Phillip Oliver Hobson, Photograph of Australian serviceman checking identity papers at gates of a new village in Kuala Kangsar area, 1956. Australian War Memorial (HOB/56/0787/MC). Public domain.
Resettling the Colonial Lens: Photography and the (Re)Making of Malaysia’s New Villages
About the project
Photography was a key medium through which the British colonial state sought to document the Malayan Emergency (1948–60). This was particularly so for resettlement. Under this counterinsurgency scheme, almost half a million rural residents of colonial Malaya, most of them of Chinese ancestry, were forcibly moved into hundreds of resettlement camps – later re-labelled ‘new villages’ (NVs) – in an attempt to undermine support for the Malayan Communist Party (MCP).
However, resettlement in late-colonial Malaya has been largely overlooked in the now vast critical literature on the relationship between photography and colonialism. Concurrently, photography has been underemphasised in many ‘post-revisionist’ studies of the Malayan Emergency, even though the collection and reproduction of colonial-era images, and the emergence of new photographic practices, are key components of community-led re-assessments of resettlement in Malaysia today.
Resettling the Colonial Lens is a multidisciplinary and transnational project which aims to fill these gaps in the literature by asking the following core research question: what role has photography as a medium played in documenting, critiquing and re-writing the history of resettlement in late-colonial Malaya?
Objectives
The core objectives of the project are to:
1. Study the production and circulation of photography during the process of resettlement (thereby uncovering the role played by Malay(si)ans who worked in the 1950s as official, commercial and/or amateur photographers);
2. Collect, evaluate and make accessible the large body of photography that was produced to document, promote and/or undermine resettlement;
3. Critically examine the diverse ways in which people in Malay(si)a have distributed, consumed and interpreted photographs of the new villages;
4. Understand how new photographic practices (e.g. the collection of photographs by institutions and private collectors; the re-use of ‘official’ photographs in new contexts, etc.) have emerged as a means through which local communities are confronting histories of resettlement in Malaysia today.
The four work packages
The Project includes four distinct but overlapping work packages (WPs):
Histories of Resettlement Photography (WP1)
WP1 (Histories of Resettlement Photography) aims to examine the ways in which a multitude of individuals and institutions, including British government bodies, colonial authorities, commercial and amateur photographers in Malaya, and individuals involved in the resettlement process documented – and in some cases resisted – resettlement via photography.
Decolonising the Photographic Archive (WP2)
WP2 (Decolonising the Photographic Archive) involves the building of an OA Database which will include images of historical resettlement photography, including images not just from UK-based IROs, but also those collected in Southeast Asia.
The Afterlives of Resettlement Photography (WP3)
WP3 (The Afterlives of Resettlement Photography) aims to document the ‘afterlives’ of colonial photographic images as well as new photographic practices in Malaysia that are linking the past with the present, and entrenching history with ever-shifting contemporary lives – and, importantly, imagined realities.
Visualising the New Villages (WP4)
WP4 (Visualising the New Villages) aims to map the ways in which photography and photographic practices are being used today in new village communities as a means of both re-visiting the history of resettlement and re-imagining the new villages.
Additional information
Blog
Project funding and timeline
"Resettling the Colonial Lens" (Grant ID: AH/Z507349/1) is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to the value of over 1.1 million GBP for 3 years from January 2025 onwards.