Yip Cheong Fun was perhaps Singapore’s best-known photographer. Admired for his seascape photography, it was his documentary photographs of Singapore that first won him fame. Today, his body of creative work remains an important and visually striking record of Singapore’s social and cultural history. In 1980, Yip was named as one of ten Honorary Outstanding Photographers of the Century by the Photographic Society of New York, USA. In 1984, Yip received the Cultural Medallion for his contributions to photography in Singapore.

Born in Hong Kong in 1903, Yip was brought to Singapore when he was only seven months old. Four years later, his father passed away, and Yip was sent back to China to be cared for by his relatives while his mother remained in Singapore to support the family. In 1913, Yip returned to Singapore to join his mother after his neighbours in China realised he was neglected at home.

Back in Singapore, a young Yip helped out in his mother’s grocery shop, taking charge of the photocopying machine in the shop and helping to make copies for customers who brought in books on all kinds of subjects. Being an inquisitive young boy, Ying would make copies for himself too when he found anything interesting to him, and this allowed him to read widely. This thirst for knowledge would come to inform Yip’s photography greatly later in life.

In his early teens, Yip began his interest in photography when he acquired a Brownie camera that he would use to record the things he saw. However, he was more interested in music then, and went on to play the yangqin (Chinese hammered dulcimer) in the Chinese orchestra of the Tamfa Club, and the flute and violin in his free time. This changed when he made friends with a few professional photographers in the Tamfa Club.

Yip saved the money he got from working as an apprentice mechanic at an engineering firm and bought his first professional camera, a Rolleiflex, in 1936. He started taking a serious interest in photography and experimented with his camera in his free time—going on photography trips to Johor, Malaysia, with his Tamfa Club friends—while he worked as a technical supervisor at United Engineers. During this time, Yip took an interest in portrait photography and was influenced by pioneering Japanese photographers Kusakabe Kimbei, Shimooka Renjo, and Uchida Kuichi.

In 1942, Yip resigned from his job and opened his own engineering workshop. He also built his own photographic darkroom at the back of his house where he would experiment with his film prints. His photographic experiments lasted until the Japanese Occupation when his camera was taken away as the Japanese military did not allow the ownership of cameras. After World War II ended, Yip once again continued his photographic pursuits.

In 1948, renowned photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson visited Singapore and went on photography trips with Yip to Chinatown and the Singapore River to capture street scenes and images of the death houses in Chinatown. Yip’s shared Cartier-Bresson’s passion for capturing meaningful candid moments and would come to be influenced by Cartier-Bresson’s work. With his camera in hand everywhere he went, Yip created a style that would capture and document the changing face of Singapore across the decades.

Yip pursued his passion whole-heartedly, experimenting endlessly and honing his self-taught skills over the years. His talents received official recognition for the first time in 1952 when he submitted prints of Rowing at Dawn to international salons and competitions, earning himself top prizes and exhibition showings in over 80 countries. Rowing at Dawn—a photograph Yip created in celebration of Singapore’s independence from colonialism—would come to be his most recognised photograph.

Yip is noted for his humanistic understanding of his surroundings and approach to photography as manifested in his depictions of harbours, plantations and kampongs—these photographs showing the cultural landscape of a pre-urbanised Singapore and the physical and social impact of urbanisation. In particular, he took detailed pictures of every aspect of life in Chinatown. He is also known for his sensitive child portraiture and his hallmark seascape works, which consist of shimmering lights and reflections, and the fishermen and Chinese junks for which he is best known internationally.

Yip has had many notable disciples and taught for decades at both the Photographic Society of Singapore—where he was vice-president from 1966 to 1974—and at the Kreta Ayer Camera Club, playing an active role in inspiring and guiding many aspiring photographers. His influence reached beyond students of photography to people who were interested in the preservation of Singapore’s memory of the past. Some of these included former Deputy Prime Minister S. Rajaratnam and Chief Architect of the Housing and Development Board Tony Tan, both of whom would visit Yip regularly at his Kreta Ayer home.

In 1972, Yip was conferred the Honorary Excellence Distinction by the Fédération Internationale de l'Art Photographique, an honour he would received again 11 years later. In 1980, he was named as one of ten Honorary Outstanding Photographers of the Century by the Photographic Society of New York, USA. In 1984, Yip received the Cultural Medallion for his contributions to photography in Singapore.

On 16 Sep 1989, after a sixth trip to the Chinese Gardens to take pictures of the Lantern Festival celebrations, Yip collapsed at midnight while on his way back home. Yip passed away at the age of 86.

Today, Yip’s legacy of photographic work lives on as one of the most striking and important records of Singapore’s social and cultural history. In 2006, a book of Yip’s photographs, An Ingenious Reverie: The Photography of Yip Cheong, was published with an accompanying exhibition of his work. In 2009, Yip’s son, Andrew, published A Poetic Vision: The Photography of Yip Cheong Fun.