Gilles Massot (b. 1955) studied architecture and photography in Marseille, France. In 1981 he moved to Singapore to work in advertising. The 1980s saw him involved in seminal arts events, including the first Singapore Festival of Arts Fringe and the 1987 Ying Yang Festival. In the 1990s, travel editorial work done around Asia resulted in numerous exhibitions for which he used a wide range of mediums. In 2000, his focus turned to research with the 2003 book “Bintan, the phoenix of the Malay Archipelago”, followed by an MA-FA completed in 2006 with LASALLE, where he currently teaches. In 2007, he started the photo history course for ADM that led him to in-depth research on Jules Itier, the main finding of which was to identify Itier’s view of the Tian Hock Keng temple as the oldest extant photograph of Asia. He is a member of the artist collective The Artists Village.