Tag: Singapore Photography

Through the lens of The Straits Times

Just over two weeks ago, Straits Times launched Through the lens, a micro site that features the work of its photojournalists as well as the best pictures from around the world. Today, visuals and multimedia proliferate our world and have also become an integral part in telling the news. In recent years, the latest camera technology that combine photography and videography has also given rise to “multimedia storytelling” — the use of images and audio to present a story (But isn’t it still video?). More and more, photojournalism is no longer just about having a spread on the newspaper or a photo gallery online, and ST is not alone in doing this, The New York Time started its Lens blog over a year ago.

For me, what’s unique about Through the lens is its Flashback section. A media institution like the Straits Times probably holds the biggest archive of pictures of Singapore’s history, and it’s great to see it finally come to public light. Thus far, you can see what the National Stadium, Hong Lim Park, Miss Worlds, and even how flooding looked like in the past. These photos help to add historical context to some of the recent issues the print stories have brought up.

Through the lens is an important development for ST’s photojournalists. They have long been seen as sidekicks to the journalists who write the story, yet, people remember photos and are drawn to it first before even reading the news. This website finally gives ST’s photojournalists their own platform to showcase more of their photos, as many often do not make it to print. More importantly, it gives them their own voice to author their own stories. Many of the photo essays and multimedia currently up were done in conjunction with print stories. However, there are now some web-only and photo-only stories. One that caught my eye was Kiddy Rides, a on-going photo essay documenting the colourful machines that would rock children for a few minutes with music. These are gradually disappearing from Singapore after a 2007 shophouse fire in Hougang led to a tightening of rules on how spaces outside shops are used. This is a story that is definitely more interesting visually than in print and Through the lens and opens up an avenue for work-in-progress photo collections.

Kiddy Rides

It’ll be interesting to see how Through the lens develops in the coming months. Will it be actually enhance the role of photojournalism in ST or become a container for the paper to keep photojournalism online? From what I understand, this site means more work on top of the daily assignments for the photojournalists, so it’s really a labour of love now more than anything that is keeping it alive currently.

How Will We Picture Our Past?

After doing some work recently involving the use of images of Singapore’s past, I’ve learnt that there are only three sources for old images: PICAS, Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and personal collections.

PICAS is the Picture Archives Singapore Database run by the National Archives of Singapore (NAS) that contains some of the oldest photographs of Singapore. To buy a photo from the database is just as archaic. You cannot buy a photo online. Instead, you fill up a form and place your order at NAS itself, and return to collect the actual print. The only plus point is that you pay much less for a photo from PICAS, as compared to SPH, if you’re publishing for educational and cultural purposes.

While PICAS may have the oldest photographs, SPH has the most extensive collection of images of Singapore’s past. In fact, many images in the PICAS database actually belong to SPH. This means you have to deal with SPH and pay their rates if you want to use the SPH photos. Their extensive database is no surprise as SPH is a news organisation that covers all the important events of our nation’s lifetime. While it has an online SPH Photobank System, that database only carries current photos. To see all the old photos SPH has, you have to make an appointment to go down to their Information Resource Centre to search their internal servers.

The final resource for old images of Singapore is an emerging one thanks to the proliferation of digital imaging tools. People can now easily put up their personal collection of photographs and there are many gems out there waiting to be discovered. The National Library Board (NLB) is making an effort to canvass these photos and make them available via it’s Singapore National Album of Pictures (SNAP) website. It has also created a Flickr! set too. The only issue is with regards to their use. I have no idea if I can somehow obtain these photos for publishing. Another collection that exists online is Memories of Singapore, which is made up largely of photo collections from expatriates. Interestingly, the photos also give a glimpse of an expatriates’ life in Singapore in the past.

The problem with the current offerings of image databases is their poor quality and how there are so few of them. This limits the view of our colourful and diverse past, such that after a while, the same few ‘classic’ photos are reused to depict Singapore’s history. While SPH has built up the most extensive database, public access to it is troublesome, and the cost of use is prohibitive. PICAS is disappointing, and it could do so much better in terms of collection and the simple task of enabling online payment. I’m also a little puzzled as to why I wonder NLB is spearheading SNAP instead of NAS.

More importantly, I think there are a lack of image databases in Singapore and we’re depending too much on a few big institutions to document our lives. Especially nowadays, when there are so many event photographers and amateur photographers covering public life in Singapore. What is lacking are organisations and people who can amass these photographs, make sense of them, and make them available online so that future generations, and even you and I, can better remember what life is like today.

In Singapore, Emptiness is Full of Meaning

An empty piece of land is not something that will catch our eye as we go about our daily lives, but for photographer Darren Soh, it sparked his on-going project that documents the building of Marina Bay Sands. Presenting at the inaugural PLATFORM, Darren showed a full-house crowd at Sinema his “progress pictures” of the integrated resort since construction began some four years ago. The photographer, who has made several photo collections of the Singapore landscape, said this island is one big construction site and that makes emptiness in Singapore’s landscape significant and something worth documenting.

Indeed, living in a country where everything is so transient, Singapore’s landscape has been extensively photographed. However, most works on it that I’ve seen focuses on the death of landscapes and its decay. It’s become a knee-jerk reaction for photographers living here — just look at the number of photographers who have been flocking down to Tanjong Pagar Railway Station now that it’s future is in limbo. Darren’s project responds to this Singapore condition from a different time frame — its beginning and birth. More importantly, his project freezes the never-ending construction work that we are seemingly surrounded with and allows us to reflect, and even marvel, the building of Singapore.

Coincidentally, I recently had the privilege of helping do some background research for an architectural project that looks at the conditions of emptiness in Singapore. The findings of architect Thomas Kong’s project will be presented in ‘Zero’: Alternative Scenarios for Architecture in a Post-Bubble Era on 16 June in Rotterdam.

As a number, zero is neither negative nor positive but we often assign a degree of negativity despite its neutral meaning. A vacated site similarly lies in a liminal state with potentiality. However, architects have been taught that the only thing they could present to society is a building, to fill the void again. But what can they learn from the way in which individuals and groups appropriate empty sites in towns and cities? And in broader perspective, what can zero offer as we live through the Great Recession, when the myth of continuous economic growth is shattered, the assumption of ready capital for development can no longer be guaranteed and architecture students are taught only one mode of survival as a professional?