Author: eddietay

I am a poet and an educator. I have come to realise in recent years that the act of writing poetry has trained my mind to be always on the prowl for everyday moments that might be suitable material for my writing. Hence, I turn to photography in order to record some of these moments. I soon discover that the photographs I am taking, using film rangefinder cameras which are more discreet and hence suitable to the task at hand, are in the tradition of street photography. In search of poetry, I have become a street photographer. What can Hong Kong teach me about street photography, and what can street photography teach me about Hong Kong? This blog seeks to address that question.

How to Analyse and Appreciate Street Photography Without People

Posted on March 22, 2014April 30, 2014 by eddietay in Monochrome

I like the following passage by James Elkins:

Every field of vision is clotted with sexuality, desire, convention, anxiety, and boredom, and nothing is available for full, leisurely inspection. Seeing is also inconstant seeing, partial seeing, poor seeing, and not seeing, or to put it as strongly as possible … seeing involves and entails blindness; seeing is also blindness. (Elkins The Object Stares Back 95)

Even though everything is right in front of us, we see that we do not see.

Street photography is about the human condition.

When street photographs are devoid of people, we are reminded powerfully of what we do not see.

It’s the same as telling you not to think of pink elephants – the moment you hear the command, you can’t help but think of pink elephants.

The above scene is moulded by desire, and it calls out for a kind of associative thinking that is different from our everyday calculative, economically disciplined thinking.

It’s as if to say every day is a surrender of our selves.

Those in pain will know: there are so many ways to suffer, and in our suffering, many ways to call for help.

Monochrome photography eliminates colours that may be distracting.

Here, our attention is drawn to multiplicity and repetition.

What the above says to me: there are many shoes for sale. You can buy any pair or more than a pair.

But you could only walk in your own pair.

We’re asked to think in terms of symbols.

What does the electric meter symbolise?

For me, the photograph is asking the following questions: how much have we accomplished? Is there any one to keep track?

Where is the electricity meter of our days? Where is the electrician?

Is the photograph asking those questions, or am I the one asking?

Perhaps the photograph and I are one.

What’s the writing on the wall?

Translation: one, peace.

It’s up to you to fill in the blanks between those words.

Why would anyone put a sofa on the pavement? I asked this as I took this photograph.

I have been at this spot many times and it’s still here. On some days, it’s occupied.

On others, not.

An empty sofa is like a funeral of the self.

Whoever placed the chairs here is smart.

Things are different with two chairs.

There are possibilities here.

We build and dwell … and soon the evening is here.

We pack up the boxes of our days…

Will they be enough?

Am I enough?

Is it already time to move on?

Street Photography: An Imagined Community

Posted on March 19, 2014March 20, 2014 by eddietay in Colour

Social media and the internet in general are wonderful for those of us who are committed to somewhat specialised endeavours.

I’ve been reading the posts of quite a few people for a while now. Though I’ve never met them in person, I’ve been inspired by their examples and their work. You could sort of tell the kind of people they are by their posts.

Benedict Anderson uses the term “imagined community” to refer to a person’s sense of belonging to a group (he was talking about nationhood) even though he or she may never have met all its members. I know I may be presumptuous here, but I’d like to think these are members of my imagined street photography community.

In an ideal world, I’d really like to have a few rounds of beer with all of them at the same table. It’ll be an absolute blast.

Here are a few sites/people I’m constantly checking out.

Eric Kim

Eric bares his soul in quite a few of his posts. Here, he wrote about street photography and social media. Here, he wrote about GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome), a common affliction for photographers. And my favourite post here is about what drives him and how he’s seeking to follow his passion and at the same time remain realistic about bread and butter issues.

Ming Thein

This guy is a hyper-achiever. Put together an MBA ethos with a photographer’s sensibility and this is who you’ll get. [Edit: Ming Thein says he doesn’t have an MBA (see comments below) but it’s undeniable that he really is very focused, committed and productive.] He’s not a street photographer per se but I do admire his mastery of photography techniques. In two years, he wrote 780 articles, had 9.5 million visitors, and received 36 000 comments! Check out his post on printing here.

Shoot Tokyo

Dave is another photographer with an MBA ethos. [Edit: Dave says he doesn’t have an MBA (see comment below) but it’s undeniable that he really is very focused, committed and productive.] I think he’s a high-level business executive or a business owner. He’s a flaneur in Tokyo. And check out his Leicas! Yes, Leicas as in plural! Check out his wonderful prints for sale here.

Thomas Leuthard

He’s offering free street photography ebooks! I like his article here on why street photographers do what we do. His Flickr site is more extensive.

Yanidel Street Photography

He’s on a street photography and life project that will take him around the world in eighty weeks, from Paris to Switzerland and then to Spain, Portugal, London, Turkey, Mexico, Cuba, and so on (you could see his itinerary here.) This article helped me realise that I tend to favour a certain style of street photography, and is useful in helping me vary my way of doing things once in a while. This article addresses the central existential question every street photographer must ask of himself or herself: 35mm or 50mm?

Invisible Photographer Asia

This is the go-to place for street and documentary photographers based in Asia. You’ll get lots of street cred if your work has been featured here. (One day, one day I’ll make it.) Kudos to Kevin Lee, the person who started it all.

Photoethnography.com

Click the “equipment” link and you’ll find tons of information on film cameras. Thanks to this site, I decided on a Yashica GX so as to learn to handle aperture priority, and on a Canonet QL17 G III to handle shutter priority and manual. I’ve been using the previous two cameras for a couple of months before finally buying a Leica M6. Karen Nakamura is an ethnographer by profession. While the site, as far as I know, is no longer being updated, it is the go-to place to learn about film cameras you could use for visual ethnography, a discipline closely affiliated to street photography.

Japan Camera Hunter

While I’ve never bought anything from Bellamy Hunt before, others have done so. See here (Eric’s video) and here (about the Contax T3 that Dave, the Shoot Tokyo guy, bought from Bellamy ). This guy definitely has street cred. His three articles here, here and here on where to buy film photography gear in Hong Kong is my go-to guide. I basically spent a few happy weekends checking out some of these places. I definitely owe this guy a few beers.

These are a few sites/people who are exploring the use of social media alongside street photography. In some cases, it’s related to their day jobs. In a few other instances, you could say street photography is part of a portfolio of various other endeavours.

In the age of social media, it’s important to embrace the “no one knows anything” ethos. The phrase was used by William Goldman in relation to Hollywood, to describe how, in the end, there is no such thing as a fixed formula to doing things and even “experts” are constantly surprised by unanticipated surprises in the fields of their own supposed expertise.

I’m beginning to think that in the end, there are no experts, and that it is only committed and thoughtful practitioners who will thrive. The only thing to do is to open ourselves to the possibilities of positive black swans (a phrase coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, whose books I return to again and again).

These people inspire me with what they do and I wish them all the best.

At my end, I’m working on a poetry plus street photography manuscript and am planning to teach a new undergraduate course on photography, writing and social media hopefully in the next academic year. I’m taking baby steps here compared to these people.

P.S. Have I missed anyone? I know the list is definitely not exhaustive and skewed in terms of gender. Would be grateful if anyone could could fill in the gaps.

Susan Sontag vs John Berger

Posted on March 15, 2014March 15, 2014 by eddietay in About Singapore, Monochrome

I am presenting a paper on photography and literature at an academic seminar next Monday at Hong Kong Baptist University, and this is part of what I am going to say:

This is what Susan Sontag says about photography:

like many mass art form, photography is not practiced by most people as an art. It is mainly a social rite, a defense against anxiety, and a tool of power … Photographs document sequences of consumption carried on outside the view of family, friends and neighbors … Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs. (On Photography)

I am thinking of people I know who like to photograph their food before they eat, or of parents who take photographs of their children while they’re playing the piano at home or of their families in front of the Eiffel Tower. There’s nothing wrong with doing these things (I do them myself all the time), but after a while, if we claim to be serious about photography as an art form and yet this is all we do with photography, then it no longer allows us to see anything new. It allows us to see only what we already see, putting us in a state of self-consuming and self-affirming narcissism, saying, “Look at me, look at me”.

But a lot of what Sontag says are provocations to thought as well:

Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it. But this is the opposite of understanding, which starts from not accepting the world as it looks. (On Photography)

What if we pursue photography with humility, as a way of looking at things differently? John Berger has made the point that “Every photograph presents us with two messages: a message concerning the event photographed and another concerning the shock of discontinuity” (Another Way of Telling). He goes on to say that “Between the moment recorded and the present moment of looking, there is an abyss” ((Another Way of Telling).

The abyss is when the street photograph gives us something we find hard to accept. We look, and look again, and we struggle with the meaning of the scene.

Perhaps, then, this is the moment we enter into the realm of critique…

Searching for Singapore III

Posted on March 11, 2014March 10, 2014 by eddietay in About Singapore, Monochrome

I suppose this theme is like a visual fixation for me.

This post is dedicated to those who know what it feels like to be doing street photography in your own neighbourhood.

In our own ways, we’re all searching for something, using our cameras as visual search engines.

What are we looking for? For another way to look, to turn everything into a work of art…

I suppose it’s about moments that surprise me.

That tree now looks like an explosion with the HDB flat facade as backdrop…

I keep coming back to HDB flats (public housing that 80-85% of Singaporeans live in), because it’s the cookie-cutter, middle-class, ideological environment I grew up in and which is part of who I am.

For those looking for general info concerning public housing in Singapore, this article from Wikipedia is a good general source. You could purchase these (highly-subsidised) flats through various schemes which are generally pro-marriage, pro-family, pro-heteronormative, etc.

It’s all very Bauhaus-influenced, with a rational/functional ethos to it.

Chua Beng-Huat, a sociologist at NUS, has a wonderful book called Political Legitimacy and Housing: Singapore’s Stakeholder Society. It looks at the ideological and social-engineering aspect of Singapore’s public housing policy.

I’m fascinated by how newness can emerge from familiar/regimental environments.

I have a thing with hawker centre food …

These are some people I’m learning to see again with my camera.

These were all taken on the same day I was due to go back to Hong Kong.

At the airport … back to Hong Kong…

Is Hong Kong any different?

In the end, it’s all about finding your place, moving up or down…

I should say all of images here are from the same roll of film: Ilford XP2 in an Olympus XA2.

The Leica M6 is now my back up camera (!!!)

Thanks for reading!

Quiet Rural Hong Kong

Posted on March 3, 2014April 30, 2014 by eddietay in Monochrome

Mention Hong Kong and you would think of skyscrapers, crowded streets, and the wonderful dimsum.

But there’s a quieter, meditative side to Hong Kong as well.

You could find scenes like these…

These are the views you get if you’re willing to live in somewhat out-of-the-way village houses.

These are really quiet, meditative spots.

If you’re willing to live near a farm…

And this, too, is an environment where we could live with ourselves…

Thanks for reading!

Searching for Singapore II

Posted on February 26, 2014March 10, 2014 by eddietay in About Singapore, Colour

I usually have 2 cameras with me during a photo-walk.

The previous post was with my stealthy Olympus XA2 loaded with Ilford XP2 400 film, while this is a Summicron 50mm Type II Rigid on a Leica M6 loaded with Kodak Portra 400.

I sometimes go all Daido Moriyama with my Olympus XA2 (or I try, at least), while with the Leica, I get that understated Martin Parr social commentary look (or I try, at least).

So that’s the flat visible from Bras Basah Complex, my favourite haunt since when I was a teenager as it’s the place to go to for secondhand books.

I took an Irish colleague there once and he said quite accurately that he could see that Bras Basah Complex was a formative part of my education.

Good old civil defence!

Singapore, along with its many historical landmarks, are works under construction.

That’s just outside the Arts House. I supposed you could call this commissioned graffiti.

“If You Dream Too Long” calls to mind If We Dream Too Long, the title of a novel by the late Goh Poh Seng. I met him once at a literary festival.

The author of yet another great Singaporean novel, Heartland, Daren Shiau, once told he admires the writings of Goh a lot. Heartland is many ways a response to If We Dream Too Long. Read these two books if you want to know Singapore.

Yes, yes, that’s my inner Singaporean literature nerd emerging.

That’s outside Ngee Ann City, a very appropriately named shopping complex because it’s so gigantic.

Yes, the humongous bookstore Kinokuniya Books is in there. It’s a place I go to for inspiration.

The stone lion outside Ngee Ann Complex, representing prosperity and all the good stuff and guarding all that conspicuous wealth inside the shopping mall.

That’s the ice-cream uncle at Orchard Road. I’ll usually buy a durian ice-cream wrapped in bread from him. It costs all of SGD$1. Pretty amazing.

That’s “Urban People”, the art sculpture in front of Ion Orchard, delighting tourists always.

We’re always being framed by brand names at Orchard Road, with fashion models watching over us, reminding us of what we could be if only we’re willing to spend just a little bit more …

Thanks for reading!

Searching for Singapore I

Posted on February 21, 2014March 10, 2014 by eddietay in About Singapore, Monochrome

I’ve been living and working outside of Singapore for many years now, and every time I return, I’m reminded that I’ll never truly return to the Singapore I know.

It’s like that quote from Heraclitus – you’ll never step into the same river twice. It’s never the same river, and you’re never the same you.

My long-suffering wife knows of my street photography obsession (passion). She understands (bless her!) that I get cranky sometimes and need to go away for a while for an afternoon or two whenever we’re in Singapore.

I can’t help but walk around with my camera(s) with a sense of both recognition and alienation.

That’s the “chwee kueh” (water rice cake, according to Wikipedia) hawker auntie at the market near my place, where I also satisfy my cravings for “chai tow kway” (fried carrot cake) and “char kway teow” (unhealthy rice noodles with black sauce, pork fat, pork lard and cockles).

I have a mental checklist of food to tick off every time I’m in Singapore, such as satay, mee siam, mee rebus, hor fun…

That’s the uncle who for some reason, prefers to sleep at the void deck on most afternoons.

The above are homely scenes for me, while some of the scenes below remind me how commodified Singapore has become.

That’s a tourist, who, for some reason decides to lie down and take a nap near the Merlion Park.

That’s another tourist … every time I am here I am reminded of how Singapore is a place for tourists… I wonder how many Singaporeans actually come here to take photographs …

That’s at Waterloo Street, where you could find a street bazaar.

And of course, that was the Chinese New Year period. Huat ah!

And lion dance performances can really be mesmerizing…

This is Ion Orchard, the shopping mall at Orchard Road.

And there’s something about the architecture that puts together celebrity culture with consumer culture.

We’re all encouraged to shop like celebrities.

Sometimes we “relac one corner” (relax) and claim a little space for ourselves.

And maybe we’ll find something meaningful after all …

This is “Searching for Singapore I”. Part Two, in full colour, will arrive in due time.

Thanks for reading!

London Street Photography II

Posted on February 19, 2014March 10, 2014 by eddietay in Colour

From my London folder again…

I was happy to have caught this gesture…

He’s framed by various pictures, and there’s a statement here to be made about the idealised/commodified/cosmetic appearances of the pictures vs his heartfelt sincerity. Check out the arrow that’s about to pierce his heart.

The British Museum … it’s difficult to photograph such an iconic place because you know it has been done so many times…

I chose the seemingly unthinking approach: capture it at any angle and it’ll still look wonderful. Kudos to the architects…

Here’s a museum interior that plays with religious icons … there’s definitely a connection between religious devotion and museum space.

In a way, we’re here to worship art and/or the past.

At the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Here’re the acolytes …

I’m a tourist!

A busy scene with the seated person as a focal point, at the still point of the turning world …

“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.”

(T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton”, The Four Quartets)

Thanks for reading!

London Street Photography

Posted on February 16, 2014March 10, 2014 by eddietay in Colour

These were taken from a London trip some time ago with my trusty now classic Canon G11.

I’ve been looking through my folders and was actually surprised to realize I had been doing street photography without really knowing that was what it was.

These are all shots taken in-between vacation family pictures when I thought the combination of people and scene looked interesting.

Selfies (with a nod to Samuel Beckett)

Posted on February 12, 2014March 10, 2014 by eddietay in Monochrome

These are photographs of me, or of how I see…

We’re all shackled in one way or another, waiting for our little godots…

I’m Estragon the poet…

Is He arriving? Godot is always late.

I wait and I wait …

And I wait …

Like Vladimir the thinker, I keep myself informed …

I want a branded watch to tell me I am a lucky Pozzo…

Am I a cookie-cutter person with cookie-cutter dreams and desires…

Or can I be my own work of art, recognizable to myself…

I want to be Lucky, my favorite beer…

I want to be forever on the move… forever arriving with the goods…

and then I’ll be happy-go-lucky…

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