rather by merging the two. The Photograph In the early 1930s, while continuing to give piano recitals, Lionel Wendt turned to what became his great passion, photography. In 1934, jointly with Bernard G. Thornley and P.J.C. Durrant, Wendt revived the Amateur Photographic Society of Ceylon, founded by his father and which was then renamed the Photographic Society of Ceylon. He took part in many exhibitions in Ceylon between 1935 and 1944. His first solo exhibition took place in 1938 at the Camera Club in London, at the invitation of Ernst Leitz, the inventor and manufacturer of the Leica. Wendt's photographs bear witness to the culture of his country. While the male body is his favourite theme, he also deals with landscapes, everyday life, architecture, archaeology... He reconciles knowledge and interest in modern artistic trends (Magritte, Man Ray, Chirico...) with a desire to represent traditional Ceylonese life. His fertile imagination uses a multitude of techniques: photomontage, photo-collage, solarization, photograms... Song of Ceylon In 1934, the British director Basil Wright associated Wendt with the development of his documentary Song of Ceylon. Described by Wright as one of the six best photographers in the world, Wendt was not only the narrator of the film; his eye as a photographer and his in-depth knowledge of the country and its culture were an essential contribution to what was considered a major documentary. In an interview published in 1949 in Mosquito (the magazine for Ceylonese students in England), Basil Wright paid tribute to Lionel Wendt:Without him [L. Wendt], I don't think Song of Ceylon could have been what it is. For here was a man who knew Ceylon as few men did, and he was in touch with the avant-garde cinema of those days and he knew what the documentary people were doing. As a matter of fact, the only two people I met in Ceylon who knew anything about films then were Wendt and George Keyt.The collaboration between Wendt and Wright continued after the shooting of Song of Ceylon, with the photographer staying in London several times to become Wright's assistant in the company he had founded. Wendt was the first Ceylonese to establish a relationship between photography and film when the latter developed on the island during the 1930s. Patron of the arts Lionel Wendt and George Keyt play a leading role in the promotion of Kandyan dance. They act as true patrons of