Coffee Plantation

Description

This photograph, taken in Singapore in the late 19th or early 20th century, is from the Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection at the Library of Congress. Frank G. Carpenter (1855-1924) was an American writer of books on travel and world geography whose works helped to popularize cultural anthropology and geography in the United States in the early years of the 20th century. Consisting of photographs taken and gathered by Carpenter and his daughter Frances (1890-1972) to illustrate his writings, the collection includes an estimated 16,800 photographs and 7,000 glass and film negatives. The photograph shows people at work picking coffee beans alongside irrigation ditches on a plantation in what was then the British colony of the Straits Settlements.

Last updated: January 8, 2018