Stories from Malaysia
My first encounter with the residential complex had been accidental, stumbling upon it while tracing the Kerayong River from its source to confluence as part of a documentary project on Klang Valley's river network. The second visit was to photograph the area, and by the third visit, all the blocks had been demolished. The residents …
Kampung Tanjung, Kuala Terengganu The last time I was here, the house was shrouded in darkness. I could barely see the tail light of a motorcycle, streaking to a halt between the stilts. The house stood alone on an empty plot of land, or rather the land around the house had been cleared. I promised …
Quite happy with my recent purchase of a small booklet of prints from the weekend flea market. I was only interested in the first 7 or so photographs but there was no way to purchase them without tearing the booklet. The negatives were unfortunately nowhere to be found. One booth had a small box of empty …
Another routine visit to the weekend flea market in search of old photographic material. One of the sellers had a small plastic box filled with old photographs. Most of them were vacation snapshots, group photographs at schools, a series with a Chinese master demonstrating some sort of martial arts movement, photographs of a plywood company …
What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than browsing through a box full of abandoned memories at the flea market in Amcorp Mall. These old photographs are usually sourced from family albums, where the prints are stripped out and packaged to be sold individually. In light of how everything remotely old is being sold …
As someone who deals almost exclusively with fragments of the past, a favourite past time of mine is to look for old photographic negatives and work on extracting the images. Some time last year, my dear friend Audrey kindly loaned me a collection of her father's negatives from the '20s for me to work on. …
Continued from Part 1 Scanning There were several problems here. All I had was a flatbed scanner (Canon 9900F) which came with both 35mm and medium format film holders. None of them worked as designed. After much frustration and tests, I learned that I had to place the film flat on the glass to get …
Continue reading "Portraits of a Monsoon: Making the print, part 2"
