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while you were sleeping
2002 - 2004 | singaporeall images darren soh
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I started photography at a local news- it wasnt till a year later that I actually scape that presented itself would ap-
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I started photography at a local newspaper where I was taught to embraceobjectivity and to leave my feelingsaside while photographing.
Being older and wiser now, I havecome to the realization that life is not
always so straightforward. Much ofthe photography that I practice today
no longer requires me to beobjective in any way.And it was only recently that I beganto admit that the possibilities of pho-tography were far greater than I had
allowed myself to imagine. In manyways, the photographs in this bookare a direct result of that admission.
The images in this book began theirjourney to life on a night in June 2002.Suffering from insomnia, I decidedto make the best out of the fact that
I was awake when almost everyoneelse was asleep. I took long drivesand stopped to photograph whatever Ifelt could be visually interesting.
My frst steps were tentative, with notheme or specifc subject matter what-
soever. My approach was decidedly
un-journalistic insofar as there wasneither a story I was trying to tell nora particular message I was trying toconvey. It was driven instead by howI felt about the particular place I hadchanced upon.
Many sleepless nights ensued oncethe project took on its initial shape but
it wasn t till a year later that I actuallyknew what it was that I wanted to at-tempt to record on flm.
Many of the locations in this book areplaces any Singaporean would nottake a second glance at should he or
she pass them by in the day. Comenightfall, however, the light recedes
and shadows take over.Familiarity fades into obscurity andthe very same places we know sowell begin to take on a foreign andalmost alien visage.
The unfamiliarity of the familiar fasci-nated me and this was the Singaporethat I wanted to portray: a Singaporethat in some ways is there for all tosee yet cannot really be seen withoutmy actions of photography. Throughlong exposures and flms unpredict-
able chemical reactions to ambientlighting at night, I brought to life aSingapore of which amorphous hintspreviously only existed in my mind.
The photographic acts I embarkedupon were thus deliberate and highly
subjective.
For me, making these images was aroad to discovery. Every night that Iwas out and about, I found out some-thing new - about photography, aboutthe landscape before me or simply
about myself. Each frame I madecontained a surprise, as I had no wayof knowing exactly how the night-
scape that presented itself would appear recorded on flm. The late GarryWinogrand once said that he photo-graphed to fnd out what somethingwill look like photographed and it waswith his words in mind that I revelledin the measured doses of my insom-
niac experimentations.
It has been two years since I frst tookmy camera and tripod out for thoselong nocturnal drives of discovery andstill I cannot be sure of what to expectwhen I start to expose that frame of
flm to the night.
That, to me, is the only reason I needto continue photographing.
Darren SohSeptember 2004