Have you ever snapped a picture, or a series of pictures, and then after that looked at them and felt like your subjects were telling you something? As if they had a message they were sending out to you right at that very moment you clicked the shutter.
I'm not talking portraiture photography.
I'm talking inanimate objects. Objects that *technically* have no life and therefore no soul and no spirit.
And yet...
That's how it feels sometimes.
That's how it felt taking this series of pictures.
It can sound bizarre, flighty even, but I thought they were trying to tell me something. As if there were many things waiting to be spoken, and yet many things left unspoken. As if there were lots and lots of voices speaking, or fighting to speak, but their words ended up lost in a mist of drifting murmurs, completely indiscernible.
I'm not trying to be poetic. That's really how it was. Like I was hearing voices, male and female, yet not being able to decipher what was being said. There was just one overarching impression that lingered with me even as I left the museum, and the same impression that surfaces still when I'm seeing them again.
Pain.
So much pain.
Don't ask me why. I don't know the answer.
It was just there.
All the pain.
And tears. Loud, wailing tears.
And the fact that these subjects were remarkably difficult to capture, as if they didn't like being observed and studied- even through the glass case- and as if they didn't want to be photographed. It took me a bit of coaxing before anything acceptable turned up.
It was- is- all very peculiar, so I've decided- with a little bit of reverence- that I'll just place these pictures here, as they are from a hospital in northeast Singapore, and just let them be.
I'm not talking portraiture photography.
I'm talking inanimate objects. Objects that *technically* have no life and therefore no soul and no spirit.
And yet...
That's how it feels sometimes.
That's how it felt taking this series of pictures.
It can sound bizarre, flighty even, but I thought they were trying to tell me something. As if there were many things waiting to be spoken, and yet many things left unspoken. As if there were lots and lots of voices speaking, or fighting to speak, but their words ended up lost in a mist of drifting murmurs, completely indiscernible.
I'm not trying to be poetic. That's really how it was. Like I was hearing voices, male and female, yet not being able to decipher what was being said. There was just one overarching impression that lingered with me even as I left the museum, and the same impression that surfaces still when I'm seeing them again.
Pain.
So much pain.
Don't ask me why. I don't know the answer.
It was just there.
All the pain.
And tears. Loud, wailing tears.
And the fact that these subjects were remarkably difficult to capture, as if they didn't like being observed and studied- even through the glass case- and as if they didn't want to be photographed. It took me a bit of coaxing before anything acceptable turned up.
It was- is- all very peculiar, so I've decided- with a little bit of reverence- that I'll just place these pictures here, as they are from a hospital in northeast Singapore, and just let them be.
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| a sort of shield |
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| mealtimes |
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| a lamp with a story |
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| steel; surgical steel |
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| i'm shuddering |
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| clay play |