November 2009
1 post
The District 9 Antithesis
The class divide in Singapore is readily apparent to anyone who actually bothers to look for it (and one doesn’t have to even look very hard). While i would not venture so far as to say that this divide is one that akin to a large chasm, it is there, and it is here to stay.There is a startling dissonance between what the state portrays of Singapore as a glitzy (kitschy at times, even) island...
October 2009
6 posts
Objective / Subjectivity: A Problematique
With the proliferation of the camera as a tool for capturing scenes and images of the everyday, a critical question must be raised. The camera, as a tool, allows one to stop action and create images of how the photographer perceives and interact with his surrounding.Hence, one would assume, because the image created is a definite representative of a certain reality, it must be true and thus, in...
Reading:
PhotoBox (ISBN 9780500543849)
Avedon, Bresson, Leibovitz, Salgado, Erwitt and company all in one book. What’s there not to like?
Walker Evans
It is interesting how a collection of repetitive photographs, of people, caught unawares on film can be such a poigant reminder of Depression-era America. The subway in itself is a temporal setting, a non-space if you may. The subway as a...
Fragile Things: Mono
This time in black and white. I can’t seem to decide if i like the ones with colour more. hmm.
It’s interesting to see how photographing in black and white alters the way i look at objects. When i photograph in colour, the primary concern is well…colour. However, in black and white, one is forced to pay more attention and divert focus upon other concerns such as texture...
Eggleston.
‘I am at war with the Obvious’ - William Eggleston.
William Eggleston’s colour pictures of contemporary America and, essentially, Americana, have been hailed as the advent of colour photography. The beauty in his photographs is that he is able to portray drama, decay and neglect in mundane everyday objects. These pictures, while seemingly snap shot-ish (if ever there was such a...
Vanguard.
The camera is and will always be the great leveller.It is such in the sense that all anonymity, or any pretense that there is a smidgen of it, is far removed by the revealing eye of the lens and the photographer.
The social dynamism of interaction, or rather, what we assume is the social dynamism of interaction is fundamentally ignored by the intruding eye of the camera and it’s curious...
Fragile Things.
Life in the cracks.
The little things that go unnoticed, forgotten even, in the caphony of life. Quiet, unassuming and seemingly content just being alone.