Tag: kacang puteh

Singapore Local Culture

Posted on by eddietay in About Singapore, Monochrome

This is culture as lived experience:

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An ordinary life that is the subject of street photography.

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Every year I return to Singapore for a period and some things don’t change.

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The kacang puteh man is still there (there’s another photo of him in a post a year ago).

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I tried another shot and he spotted me.

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A cobbler.

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And another cobbler.

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I stopped to buy my son an ice cream.

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When doing street photography, bring along your child – you’ll look less conspicuous that way.

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See? This guy actually smiled at my son and I.

I look like I’m helping my son with a school project…

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My son dared me to take a picture of him up close – and I did.

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And he pointed to them and said it would make a nice photograph – so I obliged.

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He didn’t think the above would work – I think he’s right.

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And he said the cyclist was looking the wrong way … again he’s right.

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“Why did you take a picture of that building, daddy? Is that considered street photography?”

Good question.

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I thought the tie fluttering in the air might make this interesting.

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He was trying to tack something onto the wood paneling and looked somewhat frustrated – I caught that moment.

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That’s life – always under construction.

Thanks for reading.

Check out my open-edition prints at my Saatchi Art page!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Singapore

Posted on by eddietay in About Singapore, Monochrome

I was in Singapore recently and of course, I brought along my Leica M6 fixed with a 50mm Summicron.

I was paranoid at first about the film going through airport x-rays. But I could see no fogging to my beloved Ilford XP2 films on a previous trip despite them having gone through 4 x-ray cabin baggage scanners at the airport at HK airport, then at Dubai where I transited, and back again.

I took a walk around my neighbourhood and walked past him, circled around, and took this:

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This was at the National Library. I simply love this particular angle of the architecture:

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This was in Hans, the café at the library. I like the rectangular grid:

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And yes, the kacang puteh man:

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You might say there’s a statement here waiting to be made about the life of a kacang puteh seller, as our attention is drawn to the newspaper headline the seller has put up.

And then I had my Singapore-style chicken rice here. They do it very differently in Hong Kong…

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The photograph below sums up my ambivalent attitude towards my country of birth, in which I’ve spent 3/4 of my life before moving to Hong Kong. About 80-85% of the people live in public housing, and the facades of these HDB flats are often used as symbols of conformity, depicting the cookie-cutter and pigeonholed lifestyle and aspirations of middle-class Singaporeans. I have in mind those haunting images at the beginning of Eric Khoo’s 12 Storeys.

I think of the photograph below as saying something opposite.

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I like the tree here because it symbolizes something else, that perhaps there is life, rejuvenation and fresh insights that might arise. I sense a poem coming …

Finally, since some of my friends have been asking about my street photography and the point of it all, here’s an essay by Nick Turpin that says it.

I especially like this quote from Nick’s essay:

“As a Street Photographer you are different, you are not like the others, you are an oddity both in society and in photography. In society you are odd because you are just standing their [sic] looking whilst everyone rushes past to their next shopping experience or intake of salty, sugary, fatty food. In photography you are odd because your motivation is not financial and you don’t go to photo trade shows unless it’s to people watch. You are really not part of either world, it can be lonely not talking about equipment and bags and not oiling the wheels of retail….if it weren’t for online street photography forums you could feel isolated like some lonely eccentric.”

Sometimes I stop and look around and wonder where everyone is rushing off to…