For the very first time, photographs from 3D glass negatives taken by His Royal Highness Prince Purachatra Jayakara, Prince of Kambaengbejra, will finally reveal themselves to the world as they were meant to be seen. Prince Purachatra took these personal photographs more than a hundred years ago (between 1908 – 1921). Among other things they show Siamese people of varied tribes and ethnicities from North to South. The first head of State Railway, he encountered them as a pioneering train engineer building railways across the virgin landscape. He met the tribes of Indochina (Vietnam and Cambodia), then under French colonial rule; he experienced some cities in China under the British; with an enviable freedom now unimaginable, he travelled through the Arabian lands. These negatives preserved in the National Archive may be antiques, but the photographs appear vibrant and fresh. We are intrigued by their spell-binding power; we ask ourselves why we cannot look away.

General His Royal Highness Prince Purachatra Jayakara, Prince of Kambaengbejra, was King Chulalongkorn’s 35th son, born to Chao Chom Manda Wad. He graduated in mechanical and military engineering from England’s Trinity College, Cambridge. During Rama V’s reign in 1906 he was a Division Commander and Inspector General of Army Engineers. Under Rama VI in 1917 he was chief of the Royal Railway Department. Under Rama VII in 1926 he was minister of commerce and transport. In 1931 he became Privy Minister. He died in King Ananda’s reign, in 1936, in exile in Singapore, at the age of 55. The Chatrajaya royal lineage is descended from him.