Documenting my love for the neighbourhood town centres of Singapore and their laidback, unpretentious beauty, as well as their sense of vibrant community.
This is where and how Singaporeans live.
I'm working on a photo project to photograph at least 100 people who were born in the year 1986. I myself turned 30 this year (2016). I began thinking about how the rest of my peers were doing in life. Where are they now? What has life taught them? Are they happy? Do they still dream?
1986 sounds arbitrary, but I hope that this portrait project can capture some of the spirit of my generation and allow people to catch a glimpse of the challenges, the triumphs, the pathos, and the little joys of this small group of people.
One day we will all be gone, but this will be a record of where we were at a certain point in our lives.
Portraits and interviews coming up soon.
The idea for this portrait project came about when I realized how far away I was from the people I admire. Then I remembered that I have a camera, and that with a camera one always has the perfect excuse to get closer, to walk into lives, to achieve a form of intimacy that is usually unattainable. I hope this photo project will eventually be a record of some of these moments spent with these wonderful, super-talented people.
Here's some highlights.
See the full project website here.
Where I go to find myself,
my true self.
Rooms are where most things happen: violence, tenderness, confessions, promises, death. But rooms, at the same time, are more than just an environment, a stage set. Rooms are incubators of meaning, and that is mostly because of what they tell us about you. The way you arrange your tables or decorate your wall. The color of your sheets. The hue of your table. The angle at which light enters your room.
So it's all about the meaning. Which is why you buy only certain books and place these certain books on certain shelves. It's because you want to create meaning.
What is meaning, you ask, and I say, look at yourself. You are meaning. Every little thing that you do or own or say, that is you, and at the same time that is the meaning of everything.
That's why God or A Great Thinking Machine or The Random Universe put us here.
To understand that there is a significance in EVERYTHING.
That's all I am trying to say tonight.
Polaroids are instant poetry.
May every instant last forever.
"If you ask me what influence I have received from names like, for example, Bresson, Antonioni, Bergman, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi…I must say none. I have no desire to imitate them. Because it would be impossible to do so, and more, if my goal was the imitation of great directors, I would be distancing myself from the true goal of cinema, since the main goal of any kind of art is to find a personal means of expression, a language with which to express what’s inside of you. Therefore, the influence that these directors, that I adore, have on me, lies in the fact that I find myself in the pleasant company of movie people, people I am comfortable with." - Andrei Tarkovsky
