Through
Darren Soh’s Lens:
How
His Photography Addresses Apathy to the Loss of Singapore’s Social Spaces
How well do you know your Singapore?
In the immensely popular 1999 movie The
Matrix, Neo is an ordinary salaryman with a job in a software company by day,
earning a wage and living much like anybody else. But by night, he morphs into
a man searching for the truth of the world by means of his hacking.
Like
Neo, we live in a relatively comfortable environment, the current state of a
country whose narrative from Third World to First is largely known to all. We
know Singapore well: we live here, see the greenery in the parks and along the
roads, go to shopping malls for leisure, and return home to our HDBs, public
housing made possible through the vision of our founding fathers and continued
with the goal that all should own their own home. But sometimes, we find
ourselves in Neo’s position, where things just don’t seem right and a hidden
story remains to be discovered and told. This may come in the form of Singapore
at night, which takes on an unfamiliar visage that we normally don’t see unless
we don’t sleep. Or it may be the Singapore we never noticed as we go about our
daily business of living. But what happens if we actually know this parallel
world but are simply too comfortable being ensconced in a materialistic life to
have ever paid much attention to it?
Darren
Soh, in his 2004 monograph: While You Were Sleeping, takes into account the
apathetic nature of his audience when he raises the problems we face when we
accept the prevailing notion set by the state. He argues that we have misconstrued progress as
development and face the continual loss of a Singaporean identity built up only
a generation ago. Through his book, Soh hopes to change our entrenched mindsets
by literally confronting us with the uncomfortable reality of green spaces
transformed into banality; and in so doing, contributes to a nation-wide
discourse on belonging and identity.
Some
of Darren Soh’s photographic techniques can be seen from Figure 1, a photograph he published on his
official Facebook account that did not make the cut into his 2015 sequel
monograph, In the Still of the Night. Soh tends to take long exposures that
showcase movement in nature, while always having a manmade element that serves
to remind the viewer that this is indeed Singapore, a wholly urbanised
nation-state. Without too much effort, we easily agree with Professor Chua’s
foreword in the 2004 iteration when he speaks of Soh’s “aesthetic acts of
interrupting the familiar and reframing [scenery]” to create art; Soh is “one
who makes art, an artist”. MacRitchie Reservoir in this photograph is probably
unlike what most of us have seen before, with its sky an unfamiliar purple, the
vegetation becoming gradually more detailed and reflected in the water, and the
presence of the small kayaking jetty – which, as Soh explains, “gives [us] a
hint of the chaos [during the daytime], but the stillness while [we] were
sleeping keeps that chaos at bay for now”. While we see that the reason why Soh
takes his photographs at night is to show Singapore without human activities to
block his viewfinder, in his artistry, Darren Soh also surprises the viewer
with familiar places that look different and indeed beautiful in the night.
However, when we consider Soh’s
background, it becomes clear that he has reasons other than the making of art
when he takes these photographs of the night. Professor Chua also alludes to
this when he says that “the result [of Soh’s creating of art] compels the
viewer-audience to look at the ordinary anew, to find new meanings.” Like Chua,
Soh, as the author’s biography at the end of the book reveals, is a sociologist
by training. Ostensibly a photographer by profession, it therefore isn’t
surprising for him to use his pictures as a medium to explore Singapore’s
social context.
To find out the social issues Soh is
trying to capture through his lens, we have to look at both his monograph – his
first – and his philosophy. Soh, in his introduction, acknowledges that in
photographing the images in his book, he embarked on “a road to discovery”. The
Esplanade, where his 2015 sequel and photographic exhibition will be held,
asserts that this first book “[set] the stage for all that he would capture”.
Whatever he discovered in the making of While You Were Sleeping is then
presumably an important, lifelong exploration. In his open letter For My Son –
ostensibly for his child, someone important to him – but also for the parents
of today and their children, he laments that “Many places… are disappearing for
one reason or another… perhaps [his] memories and [a book for his son] will be
all that [he has left to show his son]”. The meaning behind his photography,
then, is possibly tied to his claim as a “photographic documentarian of
Singapore” who records memories of time past, as he states in an interview for
the website SG Asia City.
But this apparent reason of merely documenting
Singapore’s disappearing places comes into question when we actually see Darren
Soh’s photographs that are associated with his 2004 monograph. When we look at Figure
2 (a photograph Soh published on his
Facebook account with the admission that it “should have made the book”), we
see an abandoned lorry in the landscape. The lorry, a ferry for construction workers
in the Singapore context, is transformed into a symbol that is a portent of the
construction to come. The landscape itself contributes to the dreary emotional
overtones suggested by the lone vehicle and the lighting. The lorry as symbol
of construction resonates with Darren Soh’s audience emotionally, who know the
story to come: yet another development will soon rise, and it will be as dull
and lifeless as the typical flat. What Soh is trying to capture are not the
objects in themselves, but what they represent. From the book as a whole, composed
from photographs that individually tell a story and yet all adhere to the theme
“While You Were Sleeping”, we realise that Soh is documenting for a purpose: he
is making an argument for Singaporeans to “wake up” and notice what is
happening around them.
To
further understand what Darren Soh tries to capture through his lens, we may
again look at what he posts on Facebook. He cites a speech by Associate
Professor of Sociology Daniel Goh, a member of the Workers’ Party, as one that
“really resonated with [him]”. Goh, in this year’s elections, was essentially
arguing for the ruling government to continue planning towns with social
centres. Soh elaborates with a wish that “the government [would] take a more
consultative approach” as redevelopment often “obliterate[es] entire
neighbourhoods’ social memories”. Soh laments the loss of a collective social
memory that is “burned into the concrete”, as Goh succinctly puts it.
Darren Soh also expresses his worry
and hope for Singaporeans on New Year’s Eve in 2013. He mentions the rapid
cycle of building, demolishing and rebuilding which we see in our daily lives,
and is concerned that we “may lose [our] sense of belonging”. In an interview
for Twentyfifteen.sg, a platform initiative of which he is a founding member,
Soh further uses the old adage, “in order to know where we’re going, we need to
know where we’ve been” to express his belief for “a country like Singapore”.
When all these pieces of information are put together, we finally have his
reason for his photographs: To document and preserve places that represent and
hold memories in order to preserve a Singaporean identity. More than that, it
is an argument that challenges the state’s emphasis on economic growth – more
shopping centres! More apartments! – by showing that that has led to a loss of national
identity. Singaporeans don’t know what else exists outside of their homes,
workplaces, and malls; moreover, they fail to see that what has gone unnoticed
will soon be gone.
This pessimistic tone is echoed in
Soh’s 2004 monograph cover, a blow-up of the middle third section of Figure
3. The lonely lamppost below the title is
the only manmade element penetrating the empty sky and almost takes on an
anthropomorphic, human figure with head bowed low, as if to shine a literal
light on what happens “While You Were Sleeping”. The impending sense of
loneliness the reader gets is a primer for the contents of the book, which have
the same characteristics as the photographs in Figure 2 and Figure 3: Largely sky, always taken with a long
exposure that amplifies any artificial lighting to the point of garishness, and
a lack of any human figure but always with a sign that man has been there.
Together, they give the reader the impression of a surrealistic environment
filled with profound loneliness and seem to beg the question: Is this progress?
The reader looking at Punggol’s desolate landscape and the lamppost at Kranji
Reservoir – ironically broken when it was supposed to shed light; and
ironically making the night scenery much more palatable – would be hard-pressed
to say yes.
Soh ends off his succession of
pictures with Figure
4. This time, the trees are all but
overshadowed by the construction that is going on. This photograph seems to be
a development of the ongoing work in Figure
2, and its presence at the end of the
book raises questions more than trying to tell the reader a story. After thirty
images, Soh’s audience has been faced with a multitude of developments in
various parts of Singapore: Sengkang, Punggol, Jalan Kayu. The question that Figure
4 poses is: What next? What happens after
these sites have been turned into the housing estates, shopping malls and parks
that are ubiquitous across Singapore? It isn’t only Punggol that is under
construction; it’s everywhere that the URA, the urban planning arm of the state,
has eventually slated for development in the name of economic progress. Figure
4 drives
home the pervasiveness of construction in Singapore.
Darren Soh’s photographs tend to
incite a emotional response from their viewer. In paraphrasing Soh’s quote of
Roland Barthes, which comes after Figure
4 in the monograph, the local sees not a
picture but rather a deeper meaning. The objects that are captured through
Soh’s lens contain shared presuppositions and underlying connotations of
construction and development shared by both Soh and his audience – and thus
become emotionally resonant symbols that cause the viewer to replay these
exigent issues in his mind. They paint a picture of Singapore as unrelenting in
her drive to march onwards without care for the environment. They create an
ideology of Singapore-style capitalism that Soh’s audience is repulsed by and
eager to distance themselves from. In so doing, they persuade the viewer of the
pervasiveness of this previously-invisible problem and the importance of a
countermeasure.
The
problem of loss of social memory that Soh’s monograph presents maintains its
relevance even today. Today’s reader of the monograph when looking at 2004’s
Punggol in Figure
2 and Figure 4 already knows the present-day Punggol,
with its HDBs, BTOs, and LRT. Today’s reader is able to compare the Punggol
past and present with other sites of development – an all-too-familiar narrative
in Singapore. In this way, Darren Soh has created a book not only for a 2004
audience: his work remains relevant to a future audience as long as the
predominant attitudes towards development remain.
Charmaine Poh, a local
photographer-cum-writer, mentions that Singaporeans “have felt the tug of
things lost” that “is not merely nostalgia, but the search for identity” in her
recent essay on photography and Singapore on the Invisible Photographer Asia
website. When we consider that the answer to this “search for identity” still has
not been found, Soh’s work in 2004 takes on an increased poignancy today.
Clearly, something is lacking from the state’s equation that links the economy
directly to progress. In this respect, his 2015 recapitulation of the work that
led him through a process of self-discovery is not merely personal, but rather,
is part of a national quest to establish connections with the past and find out
how best to move forward.
Darren Soh’s emotional argument in While
You Were Sleeping gains further meaning not only to himself, but to the reader,
when his monograph is considered as autobiographical. In another Facebook post,
Soh quotes Robert Adams:
Landscape
pictures can offer us, I think, three verities – geography, autobiography, and
metaphor… the three kinds of information strengthen each other and reinforce
what we all work to keep intact – an affectation for life.
While
we have seen that Soh’s pictures deal with geography and are a metaphor for
representing the social issues he deals with, the arrangement of his
photographs reads as his autobiography when the first and last images are
juxtaposed against each other. The first, depicting the BBC at Kranji
Reservoir, is a reflection of Soh’s roots as a photography intern at the
Straits Times Picture Desk. Figure
4, the last, is an image of a place under
construction. It not only represents Singapore as under construction, but also
Soh himself with his work in progress, and Soh’s determination to both improve
his work and continue his documentation of and advocacy for his cause. The
realisation that the photographer himself is present in his works leaves the
reader with a strengthened impression of Soh as an artist with a story to tell.
The audience is left eager to read meaning into Soh’s photographs – in effect,
they become easier to persuade.
Soh
further cements his good impression on his reader by invoking different
personalities through quotations at the start and end of the book. For the
discerning reader who knows Duane Michals as a maverick photographer, van Gogh
as a key painter of the Post-Impressionist movement, and Roland Barthes as a
theorist and philosopher who had written a book on photography and its
meanings, Soh would rank highly as a scholarly individual worth his salt.
Darren Soh, in essence, borrows the ethos of these famous people to elevate his
audience’s perception of himself when they draw their inevitable comparisons.
For instance, Soh invites comparison to van Gogh; not only is he an artist like
the latter, but his photographs assume the status and meaning of paintings. Van
Gogh ever said:
One
starts with the hopeless struggle to follow nature and everything goes wrong.
One ends by calmly creating from one’s
palette, and nature agrees with it and follows.
Soh
echoes this notion of creation in his introduction to While You Were Sleeping:
“I brought to life a Singapore…”
In
other words, Soh – like van Gogh, who created a new, unique genre of painting
altogether – has boldly stated that his photography is at the forefront of
innovation. When the discerning reader sees Soh’s innovative photography
techniques after the van Gogh quotation, which comes right before the first
photograph, the notion that the book has more to offer besides artistic shots
alone, á la Duane Michals, has a serendipitous effect not unlike that of
realising that Soh’s autobiography is embedded in his work. Soh has managed to
create a favourable impression of his ethos that contributes to audience
identification with his emotional appeal in his thirty photographs.
So
far, we have been discussing While You Were Sleeping as a standalone book.
However, this may lead to the mistaken assumption that Darren Soh’s audience is
simply those who are rich enough to buy his monograph. When we look at Soh’s
portfolio as a whole, his target audience expands to include most Singaporeans.
His status as co-founder of Platform.sg, which birthed the Twentyfifteen.sg
initiative; his history of exhibitions of his work; and his collection of
published works, one of which is his 2004 monograph – all lead to the
conclusion that Soh treats his monographs as merely one form of outreach. In
his 2015 exhibition, he explicitly states that his objective is “to get as many
people to see the images as possible”. Even his Facebook page can be seen from
a different perspective: it serves not just to voice his personal opinions to
the public and to advertise for his work; but it is also another form of
spreading his ideology to his audience. Through his constant advertising on
Facebook, Twentyfifteen.sg, and other partner websites, Soh’s aim is in reaching
as wide an audience as possible. If his photographs are viewed as argument,
then Soh’s purpose in his diverse methods of outreach is to try and persuade as
many people as he can.
Finally,
we have to address the issue of apathy in Soh’s Singaporean audience. It is
widely acknowledged that Singaporeans – and especially youth – are
disinterested politically and even socially. Without going into any specifics
of argumentation, we only have to look around us for empirical evidence of this
statement. A consideration of apathy has repercussions in finally gaining a
complete understanding of Soh’s monograph. The consequences are much greater
when we choose not to take some form of action, but merely lament over what
we’ve lost before going right back to studious ignorance. When we only care
about things when they affect us, and blame our powerlessness on a nanny state,
we remain in comfort without the knowledge of how pervasive the problem that
development poses to our environment really is. When we see sleep as a metaphor
for apathy rather than not noticing, the message of Soh’s photographs transforms
itself into a warning: that before Singapore knows it, all her social memory
and natural environments will be lost; the opportunity to establish some kind
of national identity will vanish; and as Darren Soh predicts on Facebook, we
get stuck in the rut of “building, demolishing and rebuilding. And then
repeating the process again.” Rather than imploring to the reader to “wake up”,
Soh’s pictures now aim to shock their viewer into the sheer nation-wide scale
of development that appears to continue unabated, as Figure
4 ominously warns. Soh’s narrative
becomes that of an alarm that sounds the harsh truth in order to startle them
into action.
Still,
Darren Soh, in his elaborate effort for outreach, can be seen to maintain an
optimism that things will change for the better. The “affectation for life”
that he quotes Robert Adams in could be the real purpose of his photography: a
desire for Singaporeans to look ahead to the future, while not forgetting the
past and where they belong. In his open letter to his son, Soh writes: “Let’s
see if ideas about redevelopment in Singapore change by the time you read this.”
We realise that through his photography, Darren Soh’s eventual aim is for his
photographs to help convert his fellow Singaporeans into having an increased
sensibility for the built environment. In other words, his monograph is part of
a vehicle to deliver his ideas to a broader public as a call to think twice
before trying to develop, or redevelop, a place. Looking back at Figure
3, Soh’s hidden message is that sometimes,
it is only when the light is broken that we are able to enjoy the beauty of the
darkness. Although the lamppost remains as a human construct, the light, a
metaphor for urban consumption, has gone out. This is Darren Soh’s hope in an
opened Pandora’s Box.
In
light of this, rather than asking: How well do you know your Singapore? – A
better question might instead be: How well do you want to know your Singapore?
Like Neo and his dilemma between the red and blue pill offered to him by
Morpheus, we are faced with an implicit choice at the end of the book: to wake
up from a metaphorical sleep and have to deal the hard truths and issues; or to
continue living as if they didn’t exist.
In
case we’ve forgotten, Neo chose the red pill.
Works Cited
Goh,
Leonard. “TwentyFifteen Interview 01/20: Darren Soh speaks to Leonard Goh”. Twentyfifteen.SG. 1 Aug 2013. Web. 12
Nov 2015.
“In
the Still of the Night (While You Were Sleeping)” Esplanade Presents: Festivals and Series – Visual Arts. n.p. n.d.
14 Nov 2015
Pew,
Gwen. “Darren Soh makes Singapore look dazzling and dreamy.” Timeout Singapore. 28 Oct 2015. Web. 13
Nov 2015.
Poh,
Charmaine. “On Land: Photography and the City-state of Singapore”. Invisible Photographer Asia. 7 Nov 2015.
Web. 13 Nov 2015.
Sethi,
Mrigaa. “These surreal Singapore landscapes will blow you away.” SG Asia city: The Insider’s Guide to
Singapore. 11 Nov 2015. Web. 14 Nov 2015.
Soh, Darren. “Darren Soh, Photographer”. Facebook.com. Web. 14 Nov 2015.
Soh, Darren. “For My Son”. Twentyfifteen.SG. 6 Aug 2013. Web. 14 Nov 2015.
Soh,
Darren. While You Were Sleeping.
Singapore: National Youth Achievement Award Council. 2004. Print.
*All images taken from Darren Soh's Facebook/Web page.
If he protests, I will remove this post immediately.
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