PICTURING CEYLON: RESEARCHING PHOTOGRAPHS IN SRI LANKA

It was love at first sight when I discovered Dr. Helga Wall-Apelt’s collection of late nineteenth century photographs of Asia, part of her promised gift to the Ringling Museum. But where were they taken?

I was able to determine that nearly 300 of the 750 photos were from Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. My continued fascination resulted in a grant from the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies to travel to Sri Lanka to research photographs. I wasn’t sure what I’d find when I got to Colombo, the country’s major city. Visions of snake charmers and “devil dancers,” derived from the photos, were very soon replaced by the reality of skyscrapers and sophistication.

Everyone I encountered was helpful. Plâté & Co., Ltd, a business that has produced photographs since 1890, let me investigate its holdings, even providing a desk where I could work in their photography department. While there, I looked up at the wall above my head, and recognized a photo in the Wall-Apelt Collection that I hadn’t even realized had been taken in Ceylon! The world’s foremost authority on Ceylon photography invited me to his home and regaled me with anecdotes about sites featured in the Wall-Apelt photographs. Appointments at the Department of Archaeology, the National Museum, the National Archives and discussions with local experts also expanded my knowledge.

Though Sri Lanka treasures its photographic heritage, the weather in Colombo resembles Sarasota’s, and the photographs I saw there were kept without air conditioning or humidity control, and without proper archival storage boxes, which must be imported and thus are difficult to obtain. Fortunately, the Wall-Apelt photographs are kept under conditions which will ensure their preservation for future exhibitions, and for further research and scholarship.

These two photographs were taken in Kandy, the last independent kingdom in Ceylon’s central hill country. The building, the Temple of the Tooth, is one of the holiest places in the country because it contains what is believed to be the tooth of the Buddha. The local chieftains are dressed in their formal attire. Scholars disagree about the original source of these outfits that signal both rank and the importance of the occasion.