25Hindu Penitent, Kataragama, Ceylon (1957)

Reg van Cuylenburg (1926–1988)

Silver gelatin vintage print

Collection The Estate of Reg van Cuylenburg

First exhibited: ‘The Jeweled Isle: Art from Sri Lanka’, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, United States of America, 2018

Reg Van Cuylenburg was trained as a photographer under the modernist pioneer Lionel Wendt (1900–1944). He is one of Wendt’s only known students to have continued practising photography, initially in Sri Lanka, and later in the USA and the UK. In the decade following Sri Lanka’s independence, Van Cuylenburg travelled widely across the country, extensively documenting the island’s landscapes, people and festivals. “His photographs present a certain post-colonial optimism, a revelling in the re-discovery of home and country,” writes Tushara Bindu Gude, Associate Curator, South and Southeast Asian Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Up until independence, images of Sri Lanka were largely framed through colonial eyes. Van Cuylenburg’s photographs provide a counterpoint to the colonial narratives, a journey of ‘re-discovery’ that continues in the work of many contemporary artists working today. What stands out in Van Cuylenburg’s photographs is an earnest attempt to document the island through its own terms of reference. Several closely observed photographs of Kataragama, a pilgrimage town sacred to Buddhist, Hindu and the indigenous Vedda communities make visible his awareness of the country’s complex religious histories and their rootedness in shamanistic practices.

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