Yearly Archives: 2015

Shifting Views

Climbing to the top of Christiansborg Tårnet yields a full panorama of the city. On this particular day, you could see across Øresund to Sweden.More

Bodies

Artist Dries Verhoeven has a project called Ceci N’est Pas…  being shown in Copenhagen at the moment (if you read Danish, read the article on Politiken). That day’s installation involved a woman in the nude sitting in that glass box, wearing a mannequin’s face (literally). A provoking commentary on our increasing fixation with youthfulness in an ageing society.More

Street hawker

I’ve never seen street hawkers in Singapore, where I grew up. By the time I was old enough to actively think about my surroundings, they were gone, relocated to ubiquitous hawker centers found all over the island. Scenes like this never fail to make me think of home though. Not the sense of place, but situation. A communal meal…More

Pitstop

Sometimes, we find a destination when the journey ends. At other times, only continuance. Motel. Needles, California, USA.More

Prayers

A devotee offers prayers at the Goddess of Mercy Temple in Georgetown. Built around 1800 by the Hokkien and Cantonese, it is Penang’s oldest temple and ‘home’ to 87 gods of the Taoist, Buddhist and Confucianist faiths. Penang, Malaysia.More

Public Passage

My earliest photographic project, and the only one that’s stuck after all this time, is the one that revolves around public transport. It currently lives on Instagram. I’ve spent most of my life riding buses and trains, so it seemed natural to shoot on them when I got a camera. I was working in Perth (Western Australia) when I…More

Love is…

Love is: utilitarian, service, sacrifice, shelter, feeding, unspoken, a gesture, a look, a debt, a prayer, a reason to continue. Providing shelter, that he might finish his meal while it rains. Penang, Malaysia.More

A night at the opera

I came across a beautiful set of portraits that Chia Aik Beng made of the Teochew Opera troupe, Lao Sai Tao Yuan recently. I have returned to this series a number of times, compelled by the intimacy of his portraits, and this facet of Singapore I’ve had no contact with. Then chance stepped in. After some hours wandering around the Ramadan bazaar in Geyland Serai the other night,…More

Ice Cream Seller

An ice cream seller serves a customer from his cargo bike on the road in Geylang Serai, during the Ramadan bazaar. Singapore.More

Thieves Market, Sungei Road

My father used to bring me to the Sungei Rd Thieves Market on weekends, to have a browse. You never knew what you would find there. The market used to cover a much larger area than it does today, with most of it already eliminated by the construction of the expanding rail system. What remains will eventually…More

Kopitiam, Singapore

In an old coffee shop somewhere in/near Bugis with Chia Aik Beng: She made us teh peng and kopi ice (ice tea, ice coffee) and then scurried around serving other customers , refilling containers, clearing tables. I am frequently unbalanced by the land of my birth. When I am here I want to leave; when I have left…More

Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde

I first heard about the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde many many years ago, watching a documentary about the discovery and reconstruction of Roskilde 6, now known as Havhingsten fra Glendalough (The Sea Stallion from Glendalough). I didn’t think I’d get to visit it, walk around those same skeletons of thousand year old Viking longships that had, in my reality,…More