The various facades of the studio in the 1960s and 1970s. Bottom left: Firecrackers were used to celebrate the 9th anniversary of the studio.

The busiest time every year at the studio was always immediately after the Chinese New Year celebration, when an increase in photo print requests meant working into the wee hours at the photo studio for the Keuk family. After the doors closed at 9pm, Gin Bok would enter the dark room to develop films and prints. The dark room is perpetually humid. And with chemical solutions and water running continuously, Angela worried for her father’s rheumatism. His fingers were stained brown from the chemical solutions, which are mixtures of powder formula and water of right proportions. Films and prints are meticulously soaked in these solutions, before running through with clear water.

Angela remembered him to be an extremely hardworking father, who would work long hours to provide for his family of six. Despite his busy schedule, Gin Bok insisted driving the children to their school. There were times when he was delayed in the studio, which meant teary eyes for the children who had to wait patiently at the school gates for their father to fetch them.

Kuet Gin Bok in his studio (left) and repairing a studio spot light. Top right: An old envelope for the photographs.

Views of Changi Road from the studio in the 1960s.

Flooding in the studio.

Gin Bok voluntarily took photos for the neighbours and friends, including the kacang putih seller, who sells Indian snacks typically made of nuts and spices. He was well-liked by his customers due to his photography skills and eloquence, and thus the studio was the meeting point of friends and relatives.

“Life was simpler,” said Angela of the good memories growing up at the photo studio. Floods were common and water would overflow into the shop space. The family would prop the equipment up on tables and stilts to keep them dry. Together with her elder sister and two younger brothers, she remembered each day filled with tasks with for the family business, like drying the photos in a giant air dryer and cutting the photo borders away to the correct sizes. The studio closes on Fridays.

The Kuet siblings drying the prints.

Angela says of her childhood growing up with her siblings, “We were so fortunate that my father used to take us out for activities on Fridays or school holidays. We went swimming at the Changi seaside, visited and took photos at popular sites like the Queen Elizabeth Walk, Botanic Gardens, Fort Canning Hill, National Theatre,Van Kleef Aquarium, Mount Faber and Katong Park. We also visited our maternal grandmother at her coffee shop. Sometimes after the studio closed at 9pm, we would follow my father to send some photos for framing, colouring (for the black and white photos) or to send the clients’ cameras for repair.”

Top and bottom left: Changi Beach and Golden Palace Holiday Resort (金宫水上游乐场). Right: Kallang Park

Left: Ocean Park Hotel at East Coast Road. Right: Tan Kim Seng fountain at the Esplanade Park.

Queen Elizabeth Walk

Before digital ‘photoshop’, workers used sharpened lead to edit films and touch up prints using manual techniques. There were also times when newly weds would form long queues outside the photo studio for their wedding portraits to be taken. Photographs were almost always of happy occasions.

After retiring his photo studio business in 1987, Gin Bok turned to chinese calligraphy, a form of art he had been practising in the 1980s. Impressed and awed by his beautiful calligraphy, his studio clients would ask for his work, in forms of festive couplets and even writing requests.

Kuet Gin Bok, his relatives and friend visiting the Tiger Balm Gardens in 1952.

Gin Bok passed away in May 2014. He had left behind a huge collection of diaries which he had been writing continuously over his lifetime. Writings, like photographs, are moments captured of a certain past. In a way, that moment has ‘died’ because it does not belong to the present. The act of reading, or looking at these photographs however, transports the viewer back to these times which are considered important to the writer or photographer. For a moment, albeit temporarily, the viewer re-lives in that moment and he/she gained an experience and understanding why that moment in time is so important to the writer/photographer. It might take a while for Angela before she has the courage to read and re-live those diaries her father left behind. When she did, she will realise that they are reminders of how her father talks, moves and thinks. These moments are constantly living and it is an entry to his understanding of the world.

The shop of ‘New City Photo Studio’ is currently an eatery specialising in black chicken tonic soup, owned by an old neighbour who knew the Kuet family for a long time while working nearby the shop as a stall assistant. Angela’s daughter is now a photographer, whose interest started after receiving her grandfather’s Leica camera on one of her birthdays.

2012 photo taken at the site of the former studio, showing Mr. Kuet and his wife together with the owner of the current shop.

All photo credits to Angela Kuet and Kuet Gin Bok.
Written and edited by Tan Wei Keong

Mdm Sisilia Tan and company posing for a picture by the sculpture found in Toa Payoh Town Park with the estate in the backdrop. Photo: Sisilia Tan

Also located here is the headquarters of our nation’s Housing Development Board (HDB).  Situating the headquarters here is extremely apt for being the first town to be built ground-up by the board in 1968. With a neighbourhood population of close to 116,000 people, it is not a surprise that the town centre will always be crowded with people, especially during the evenings and weekends.

Through chatting with the local residents, we discovered the urban legends and quaint histories of this neighbourhood.

1. Urban legend goes that there was an immutable “Tree God” which fell in a storm in September last year.

Every morning, the SG Snaps team strolled past the site where the “Tree God” used to be – on the way from the train station to the community library. We were told about the lightning strike that brought down the tree said to be over 100 years old. It is with this curiosity that we searched for the site to pay tributes.

Upon quizzing a few of the shop owners in the vicinity, we were directed to a tightly barricaded site that seemed dilapidated and uncared for. The emptiness of the space was a huge departure from our imagination of the tree with majestic bark and extensive branches that shaded the temple that was beneath it.

A photo from the 1970s of the sacred tree and its temple at Toa Payoh Central. Photo: National Archives of Singapore, Source: Singapore Press Holdings

The site did exude a mystical charm which was even more resonant when we learned of the strange occurrences when the new town was constructed in 1965: The bulldozers that were tasked to flatten the area malfunctioned when they approached the tree. Workers who tried to fell the tree had also died mysteriously. The town planners then had to alter the layout of the shop houses to accommodate the tree in the centre. Isn’t it interesting how our urban development can be shaped by mysticism and superstition?

2. Toa Payoh Public Library was one of the earliest full-time library to open after Queenstown.

The location, prior to the opening of the library, was the Games Village which housed athletes for the 7^th South East Asian Peninsula Games. It was the first regional sporting event ever held in the country in 1973.

A portrait at the fountain in front of Toa Payoh Community Library. Photo: Chan Lee Shan

Before the amphitheatre in the front of the library was built, there was a huge water fountain where many of the residents gathered for photographs.

The SG Snaps team (from left) Gracie, Stacy and Wei Keong at the cozy booth on the second floor of Toa Payoh Community Library. Photo: SG Snaps

Toa Payoh Community Library has got to be one of our favourite libraries visited. The library was streaming continuously with visitors over the weekend. Besides being a conducive air-conditioned haven for our tired volunteers to catch their breaths, the library staff there were simply endearing. Uncle Sunny is one of them, along with the counter staff who would climb up and down the stairs assisting our requests. Huiyi and Shao, from the Arts and Culture team of the National Library Board, were the ones who made our 3-weeks residence at the library possible. We missed the friendly cleaning aunties whom we grew close to and felt so sorry when we had to leave for another library.

3. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II visited the flats in Toa Payoh twice in 1972 & 2006.

Ask any long-staying resident for a historical anecdote of Toa Payoh and they will definitely mention the visit of Queen Elizabeth II. The lucky then-boy-now-man visited by the Queen in 1972 is Mr Jerome Lim, writer of the blog ‘The Long Winding Road’ which reminiscent intimately the personal histories of growing-up in Singapore.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on the rooftop of Toa Payoh’s VIP Flat at Blk 53 Lorong 5, during her visit in 1972. Photo: www.toapayoh.com

The Queen had visited Mr Lim’s 3-room flat – a VIP Flat with a rooftop viewing gallery, which sounds like the Pinnacle@Duxton of the 1970s. She returned to the estate 34 years later in 2006 during her Diamond Jubilee tour of the world. There must be a certain nostalgia and pride that our country holds for our history of being colonised.

 4. How can we not possibly mention? The Dragon Playground, of course.

Walking along the long ‘body’ of the Dragon. Photo: Seow Shin Horng

I suppose, most heritage buffs in Singapore would know of the Dragon Playground along Lorong 6. The playground has become so iconic that it has inspired more replicas and reflections than the Merlion in the last 2 years.

Digging sand with daddy at the Pelican Playground. Photo: Seow Shin Horng

The Dove Playground. Photo: Seow Shin Horng

The Dragon Playground was part of a series of animal-inspired playground designed by the HDB in the 1970s. Other motifs include the Pelican, Dove and Elephant etc. In the collection of photographs received from the public, there were many cute kids portraits taken at these playgrounds. It is no doubt that these playgrounds have a prominent place in the childhood memories of Singaporeans who grew up during that era. Though there is another dragon playground in Ang Mo Kio, it is the one in Toa Payoh that retains the sand pit. A sand-filled playground was a common structure in most neighbourhoods, before boring rubber matting replaced the sand. What’s the fun if you can’t throw sand into the eyes of your enemy/crush ?

5. Toa Payoh used to be a farmland.

Part of the old Toa Payoh came alive when we spent an afternoon with Mdm Lim Mui Tiang, a resident of Toa Payoh. Mdm Lim recounted where the farms were, and how the HDB flat she’s living in was previously a hill flattened for the construction of the town. At the age of six, she helped at her family farm with the harvesting of vegetables and feeding of the poultry. By seven, she was bringing water from the well. Though we probably have heard similar stories from the earlier generations many times, it is hard to imagine the same kind of hardship for any children growing up in modern Singapore.

Aerial view of Toa Payoh taken in 1967. Photo: www.toapayoh.com

Toa Payoh has come a long way from its earliest histories of being made up of marshland and plantations. The name “Toa Payoh” means “big swamp”  in the Hokkien dialect. Walking down the concrete paths, watching people sip coffee from Starbucks, families pushing their children around in strollers and pedestrians burying their heads in their devices, it must be really astounding to witness such tremendous change within a single lifetime.

Written by Samantha Tio
Edited by Tan Wei Keong