Marjorie Doggett’s Singapore : A Photographic Record (Hardcover)

An evocative interplay of photos and texts, this is a tribute to a pioneer woman photographer, Marjorie Doggett. Born in England, Doggett was a self-taught photographer. She had arrived in Singapore in early 1947, a city she would call home until her death. Starting in the early ’50s, camera in hand, she captured the cityscape of Singapore for posterity. In 1957, she published the pioneering collection Characters of Light. It was the first photo book to fully portray Singapore’s urban setting and architecture. And it was the first local photographic book by a woman.

Marjorie Doggett’s Singapore features many of Doggett’s unpublished photographs alongside newly restored images from Characters of Light. Accompanying these photos are Edward Stokes’s historical and personal texts. Together, the photos and narrative offer an entirely new presentation of Singapore, through the prism of Doggett’s life, inspiration, and methods. It is a fitting tribute to a woman whose talents contributed significantly to the preservation of Singapore’s historic architecture.