This album is one of the two albums William Louis Abbott (1860-1936) donated to the Raffles Library and Museum. It contains photos taken from Abbott’s expedition in Southeast Asia from 1890 to 1910. Abbott’s photographic documentation style was influenced by an interest in anthropometry during his time. Non-European people then were seen as subjects to be studied, and this was reflected in Abbott’s photographs where he got the local ethnic community to pose against a plain backdrop where their front and side view of their torsos and heads were shot.