The One Room Flats photo exhibition closed its doors on 16th May. During its time to the public eye at the History Museum, I visited the exhibits 3 times, each time with different feelings.

The first time, with a crowd of about 50 and my own photo presentation on Cambodia at the same premises, I?d skimmed through the photographs in 10 minutes and generally scoping the environ where my own July exhibition will take place, taking mental notes on their display style and how I?d like mine to be. Yeah....steal some ideas!

And I remember my initial silent reactions when hearing of the exhibition days earlier?..

?Oh God?.. why?re these kids digging up something like this? Who the hell is going to even want to take a second look at these, these?. People??

?The government can?t be blind?..there?s gotta be some kind of government budget ??? sheesh? aren?t there things like Retirement Homes, institutions or Hospices for people like these?? and?

?I hope tourists don?t come and see this.?

The second time, I sneaked in during lunch hour on a quiet Monday, had the place to myself and silently absorbed the spirit of the photographs.

Who were these old and weird folks who lived on the fringe of our society? Where were their children? Who were their friends?

Many within the images looked tired. A couple of them looked senile and/or unsound. But many too had radiant smiles for the young photographers who documented their lives.

Does society want to remember them? Or try to forget them.

I can?t remember the photographers? names but their images on air walls and on the coffee table remain branded in my mind.

A screaming old man railing against the gate. A retard curled up on the corner of a filthy and dark common corridor. An old man sprawled on an elevated cardboard bed outside his home. The pigeons flying through the air. ?Don?t come in. Wait I call police? ?Don?t open, wait dog bite you? An old lady sits dignified beneath her own beautiful portrait when she was younger ?.

Will this be my fate when I am of no use to MY society?

I look at the mock set up of a one room flat they put up and recognize familiar things which I last saw 35 years ago. A formica top coffee table. The creaking wooden sofa set adorned with rough cloth cushions. Old calendars. Nothing thrown away that could still be used. I could almost smell the medicated oil and burning joss within the air-conditioned hall where the exhibits now sat.

Those days, during the late 60s and 70s, areas like Redhill, Havelock, Bukit Merah and Bukit Ho Swee, the humble one-room flats were alive like a throbbing, vibrant being. Tens of thousands of the young and old used to live difficult but happy times in these rough and boisterous neighborhoods. Nothing was sterile like it is today.

My grandmother?..how I miss you with such pain in my heart. I remember how you used to bring me here to visit your best friends in a trishaw. I loved hiding behind their dusty curtains playing make believe. I broke so many things, you kept the Redifussion set well out of my reach! We loved each other so much, you were always my rescuer, saving me from countless canings from my mum and dad. Yes, I remember all the good times we had together??just you and me Ah Mah?..I remember so clearly now.

The last time was on Friday evening, a day before they dismantled everything to make way for the Migrant Workers exhibition. I settled down into an old arm-chair, quietly going through the images and portfolios again and again and again. Holding back seriously nostalgic tears, I absorbed it all one last time.

My sincere thanks to Robert Zhao for gifting me with 3 wonderful pieces of his works?.. 2 birds flying between blocks of flats, a sleeping old man sprawled out on a wooden bed in the common corridor and a pack of cigarettes and box of matches sitting atop a flowered table-cloth with a distorted human figure peering out of a small magnifying glass.

He has a very sensitive eye for images.

All the works displayed and within the book ?Some Things? brimmed with huge amounts of talent reflecting maturity and depth beyond their makers? young years?.. Nicholas Chee, Ben Wong, Song Nian, Ho Shing Ming, Yvonne Ng, PC Lang, Lu Wanshi, Keidi Lim, Poh Han Siong and JuL.

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Streetshooter (Dr Lim) commented why exhibitions don?t go online (I assume as in a virtual photo exhibition). First reactions, mine included, was that nothing beats actually being in front of a real print.

Now, having given his comments more serious thought, I take my words back. Virtual photo exhibitions do have their places and serve certain needs. Apart from getting a potentially much wider reach and money saving issues, they give access to those with little chance of access to works. Almost every website worth its salt has an online gallery today, so why not an online art/photo exhibition?

It?ll be interesting to see how such an exhibition markets itself versus traditional posters, flyers, banners and brochures.

Maybe one day, we?d see affordable cameras with a data or telecommunication devise built-in that?d allow images to be transferred the moment that they?re made. God, this would be mind blowing?..?live? photos, ?live? video sent to some kind of data bank or ?live? gallery half a world away, allowing viewers to see images only seconds old. That technology?s begun already with cell phones equipped with tiny cameras and the Iraqi War with live video coverage. I now pray for the current crappy image transmission quality to improve.

If the world really went totally digital, my dream camera for street/people photography would be ??

- a camera body/image tank that keeps in my pocket, or better yet, safe at home 5000 miles away, with a wireless connection to an image capture device (with lens) that fits into one palm and a HUD (heads up display) unit built into my sunglasses.

- I would then want to be the first to launch a ?living? photo exhibition where images made would be virtually transmitted on plasma-type screens styled like empty picture frames at a physical gallery where the audience sits in a theatre-like auditorium admiring newly transmitted images with a Love-this-Pic-Scale Meter in hand to instantly register a score.

30 years from now, I see myself telling the grand kids ?

-?Y?know, in the ?ol days, we used to have to hold the whole camera up to our eyes to shoot pictures?

-?I used to have a camera that didn?t run on a single battery!?

-?Now those silly Germans used to install this thing called a base-plate below a Leica/Contax so that the only way you?d get to load film?.. what?s film? Well, it came in a little light-tight canister?.?

-?At the beginning of time, the best cameras were made in Germany, then Japan?..?

-?Wow! This has got to be a great collectible camera! Its made in China/Taiwan/Korea! It?s a shame they?re moving so much of the camera production over to Nigeria/Serbia/Khazakstan??

-?We used to get GOOD pictures out of a CCD the size of a 10 cent coin?

-?You sissies?..in the ol' days we loved chemicals...."

-?Oh...THAT lever? Its the film advance lever. And NO.....our cameras couldnt make phone calls then....."

-?Wow??you?ve got a nice used Leica M12 ?. made in Japan, look-like-metal-body, with an old serial number?.. 3xx,xxx,xxx. And you paid $250 for it? It might be valuable some day. Well, check THIS out?.I got a dinosaur M6 that?s numbered 2,xxx,xxx ?..yeah, it was all quality before they hit the 100 million camera mark. Gillette International sure made this a popular camera again after it bought Leica from Louis Vuitton.?

- "OH, come on NOW...You mean you guys NEVER heard of Nikon before?"

-?The sky used to be blue?

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The Migrant Workers exhibition prep work got under way over the weekend and we had a lot of volunteers showing up to help. Putting together the steel scaffoldings for the environment within which the works will reside was back breaking and it was a challenge getting the whole structure to sit up straight without toppling over! If any migrant workers from the construction industry saw our handicraft, it will surely cynical laughter from them.

Shahidul Alam arrived at 5am on Tuesday morning and he shared a funny story with me in the car. ?I have 47 children. Adopted. My life partner says its ironic?..in a man-woman relationship, its normally the woman who provides the children?? our relationship is strange?..I?m the one providing the children instead!?

?I still have to mark papers during this trip? he sighed.

He?s due to exhibit at the Malaysian National Art Gallery soon and later in the year at the Oxford Gallery.

I find Dr Alam a man who is very down to earth. Dressed in traditional Bangladeshi garb and a waist pouch, the professor carried with him no airs and was of easy conversation and many friends. His bearded face reflected a genuine glow while his eyes belonged to a man still acutely alert and focused on his calling. After dinner, he returned to the museum with Darren Soh and Nicholas Chew.

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I had the first opportunity to view a copy of World Press Photo 03?. Many of the works and stories were strong.

I looked within for Asian names. There were some, not many. When will the day come when more Asians put up more critical work and put forth a strong challenge to these awards? Where has the Asian talent migrated? Glam and fashion?

Nicholas commented that the Asian eye and perspective was very different from the Western eye.

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Greg picked up a book ?40 Years in China? by Marc Riboud for me at Kinokuniya Book Store for US$15. I had borrowed a devastated and heavily dog-eared copy from the library last year and devoured its contents. It?s a keeper.

Will be meeting up with Tan Ngiap Heng and Kay Chin next week at a photo exhibition at the Alliance Francaise (damn the French for spelling it their way, why can?t they just name the place in English?)

Till the next journal entry?..happy days