Bidding to disrupt the dominance of Dutch monopolies in Southeast Asia, Britain established a trading post in Singapore in 1819 – a foothold that, by 1824, had formalised into full colonial rule. Just a year or so later, embryonic photographs would emerge in Europe for the first time. In the project of empire-building, extending well into the 20th century, this fledgling medium was to play an important supporting role. A tool with which to index and classify, photography could be mobilised to affirm the authority of the ruling powers over a distant underclass, as well as to return the colonisers’ exotic visions to European shores. Trained on the colonised, the camera could both produce and reinforce established hierarchies, often rendering subjects legible solely through the lens of service. In the expanse of the archive – where images, through time, become severed from the nuances of lived experience – anonymity is both commonplace and violent. It is here that Singaporean artist Sean Cham begins his project, prompted by an encounter with a late 19th century photograph, numbered ‘303,’ in the collections of the National Museum of Singapore. It depicts an unnamed Chinese servant, forever suspended in fixed relation to power, tending to the whims of a fair-skinned man. Produced in the studio of German photographer Gustav Richard Lambert, the image bears a blunt caption: ‘Chinese boy serving his master.’ For Cham, the encounter marked less a point of historical closure than an opening: a portal through which new possibilities might enter.

Later, while trawling the archives at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, Cham’s discovery of a second photograph heightened the intrigue. Marked ‘301,’ it depicted the same man, now alone, holding a tray of drinks before a painted backdrop. Whether the missing image in the sequence was lost, destroyed, or never produced, Cham’s series Rehearsal for 302 unfolds as a work of speculative fiction, staging possible iterations to fill the void between the two images. The artist’s own body becomes the primary vessel for this exercise, assuming the servant’s role to perform both the gestures and implied hierarchies of the original photographs. Inevitably, the performance also brings Cham’s position – as a Singaporean artist living in London – into subtle focus, carrying its own entanglements with the legacies of empire and migration.

SEAN CHAM is an artist and historian working across photography, performance, and spatial intervention. Through his research-based practice, he questions power structures, exploring the ways in which historical narratives are constructed and manipulated. Cham was a participating artist in the in the Guangzhou Image Triennial and commissioned by the Singapore Art Museum in 2025.

GEORGE H. KING is an independent writer and editor based in London. His work focuses on intersections between contemporary photography, culture and society. A graduate of Liberal Arts & Sciences from University College Utrecht, George previously worked as editor-in-chief of Unseen Magazine. Beyond editing publications for various cultural platforms (FUTURES; Nxt Museum), George regularly supports emerging artists in the development of their projects. His writing has featured in the likes of IMA Magazine, Trigger, Yet Magazine and the British Journal of Photography.