Archive for April 2010
Singapore: Work in progress
Masjid al Mukminin, Jurong
I have passed the halfway mark of my one-month residency at Objectifs Center for Photography and Filmmaking in Singapore. I’m teaching workshops, making presentations, and working on a project, a series of photographs (with audio and possibly video) about faith and spirituality here.
It took me two weeks of making photos in houses of worship to get any perspective on what I have actually been producing. I realized that the photographs are less about people’s “faith” and much more about the places of worship themselves and the rituals performed there.
Sri Krishnan Temple (Hindu), Waterloo Street
To gain access to these places, I have behaved like a journalist, trudging from mosque to church to temple (and telephoning as well), approaching officials, and asking for permission to photograph and record interviews. So far, I have made my pitch at roughly a dozen houses of worship, been granted varying levels of access at six, turned down by two, and don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-youed by the rest.
Hong San Si (Daoist), Kembangan
Once I have gained access, however, I have responded more like a visual artist than a reporter. I’m now working from a distance, often from the side or behind, not getting in people’s faces. I’m trying to portray something essential about the rituals of worship without turning them into exotic spectacles, and I’m trying to balance my literal, newsman’s impulse with my desire to be more lyrical.
Masjid Sultan, Kampong Glam
I think that by backing off I have granted myself a reprieve (subconsciously) from my usual journalistic confronting and prodding. But I’m also responding to the sacredness of these spaces for the worshippers. I’m not religious. In fact, I’m a rather hardheaded secular humanist. I am deeply mistrustful—and sometimes afraid—of people who use religion as a weapon to diminish, divide, and destroy those who don’t practice as they do. But I have encountered a number of exceptional people of faith in my 20-plus years as a traveling journalist/human—men and women for whom belief, not simply religion, is the organizing principle of their lives. I don’t have to understand or emulate them, but I respect them. So rather than poking and prodding people here to explain and justify their faith, I’m doing my best to look and listen.
Bethesda Chapel, Kembangan
More to follow.
16 April 2010
