Profile

Cross section ready for dissection

'He hadn't meant to touch it. As he grubbed in the rain-filled gutter to pick up dog shit, human excrement and blackened, rotten vegetables, stowing them in the basket he carried on his head, he brushed what seemed to be a pile of rags, and it moved a little. The pile was flesh; it was a leper, dying. Eyes, nose, fingers and toes had already gone. Maggots writhed on him. And Murlidhar Devidas Amte, shaking with terror and nausea, stumbled to his feet and ran away...'

Almost everyone in this photo is caught in profile giving a more literal meaning to the photo being a profile of Indian everyday-life. Indian street life is always colourful, and colour has always been symbolic of life in itself. An abundance of colour derived from an abundance of life but with this abundance comes a loss in value. Perhaps life in itself is no different from a mere commodity, evaluated by scarcity. Conversely, looked at from a self centric perspective, most tend to value their own life to infinity because there is only one consideration; Self. Yet in spite of the infinite value we place on our lives, what are we doing with it? Do we attach an economic value to it like as if it is an actual commodity; a digit making up the GNP or GDP figures? Or do we value it with some other standard and if so what is that standard?

'Mr Amte, a handsome man in his 30s, was better known as a big-shot criminal lawyer in Warora, in what is now Maharashtra in central India. He could charge as much as 50 rupees for arguing for 15 minutes. He was a member of the bridge club and the tennis club and vice president of the Warora municipality, and he kept, outside town, an elegant farmhouse set in lush fields which he had never lifted a finger to cultivate himself. But after living with Mahatma Gandhi in his ashram in the mid-1940s, something had happened to him...'

I would recommend reading the rest of the article from The Economist. Sure, there are plenty of people around the world like Mr Amte. We say "how noble", "how selfless" and then move on, leaving the likes of him and Gandhi as social commentaries of a time and place anywhere but here or now.

Water

As the deer panteth for the water

I always get heavy hearted when I flip through my photos of Mosegard woods. I still remember the day I took this photo. It was late spring and the forest was in full bloom. I remember. This Sunday's gospel theme was water. Its amazing how frequently water has been used as a motif in the bible. Water as redemption, memory as an act of redemption.

Peek

Below the Layers, a surprise awaits. Peek.

Sometimes I do wish that I could mark the passing of the year with the seasons, how the leaves change colour, fall and grow again, how the soothing summer breeze gives way to the frosty winter winds. In Singapore, our changes in season are more subtle. If we pause long enough, we do notice that the December monsoon rains have given way to the cool dry breezy days that are January and February; and that the blazing heat of March to June is just round the corner. Subtle Changes. But the subtle does evoke, like how the novelty of a childhood snack marks the transition from child to adult. Soon there will be another Comex, soon it will be the Great Singapore Sale, soon we will get called, soon it will be Christmas again. If only we look hard enough; we might be pleasantly surprised.

Giza

Pinhole Pyramids.

One cannot help but feel that snapshot photography has reduced the world to a collection of things seen, miniature souvenirs, instead of representing the world as a thing to be seen, in the reality of perception and on the scale of the body.

影

那年的冬天
永远的夏天
有很多的梦
等待着进行

Churchill

A lovestruck Romeo, sings the streets a serenade

I am a sucker for packaging. It doesn't help that the Killer's Romeo and Juliet has been stuck in my head. Enough said. What started off as a hectic weekend ended off with an indulgent afternoon. A nice long lunch in the comforts of home, with 3 fantastic wines and a nice long cigar smoke, topped off with a late afternoon siesta. Perfect.

Conjectures

Framed and Hung

Contexts frame our issues and provide a perspective. I recently was reminded of the importance of context over the course of the week. And context applies to everything for it forms the basis of what and how we think. To ponder something in abstract, would be to deprive it of real world applicability. And to keep an outdated context as a base layer would result in susceptibility to orthodoxy and fundamentalism. Take culture for example. The most orthodox way of thinking about culture is to talk always about discontinuities, breaks, ruptures, leaps. Walter Benjamin said, 'the only way to think legitimately about tradition is in terms of discontinuities.' Nevertheless, I think that it is possible to forget the meaning of something in ritually referring to it all the time. So it is necessary to develop language and forms which express the continuous aspect of the development of vanguard-ist culture or post modern culture. And it is this language and form that provides a fluid context. But having said that, I sometimes wonder if the concept of context has been taken to its extreme, resulting in contexts within a context or as we of this profession are so used to saying "drill down to the core issues", thus bringing us back to where we started; and none the wiser?

Window

Window to the World

Every work day, I stare at Windows, without a glimpse into the outside reality. Every work day is a reference to a book, a document, a position. I love windows. I watched the four seasons changed through my window frame in Denmark. What a beautiful time frame. And to a certain extent, one cannot deny the postmodern ideal that all texts perpetually refer to other texts, rather than to external reality. If not literally than in this case, figuratively.

Visiting

Lunar New Year Conversation

Finally got round to scanning the negatives that I developed over the weekend. This photo was taken on the CNY visiting circuit. In this cluttered room, there is an abstract sense of isolation that seems to be brought about by the symmetry in the postures of the subjects. I like this symmetry, one almost bordering on an yin yang sort of balance, which would have been better seen had I captured more of their feet. Anyway, to a certain extent almost everything is about balance. Yet asymmetricals alway intrigue. Perhaps something shy of pure symmetry is the best middle ground.

Scenic

Fallingwater

Inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's house. I love both of Kaufmann's houses, Wright's Fallingwater and Neutra's Desert House. Both works of geniuses. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Trees

Death came from a tree,
Life springs from a tree;
From Eden to Gethsemane.

We think that Paradise and Calvary,
Christ's cross, and Adam's tree, Stood in one place;
Look, Lord, and find both Adam's met in me;
As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace.
~ John Donne

Requiem

The young girl in the story is walking alone in a cemetery.
She sees a thin old woman walking ahead and she runs to catch up with her,
'Please, may I walk with you? I'm afraid'
'Sure honey', the woman answers,
'I, too, used to be afraid when I was alive'
~Sylvia Plachy, Self portrait with cows going home

Chop Suey

Pensive, in the least likely locality

Another Hopper influenced shot with the Leica. Many of Hopper's subjects share the theme of isolation in the midst of urban life. His solitary figures in the public or private interior settings appear vulnerable. A nude by a window gazes pensively outside; a woman in an Automat turns inwards, absorbed in her own thoughts. In Hopper's view of the city itself, the few figures that populate the vast urban space are reduced to insignificance. And it is this insignificance that we so often talk about, in the form of demographics, statistics and figures.

Veuve

Hommage a Madame Clicquot

Saved the champagne cap from last night's reunion dinner. I need to stop collecting knick knacks. So much for out with the old and in with the new, although I must say that the cap is in very CNY colours. I have been stuffing myself non stop since last night and I believe this trend will continue for the next couple of days. I hope everyone's doing the same too.
Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Time

Time Roll Over Dead

Sometimes I wish I could just stop time. But doing so would mean that I exist in the present, burdened by the past; with no future. It is impossible to stop time dead in it's tracks. We try to by reviving memories. Memories implies a certain act of redemption. What is remembered has been saved from nothingness. What is forgotten has been abandoned.

Drive

Scarlet 280SL , drains the colours of Munich

They say that money is everything. But then why does everything that I want cost so much? Today's gospel and homily on the Beatitudes attempted to right that perspective. To what extent it has succeeded remains to be seen. Maybe it just needs some time to sink in. Religion has always been revolutionary, especially Christianity; the Master serves the Servant, the Creator becomes the created. I am still waiting for the revolution to sweep me away. But till then, I need some drive, to keep me going.

Monument

Dachau; Light at the end of the tunnel, still enclosed, not free

Sometime during the week, I had a little discussion with some colleagues about concentration camps. One of them exclaimed at how is it even possible to treat another human being in such a cruel manner. I echo her sentiment but I am not the least shocked. The human powers of rationalization makes almost any act possible. All that is needed is a blind eye and an overly rational mind. I suppose that is why we are endowed with a soul or for atheist, a conscience; to keep the rationalization process in check. The conversation evoked memories of visits to Auschwitz and Dachau. The room full of hair, the gas chambers. Even abattoirs are more humane.

Here war is simple like a monument:
A telephone is speaking to a man;
Flags on a map assert that troops were sent;
A boy brings milk in bowls. There is a plan

For living men in terror of their lives,
Who thirst at nine who were to thirst at noon,
And can be lost and are, and miss their wives,
And, unlike an idea, can die too soon.

But ideas can be true although men die,
And we can watch a thousand faces
Made active by one lie:

And maps can really point to places
Where life is evil now:
Nanking; Dachau.

~W.H. Auden