The work done for the book on Bintan in the early 2000s had all the components of a proper academic research, except that it was done outside Academia. But this first taste of historical and ethnographic rigour made me realise that scientific academic research was my calling. It made me accept "discipline", something I had rejected after running away from a ballet class at the age of five years old. With the Phoenix, as I like to call the Bintan book, I learned how to enjoy the stubborn determination required from historians and ethnologists to gather the pieces of a cultural puzzle one by one and see the picture of a resurrected moment in time slowly emerge. It made me relish in
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1981In 1983 I went to photograph the Chingay procession, a colourful street parade held both in Singapore and Malaysia for Chinese New Year. In Singapore the colourful parade takes place along Orchard Road. But I somehow found myself more attracted to what was happening backstage, in an area at the top of Orchard Road where floats, performers and marching bands gathered before and after their performance. There, the scene was equally vibrant but much more informal.
1982Article in the catalogue of the exhibition Transport Asian - Visions of Contemporary Photography from South East Asia,
Singapore Art Museum, Singapore. 1980sArticle in the catalogue of the exhibition Performance in Frame on the relation between photography and performance art, presented for the 2009 edition of the performance art festival Fetter Field, presented in Singapore Management University.
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