Rumah Abu : Death and the Photographic Medium in Straits Chinese Ancestral Halls

This article seeks to establish ancestral photographs as objects of worship and examines the relationship between death and the photographic medium in Straits Chinese ancestral halls, also known as rumah abu , in the former British colonies of Singapore, Malacca, and Penang. Various scholars have argued for a conceptual link between photography and death, but the case for diasporic communities such as the Straits Chinese have been under-studied and rarely discussed in meta-physical terms. Portraits of Straits Chinese matriarchs and patriarchs are commissioned as not merely images of visual commemoration, but also objects for physical reverence, sites to which descendants could feel geographically closer to their forebears. Objecthood in photography refers to death in the literal sense: the photograph structures a tangible space where spiritual, temporal, and cosmopolitan worlds could converge and meet. Ancestral photographs serve as points of reference for chia abu (to ‘invite’ the ancestors) and piara abu (to ‘upkeep’ the ancestral shrine) on special occasions such as death anniversaries; where the image performs the earthly representation of a living identity, negotiating traditional Chinese social order anew in southern shores. The photographic object, when ceremonially placed next to food offerings, processional music, and incense, augments the image of the dead with a presence that is bound ever more intimately to mortal space and time. Elevated as a ‘participant’ of the ritual, the ancestral portrait transforms into a social actor inasmuch as it is entangled in a web of material practices. Rather than merely a stage-setter for physical acts of filial piety, the photograph is also integral to it.