A Poetic Vision and Photo-Poetry - The Photography of Yip Cheong Fun

About the Book

This publication offers an introduction to PhotoPoetry and gives a glimpse of the changing landscapes and lifestyles of Singapore. Both photography and poetry are powerful art forms to communicate emotions and ideas. Both use imagination to connect our conscious mind with our sub-conscious, allowing us to explore our inner self and the changes in us and around us. Both art forms create feeling or mood, and as modes of expression, they could be used to reveal the rich heritage of Singapore’s social history in a dramatic way. Through PhotoPoetry, the Author combines photography with poetry to create connections between the visual and verbal elements. It is about adding a new and deeper meaning and enabling multiple interpretations and the creation of a different emotional experience. It is a poetic vision and fusion.

In this publication, the narration is interactive PhotoPoetry through the best poems from the Anthology of Poetry of Andrew W.K. Yip. The photographs in this publication by famous photographer, Yip Cheong Fun, have been displayed in exhibitions all over the world. The photographer was a recipient of the Cultural Medallion in 1984 and named an Outstanding Photographer of the Century by the Photographic Society of New York in 1980. The citation of the NYPS stated that the honour was “...the World’s highest tribute to a photographer.”

This publication is new, but it is the culmination of the creative works of two persons, father and son, spanning almost a century. It involves photography taken as early as 1930, and as late as 2025. The pictures include black and white as well as color photographs taken by world renown photographer, Yip Cheong Fun, and some pictures taken by his son, as recent as 2025, including some poetry in 2026. By showing the pictures together and with narrative poetry of an accomplished poet, Andrew W.K. Yip, it becomes a new process of pairing off “the old and the new” and thus document the changes in lifestyles and our social environment over a certain period of time. Time is a dance or a flickering gesture of the mind. The adaptation of Photo-Poetry through having both the photograph and the narrative poem with the same name and title clearly demonstrates the creation of greater depth in our visual experience. We are then able to perceive how time changes things in our lives. The combination of Poetry and Photography, the pen and the camera, is a creative process that depicts time as a powerful force that shapes life, memory and human experience. It becomes a new visual experience that demands effort to understand fully the deeper meanings that may lie hidden in the images or the poems that are portrayed in a simple way. These are complex notions, but they are challenging to the alert minds. In this book, the Author has explored the concept of time. A stitch in time saves nine. Take time to enjoy both the poetry and pictures in this publication.

About the Author

The Poet is a psychologist and educationist. He was educated in Edinburgh, Malaysia, Singapore and in Pennsylvania, USA. Holder of a M.Ed., Dip. Ed-D in Education and Advanced Psychology and Bachelor of Arts Honours Degree, he held various top academic and professional appointments. He has worked as a psychologist in a Scottish clinic and headed the guidance and counselling departments in the Ministry of Education and the PR departments in the Police and the Singapore Armed Forces, Director of Nanyang University and the American College and Executive Vice-President of the International Schools and IBM Education Centre in Singapore. An army Major in the Singapore Artillery in his younger days, he became the Chief of the Education and Public Relations Department and Chief Education Officer of the Singapore Armed Forces and later joined the University administration as Director, after which he retired as a Property Developer.