In 1952, four Singapore artists—Chen Chong Swee, Chen Wen Hsi, Cheong Soo Pieng and Liu Kang—set off from Singapore to Bali as their intended destination for a seven-week field trip. They were seeking new cultural sources from Southeast Asia to enrich their artistic practices. Bali 1952 is published in conjunction with the exhibition, Untold stories: Four Singapore artists’ quest for inspiration in Bali organised by the National Library Board Singapore in 2025. Both the exhibition and this publication include a wealth of archival materials such as photographs, letters, sketches and artworks produced from this trip. This publication clarifies the misunderstanding that the artists arrived in Bali directly from Singapore. Instead, it meticulously traces their journey from Singapore to cities like Bandung, Malang and Surabaya in Java before reaching Bali using photographs that the author, Gretchen Liu recovered in Liu Kang's residence by chance in 2016. This precious archive was left untouched in his studio-study after his death in 2004. During the Covid lockdown, Liu opened the shoebox again and counted more than 1,000 photographs taken during the trip using a Rolleiflex f/3.5, which was purchased by Liu Kang just one day before he departed for the trip. These photographs formed the archival source from which this book and exhibition was based.

Besides Liu Kang, Chen Wen Hsi and Cheong Soo Pieng also brought along their cameras on the trip. This book has demonstrated how the photographs taken by Liu Kang are an important archival source for research, documenting the places that the artists visited and the artists they met. This is crucial to track the artist networks between Singapore and Indonesia in the 1950s, which also extends to Southeast Asia and even East Asia. In particular, the photographs documented artists like Luo Ming (1914–98) and Zhou Bichu (1903–95) in Bali revealing connections back to China. Luo Ming studied at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Art like Liu Kang founded by Liu Haisu while Zhou was already an established artist who lived in Indonesia for 10 years since 1949 before returning to China. Zhou visited Singapore in 1953 and was received by the Society of Chinese Artists and the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts together with Georgette Chen, further deepening the artist networks of the Chinese diasporic artists. The photographs make visible the intertwined networks of Chinese diasporic artists and the Indo-European artists in Bali like Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès (1880–1958), Theo Meier, Rudolf Bonnet, and Ries Mulder in Bandung connected into a larger constellation of artist networks in Southeast Asia and beyond.

While the photographs provide historical evidence of these artist networks, it was the letters from Liu Kang to his wife, Chen Jen Ping that embellished the photographs with accurate places, dates, and even detailed records about the emotions the four artists experienced, their responses to encounters with different cultures in Java and Bali, and even their difficulties dealing with immigration. While the photographs usually showed their smiles: it was the letters that revealed their anxieties as they were constantly improvising their travel arrangements, often depending on the generosity of both strangers and friends along the way. The meticulous research to annotate the photographs drawing information from the letters and oral interviews have opened new pathways for researchers to deepen their understanding of diasporic artist networks through largely unknown figures such as the artist Luo Ming and Tay Tian Song who was the President of the Society of Chinese Artists in 1952, as well as a close friend of the artist, Shui Tit Sing.

The most outstanding contribution of this book is its rigorous annotation of photographs taken by Liu Kang, and the inclusion of archival materials like letters, drawings, sketches and artworks to tell a compelling story of four Singapore artists and their adventure to reach Bali. Illustrated side by side in the book, the reader is alerted to the similarities between the photographs and sketches in terms of the choice of subject matter, composition and perspectives. These photographs are carefully composed by Liu Kang, capturing the elegant dance movements of Nii Pollock, wife of Le Mayeur, and his sharp observations of the Balinese going about their daily lives. At times, everyday spectacles like women gracefully carrying baskets on their heads, Satay hawkers manning their portable street stalls and rice harvesters wearing their straw hats working in the padi field reveal his sharp eye for everyday aesthetics as an artist. While some of his photographs bear artistic merit, it is clear that Liu Kang did not consider these photographs as artworks as he did not develop them as photographic works for display in exhibitions, and certainly did not sell them. What this book advances are the possibilities of using these photographs beyond mere documentation or record of the artists’ travels. Studying these travel photographs alongside his sketches that resonate in subject matter, composition and perspective with each other enables a better understanding of artistic processes. The photographs could have been taken before the sketches were made in-situ that eventually become preparatory studies for paintings. This has implications on how we reconsider these travel photographs, not only as documentation but also the possibility of performing the function of sketches for his paintings. One could also argue that the immediacy provided by photographs as a snapshot of the moment could shed light on why the artist chose a particular location, subject matter and angle to compose the sketch and subsequently the painting.

Bali 1952 does much more than tracing the journey of four artists to Bali through archives like photographs and letters. It reimagines the use of travel photographs as sketches, giving it a place in studying the process of artmaking. For cultural institutions, this book is a call for action. Gretchen Liu has shown the importance of these photographs for research and documentation, underlining the increasingly urgent need to recover, conserve and digitise these photographs, most of which usually reside with the artists or their families.