As a child, I was fascinated by the natural world and different people, places and cultures. So I grew up watching the National Geographic Channel and especially enjoyed geography, history and literature. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the subjects were tortuous. They even diagnosed me with Attention Deficit Disorder - of the dreamy kind - and gave me pills to concentrate.
In hindsight, it was interesting how I only needed those pills when practicing math. It’s tragic that arts subjects seem to be second grade; the system pigeon holes you very quickly if you don’t fit in. i.e ‘Oh, you can’t do math and science, let’s put you in the arts subjects’. Why can’t one have a legitimate interest in arts?
I developed a keen interest in photography in secondary school. I started out fiddling with my Dad’s cameras, and experimented a bit more in the photography club. Eventually, I started to get serious about it while at the Communications and Media Management Diploma in Temasek Polytechnic. It was a real epiphany because when I finally got to do something I enjoyed, my labours were hardly laborious. Till today, I have stacks of National Geographic magazines and photography magazines stashed somewhere.
This photo of Lee Kuan Yew won the TODAY News Picture of the Year in 2013. By society’s standards, you could technically say it was my most defining work at the time. I don’t really feel that way now, I was just in the right place at the right time. It's funny because I also shot a photo of Kim Jong Un in Singapore at the Trump-Kim Summit. These big moments were a confluence of years of development and experimentation. In that sense, there are many other moments which are equally defining to me, even some “failed” ones because they give you stories to tell.
Society tends to glorify success, results or talent, but it’s clearly not the whole equation. People who are good at photography might be exposed to a camara early; people who are good at a sport may have had parents who took an interest in it and nurtured them. They started out early and slowly accumulated advantage — small, seemingly insignificant actions often add up to much more with deliberate practice. Nobody was born knowing how to pole vault. Many people we label as geniuses or prodigies are ordinary people who have become extraordinary because of the little steps they take each day.
I was glad to enter University. It was at first unimaginable given my polytechnic background. Despite the anticipation, I struggled in my first year. The readings and tests were especially tedious after two years of stagnation in the army. University was like the JC I never went to. I found myself chasing grades and trying to outdo people and myself. Especially for creative assignments, I struggled between doing what I wanted over what I needed to do to get good grades.
I reflected on this and pondered how in a neoliberal capitalist system, we are conditioned into a mindset of scarcity and competition — in our world, money and the supposedly spontaneous, self-evident market is above life itself. Before he was assassinated, Robert Kennedy pleaded for values and ideals over what (was then known as) Gross National Product. Kennedy said: “It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”
The bell curve is a great example — we are not-too-subtly teaching kids that in order to thrive, you need to rip the person next to you. Call me idealistic, but I choose to believe we can and should create our own path and that collaboration can be synergistic.
Perhaps we are starting to awaken to the fact that this is a cynical worldview and not the only way to live our lives. It may even be harmful — why else did Greta Thunberg lambast politicians for their obsession with “money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth” and how did the book 'This Is What Inequality Looks Like' become a bestseller locally?
I graduated recently and decided to freelance as a multimedia creative and commercial photographer. This allows me to own the creative process, enjoy the product of my labour and feel a sense of purpose. Purpose is so important because if you feel alienated from your work and from other humans, you become cynical.
Sometimes people ask: “When are you going to get a real full time job?” They naturally assume the status quo — get good grades, a good job, earn money, buy stuff we don’t really need, elope or BTO… I refuse to believe that is the only way.
Oscar Wilde said: “To live is the rarest thing in the world, most people exist, that is all”. I’ve been thinking about this, what makes life worth living? For me, its when you sincerely enjoy your work, and when people appreciate and value you. I have a client who gave me a downpayment upfront and said “I think this will help you as a freelancer”. I was so touched. Who does that? Usually people hold payments to the last minute’.
Sometimes there is serendipity. I experience little moments of glee when I realise I don’t need to squeeze in the train, or when I'm having tea at midday in an empty cafe. Or when a client thanks me for the work I do. To me, it’s priceless having my own space and the time to explore things I want.
In greek mythology, there’s a story of Icarus, of how he tried to fly near the sun, how his wings melted and he fell to the Earth. It’s often told to warn us of overestimating our ability. Yet, I choose to see it from a different perspective and as a reminder to make things, break things and have an interesting life. It’s embodied in a poem by Oscar Wilde:
“Never regret thy fall,
O Icarus of the fearless flight,
For the greatest tragedy of them all,
Is never to feel the burning light”
