research on Thilly.
Click here.
Hélène Hoppenot
Following my research, collection acquisitions and exhibition on Southeast Asian photography while at the National Gallery of Australia, in 2014 I wrote a piece about Hélène Hoppenot and 1930s women modernist photographers in Southeast Asia. Till now this essay has been unpublished. It is now online — click here — more or less unchanged from the 2014 version with a few notes and links added.
Parting for Melbourne
Following our decision to move to Melbourne, we have packed up and cleaned out — and now have our home up for auction — this Saturday 4th November.
Click here for more on this.
camera chic
East West Chic
In 2017 The Asia Art Society of Australia (TAASA) hosted a seminar of East West Chic.
I presented a talk on Camera Chic based on a collection we had put together – with fun pictures from Asian studio portraiture. The collection highlighted the fusion of East and West evident in dress, accessories, and studio backdrops. Click here for more
Make sure you see the link to the powerpoint slides with loads of photographs to enjoy.
Parting with your art — library stories
A new upload to my blog about Parting With Your Art.
This time about a friend’s experience of parting with her library plus a tale from me about all those plastic folders. Click here.
Australian Pictorial Photography ~ Seeing The Light
Essay from Truth Beauty 2008
This essay was originally published in the 2008 catalogue for the Vancouver Art Gallery exhibition — click here.
Walter Woodbury
Entrepreneur, Inventor: Woodbury in Indonesia
I have uploaded a small essay I wrote in 2014 about Walter Woodbury in Indonesia. This essay was linked to the exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia — Garden of the East: photography in Indonesia 1850s-1940s. Click here for my essay online.
There’s also another small essay online that relates to a photograph — the one above — titled Serimpies, or dancing girls of the Sultano c.1858 . Click here for that essay.
For the list of my essays (being updated) click here
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An update August 2025: Have uploaded an online version of Garden of the East
Curatorland
Writing in the Rain, FX Harsono - Still from colour video 2011 Collection National Gallery of Australia
Following my leaving the National Gallery in September 2014, I was asked by the editor of the Journal of the Asian Arts Society Australia to write about my last decade at the gallery — the decade that saw the establishment of a survey collection of Asia-Pacific photography spanning from South Asia to the west coast of the Americas.
The new collection was largely based around major collections acquired from several major private collections of Asia-Pacific photography including one of some 5000 colonial-era Indonesian photographs.
Here’s that story — click here
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For the list of my other essays (being updated) click here
A quiet celebration here today
Member of the Order of Australia
I have many people to thank for their support over a career that I continue to enjoy.
Thai photography
https://www.facebook.com/theARTMUSEum.PaulCostigan/posts/635188293479667
Japanese images
https://www.facebook.com/theARTMUSEum.PaulCostigan/posts/530866183911879
Lee Fook Chee
https://www.facebook.com/theARTMUSEum.PaulCostigan/posts/529237530741411
TAP
Trans Asia Photography review
click here for the TAP site — or here for the Spring 2017 details — that includes a link to a review by me.
National Gallery Singapore
CHARTING THOUGHTS: ESSAYS ON ART IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
A new research book has been published by the National Gallery of Singapore. It contains essays on Southeast Asian art by 25 scholars.
I was given the honour by the NGS of being one the contributing scholars.
The book is available from the NGS shop and through their website — click here.
Dayanita Singh
Dayanita Singh, Museum of Machines
The MAST Foundation in Bologna is presenting for the first time in Italy a major solo exhibition of contemporary photographs by Dayanita Singh.
Wei Leng Tay—The Other Shore
Click on image for the exhibition details at China In The World (ANU)
National Gallery Singapore
click on image above for the story about this very successful new national gallery.
Photographs of 1930s China by Stanley O. Gregory
Out of Sight
Click on the image above for a link to the pdf of the article by Gael Newton previously published as one of the papers from a seminar held in Melbourne in 2012. Continue reading Out of Sight
Singapore International Photography Festival 2016
Open Call — Singapore International Photography Festival 2016 — click on graphic above
New Zealand photography at Te Papa
Click on the image above for an article about the exhibition, New Zealnd Photography Collected on at Te Papa in Wellington, NZ.
New Zealand photography
The Auckland Festival of photography — for news on exhibitions and more — click on the image.
national gallery singapore
Opening Celebrations announced
Starts 24 November. Complimentary entry for visitors from 24 Nov – 6 Dec 2015. Click on image for link to gallery website.
Singapore Photography
Loke Hong Seng at Yeo Workshops, Gillam Barracks Singapore till 6 Sept 2015
click on image for exhibition details
30 Asian Photographers
Photographers in Asia — click on image
Visual Arts Singapore
There’s an announcement online about a new art fair to be held in January at the same time as Art Stage Singapore, Click on the image for more on this.
Visual Arts Singapore
National Gallery Singapore: A story about doubts about whether an artwork is a fake. Click on the image for more.
Trans Asia Photography Review
Review: Ars Orientalis 43 (2013)
Gael Newton reviews the Spring 2015 issue — Volume 43 of Ars Orientalis, a peer-reviewed annual journal based on the Smithsonian Institution’s Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (F|S) collections of Asian Art and their related archives and research programs. Click on logo for the review.
Isabella Bird
Click on the image for a picture essay in The Guardian on Isabella Bird: pioneering photographer of life in 19th-century China.
Between – Picturing 1950–1960s Taiwan
Exhibition Notice
Between – Picturing 1950–1960s Taiwan
ANU Australian Centre on China in the World till 3 April 2015
The curatorial crypt
Steve McCurry — Sharbat Gula
A sad story indeed about the woman in the famous Steve McCurry/National Geographic photograph. The original photograph was a 1984 cover for National Geographic.
There’s a 2015 report that Sharbat Gula, the subject of the original photograph, is in trouble because she remains a refugee from Afghanistan, but was carrying a Pakistan identify card.
Please click on the image to the right for the link to the story.
The curatorial crypt
Singapore Lambert
The sale price of a Singapore photograph, by G R Lambert
Having retired from the National Gallery of Australia* and now working on Southeast Asian commissions as a consultant, I observed the sale of a recent ebay auction item, SINGAPORE dated 1900, Named China Man Inscribed Cabinet Photo by GR Lambert.
2014 Singapore International Photography Festival
Notice: 2014 Singapore Photography Festival
This festival has been a success in the past. This year’s program is looking even better.
Continue reading 2014 Singapore International Photography Festival