LOKE Hong Seng, 71, is not a name recognisable to the art world. But a recently discovered treasure trove of street portraits he took from 1963 to 1985 might change that.

The avid shutterbug captured the spirit of Singapore in her early years in some 200 evocative black-and-white photographs. For many years, he kept the negatives but never printed them because the costs of doing so back then were prohibitive.

So he kept the negatives safe and dry among his most prized possessions until his son persuaded him to meet gallerist Audrey Yeo of Yeo's Workshop in Gillman Barracks. Impressed by what she saw, Ms Yeo asked Mr Loke to show his works in a solo exhibition and publish them in a book. The exhibition is now on at Yeo's Workshop while the first 500 copies of the book are nearly sold out.