This picture of a deserted Kuala Lumpur street in May 1969 after the outbreak of internecine racial strife brings back searing memories of the blackest mark in Malaysian history. The photograph was taken by Sultan Ismail Nasiruddin Shah, who was the 4th Yang diPertuan Agong (Sept 21, 1965 to Sept 21, 1970). Sultan Ismail (an avid photographer since the 1930s) went around taking photographs of the city, with only a small escort. When the prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman came to know about this, he insisted Sultan Ismail to stay inside the Istana Negara precincts, for better security. “My grandfather had erstwhile chose to stay in the kampung-like setting of Istana Terengganu at 34, Jalan Kia Peng and commute to Istana Negara on a daily basis,” said Raja Ihsan, the grandson of Sultan Ismail. He recalled that he was nine years old then, and May 14 was to be his birthday party at Istana Negara, but his grandfather had used up all the films in the camera shooting an ‘empty’ Kuala Lumpur instead. The original photographs in gelatin silver prints on fibre-based photographic paper were in limited edition of 5.