Love

My wife Ming with my daughter Maya, Oct. 2009:

I just couldn’t find a better title for this image…

Leica M3
Kodak Portra 400VC

self portrait

Stefan 2009, with my Pentax 67:

My blog is now almost one year old and I thought it is time for a self reflection, in the mirror that is!

In November I had bought a second hand Pentax 67 when I spent a few days in Seoul. The Korean Won dropped dramatically due to the American credit crunch and made old film cameras even cheaper than they already are. This wonderful camera was an absolute bargain.

About self portraits:
It seems to be the fate of photographers that no one tends to take images of them. I have hundreds of portraits of family, friends ad all sorts of people. But nobody appears to be interested in my image, ha ha! So the only way to get my own portrait is to pose this way.
I like the soft colors of the Kodak Portra. Apart from that it is a reminder that we are all getting older, including me!

bali beach encounter

Bali, April 2009

This image was taken during a week’s holiday in Bali in April 2009. The guy was one of our scuba-diving guides. Everyone was very cheerful and friendly. Bali is a wonderful place with friendly people and it is very easy to photograph.
The photograph was taken with a hasselblad 500cm and a 60mm wide angle lens on TMX400 film. I like the light you get at a beach. The sun is very bright but the indirect light is filtered by palm trees. The fact that the sand in Bali is (volcanic) black and therefor doesn’t reflect as much as white sand also contributes to the lighting conditions.

The overexposed sky first seemed to be a problem. Viewing the end result i find that it actually provides a nice white backdrop for the portrait.

Time

This is my daughter Maya. She is almost five years now and very comfortable with the camera pointed at her. No wonder, since I have been photographing her from the the first second she was out in the world…

For me it is amazing to see the changes over time, so observe how someone develops slowly into something new. Not only from the parental point of view but also from the photographer’s eye. It never gets boring because there always new aspects, new angles, an evolving character, a human being in constant development. i can’t wait to see my children developing. It gives me inspiration and unmeasurable joy!

Michael

This is Michael, my friend’s Sharon son. I like this portrait for its subtle colors and intimate connection between subject and photographer. This is a bold look into the camera!

Taken with a Leica M6 and a 35mm lens on Kodak Gold 200.

Photographers: Thomas Stoffaneller

Thomas Stoffaneller is a photographer from Innsbruck/Austria. His images show beautiful street scenes from Asia and Africa , landscapes in b/w, all on film and beautifully executed. This is classic darkroom work and a good example that there are still things which cannot be achieved with a multi automatic multi megapixel DSLR.
To be able to craft this kind of images you must have a feeling for what you see and then be able to translate that into images and onto the paper.

Thomas and his partner Stefanie Klaunzer share a wonderful website which can be found here!
They are moving to Malaysia this year and I am very much looking forward to meet them.

East Coast

My daughter Maya, Singapore East Coast Beach, Jan. 2009…

intimate

Some portraits are just more personal than others. I don’t know how exactly it happens but sometimes the camera is able to catch something, a certain look, that is only fully revealed when the image is out…

The Maid

This is our maid Puji, together with our daughter Maya. Maids also run under “Nanny”, “Ama”, “housekeeper”, “domestic help” and other terms to describe what they are or what they do. Sometimes they work during the day, for a few hours or full time.

In rich Asian or Middle East countries (Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong etc.) they usually come from the poor neighboring countries like The Philippines, Indonesia, or Sri Lanka/India. They stay with you and are more or less part of the family, taking care of household and children.

Most of these women come from poor backgrounds and work abroad to support their families at home. That means they leave parents, husbands, children behind and stay with someone else’s family for two or more years. Most of the time they don’t see their relatives for a very long time and work on standby between 72 and 90 hours a week (6am to 8pm, six to seven days a week). The conditions they live in mostly depend on the legal protection in their host country and on the treatment they get from their employers.
As one might guess, in some places neither is very good. In the Middle east you often hear awful stories about abuse. Maids have to perform dangerous duties, are sometimes beaten and do not get the appropriate private space. In congested places like Hong Kong it is very common for maids to sleep on the kitchen floor, and even in our pampered Singapore maids regularly have to sleep in the children’s’ room, or in windowless storage rooms or bomb shelters inside their employers apartments. The pay is far below every local standard, regular fixed working hours don’t really exist or there is no control mechanism.
In today’s conditions, the local economies have more or less adapted to the availability of this kind of foreign labor. This means the cost of living is so high that most middle class families depend on a second income which means they need domestic helpers. Thus, the system feeds itself: Cheap foreign helpers create higher (double) family incomes which then lets prices soar. In the end you depend on the maid while there is no market for locals to work part time as cleaners, baby seats etc. Our family is no exception.

To be frank: I welcome the opportunity for foreign people to work in countries where they can make much more money than in their home countries. This means they can support their children, send them to better schools and improve their life. What I don’t like about it is the insufficient legal protection, the lack of regular working hours, and the poor pay compared to local standards. I think “equal pay for equal work” is something that should be achieved everywhere. In my opinion, the current system creates not only a master-servant mentality; it also leads to abuse and a chauvinistic view upon poorer countries and people. Not very healthy for a nation!

So, please, fellow Singaporeans, start to show a little bit more dignity and humanity and make rules that not only protect the maids from abuse but also create a legal environment without too many grey areas. Make it compulsory to provide every maid with a decent room and recreational time! Pay them a fair salary and treat them like employees, not like servants or temporary slaves! Teach your children that every human being has to be treated with respect and dignity and show them that their parents can cook and clean as well, in order to bring up children who will not depend on servants to tie their shoe laces for the rest of their lives!

scuba

Another image from last month’s diving weekend in Malaysia, this time in black & white. This as an inspiration for people who think diving is not their “piece of cake”…

All images are taken with a HOLGA plastic camera.