The photographs of George Aspinall, who was captured and put to slave labour during World War II, helping to build the Thai/Burma railway. Aspinall managed to secretly photograph his life under the Japanese, making this collection a scarce look at POW life and activities in Malaya and Southeast Asia.
From the Introduction:
The shadowy and evocative series of photographs taken by George Aspinall in Singapore, Malaya and Thailand from 1942 to 1942 is the most comprehensive photographic record obtained by an Australian prisoner-of-war of the Japanese. The photographs survived not only because of the skill and daring displayed by the teenage boy who took them, but because George Aspinall knew that, unless he processed his films, they would be destroyed by the hot-house humidity of the tropical climate. Indeed the ingenuity and tenacity he displayed to obtain film stock and chemicals to process chemicals to process his negatives form some of the most intriguing elements of the story of the Aspinall photographs.
