Rosalynn Tay | Ethiopia

Photo © Rosalynn Tay | All Rights Reserved

I had seen Rosalynn Tay's photographic work on Ethiopia some months ago, and thought that it reminded me of Sebastiao Salagdo's style; black and white, stark and contrasty. 

Her 2014 gallery of images made during a photography trip to the south of the country are devoid of the artifices that are favored by many travel photographer who visit that region. 

In contrast to many photographers who feature images of tribes in south Ethiopia and the Omo Valley, depicting them in elaborate (and contrived) headdress, Ms Tay photographs her subjects in a natural setting...without having recourse to artificial props.

The Lower Omo River in south west Ethiopia is home to eight different tribes whose population is about 200,000 and it is there that they've lived there for many centuries. The tribes such as the Daasanach, Kara (or Karo), and the Mursi live along the Omo river and depend on it for their livelihood. The annual flooding of the Omo River feeds the biodiversity of the region and guarantees the food security of the tribes especially as rainfall is low and erratic.

Rosalynn Tay is a travel and fashion (as well as editorial) photographer based in Singapore, and is a peripatetic traveler whose fondness of travel led her to photograph in countless countries. She travels to Sri Lanka, Japan, Mongolia, Bangladesh, China, Malaysia, Siberia, Morocco and even ventured to North Korea. She is a graduate of Spéos, the internationally recognized photography school in Paris. She's also a committed Leica user, and has exhibited her work (Ethiopia -solo- and LeicaXhibition -group). 

She also has given photo talks in Singapore including Leica Women in Photography; an initiative founded to celebrate and showcase outstanding women who brought their unique perspectives to the field of photography.

Aga Szydlik | Singapore's Street Opera

Photo © Aga Szydlik | All Rights Reserved

Readers of The Travel Photographer blog know of my current long term involvement in documenting Chinese Opera of the diaspora; an involvement that will culminate into the production of a coffee-table book bearing the same title. It is for this reason that the blog has been recently populated with posts with excellent work of Chinese opera by travel and documentary photographers.

Aga Szydlik's Wyang: Singapore's Street Opera work is one of those. Her close-up portraits of the opera actors are striking by their unvarnished look.

The earliest description of wayang in Singapore dates all the way back to the mid-1800s. For more than a century, jiexi (street opera in Mandarin) enthralled more audience than any other form of live entertainment. 

At one point, the flourishing scene supported over a hundred professional troupes that staged thousands of shows each year. Some of them even had their own dedicated venues in the city state's Chinatown.

However, now only about 10 professional street opera troupes are left in Singapore, drawing an ever-smaller audience of elderly people. The decline of street opera in Singapore was caused by its government's policy to replace dialects (such as Hakka, Hokkien et al) with Mandarin, and the slow erosion of its audience. The spread of television, movies and social media platforms exacerbated the disinterest of the younger generation in this ancient art form.

Aga Szydlik is a professional culture photographer and a doctoral candidate based in South Africa. She tells us that her journey with photography started with Muay Thai (the famous Thai fight style) which she documented extensively. Based in Thailand, she able to explore South East Asia, onwards to Indonesia and South Africa. She is enthusiastic about alternative processes, analogue photography, Lomography and salt/albumin prints as well as mixed media.

Mindy Tan | Teochew Opera

“As long as the Chinese shrines exist and people continue praying, any Chinese Opera can survive”

Continuing my obsession with Chinese Opera (and for photographers who show work that resembles mine), I discovered the lovely work of Mindy Tan who produced a video-slideshow of her images of a Teochow (aka Chiu Chow) opera troupe called Sai Yong Hong.

The Sai Yong Hong Chinese opera troupe has been performing in the Bangkok area for over 10 years. Considered as the most well known Chinese Opera troupe in the country, Sai Yong Hong has 34 actors in total. Five members come from China and the remaining 29 actors are from Thailand. There are about 20 Chinese opera troupes in Thailand, but they are reputed to be the most professional.

There are almost 10 million Thai Chinese in Thailand, making it one the largest Chinese communities in the diaspora, however the opera is not as popular as it once was.

Chiu Chow opera is a traditional art form with more than 500 years history, and is currently enjoyed by 20 million Chiu Chow people in many regions and countries. Based on local folk dances and ballads, this type of opera formed its own style under the influence of Nanxi Opera; one of the oldest Chinese operas and originated in the Song Dynasty, and originated in southern China's Chaoshan region. Clowns and females are the most distinctive characters of its shows, as well as fan-play and acrobatic skills.

Mindy Tan is a documentary and Street photographer focusing on Singapore and other Asian countries. Mindy began her career as a newspaper journalist. She won the Society of Publishers Asia (SOPA) award for excellence in Human Rights Reporting in 2007, before becoming a successful commercial and documentary photographer.

She worked for brands like Shell, Uniqlo, Mini Cooper and Huawei, and produces commissioned work for various editorial clients including Reuters, the Associated Press and Die Zeit.

An ambassador to Fujifilm on its international team of X-photographers, she has exhibited with Fujifilm in Cologne, and presented at Fujikina 2017, in both Kyoto and Tokyo. She is currently on artist residency with the Exactly Foundation.

Thaipusam Festival In Singapore | Hendra Lauw

Here's an interesting and compelling slideshow on Thaipusam, the Hindu festival celebrated mostly by the Tamil community during January or February. It's mainly observed in countries where there is a significant presence of Tamil community such as India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Mauritius Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar.

Thaipusam is a celebration dedicated to the Hindu deity Lord Murugan (youngest son of Shiva and his wife Parvati). 

This particular slideshow was made of a combination of color and monochrome photographs. Thaipusam is a rather striking festival with devotees shaving their heads and undertaking a pilgrimage along a set route while carrying out various acts of devotion, which may include self-mortification by piercing the skin, tongue or cheeks with skewers.

For my taste, the slideshow relies too heavily on the Ken Burns effect; presumably thought by the photographer to add focus to the scenes, but I thought was distracting. Nonetheless, the slideshow made of photographs from a Fuji X-T1, X-T2, and Fujinon XF 14mm f/2.8, XF 23mm f/2.0 and XF 90mm f/2.0 lenses, provides a thorough view of the festival as it occurs.

Hendra Lauw is a Singapore-based photographer. With a background as programmer and IT project manager, he also won the Singapore Best Photography Blog Award in 2010, Best South East Asia Photoblog in 2007 and was finalist for the Best Portrait Photography Photoblog in 2007. He can also be followed on Instagram.

Aik Beng Chia | Lao Sai Tao Yuan

Teochew opera, or Chaozhou opera, is one of the many variants of Chinese opera, and originated in Chaoshan region in south China. It was popular in Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore. 

Chinese opera is a popular form of drama and musical theatre with roots going back to the early periods in China. It is a composite performance art mixing various art forms that existed in ancient China, and evolved gradually over more than a thousand years, reaching its mature form in the 13th century during the Song Dynasty. It evolved to include various art forms, such as music, song and dance, martial arts, acrobatics, as well as literary art forms to become Chinese opera.

Above is a photo slideshow by Singaporean photographer Aik Beng Chia of Lao Sai Tao Yuan, the only group that survived all these years. It was formed in early 19th century and is the oldest remaining Teochew Opera in Singapore.

Photos © Aik Beng Chia-All Rights Reserved

I liked the way that Mr Chia juxtaposed the portraits of the Teochew opera performers side by side; the monochromatic ones in their daily street clothes, and the colored ones in their costumed regalia.

Aik Beng Chia started photographing the daily lives of people on the streets of Singapore in 2008. Since then, these images have earned him a strong following on Instagram numbering over 20,000. They have also caught the attention of UK newspaper, The Guardian, which let him take over the Guardian Travel Instagram account for a three-day special feature on Singapore as seen through his eyes. He has also been invited to be a contributor to Everyday Asia on Instagram, and his works have been exhibited and published internationally.

Aik Beng started the “Singkarpor” project in 2011, and of the thousands of photos taken since, a carefully curated collection will be shown at its exhibition. In 2013, he launched his first monograph "Tonight The Streets Are Ours" published by the Invisible Photographer Asia, which showed Singapore's Little India after dusk. 

Chris McGrath | Thaipusam

Photo © Chris McGrath-All Rights Reserved

I've posted about Thaipusam a few times already, but I never tire to view the varying angles and scenes that various photographers have featured on their websites.

Chris McGrath is one of the photographers who attended the version of this Hindu festival in
Singapore, rather than Malaysia where it's held annually 13 kilometres outside its capital city, Kuala Lumpur.

In Singapore though, the preparations for Thaipusam begin early in the morning at the Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple in Little India where the devotees start to perform the necessary rituals. Once these done, the procession moves through central Singapore to another Hindu temple about 2 miles away. The festival occurs on the full moon during the Tamil month of Thai, which occured on February 7, 2012.

On the day of the festival, devotees shave their heads and perform various acts of devotion, notably carrying heavy burdens, and carry out acts of self mortification by piercing their skin, tongue or cheeks with skewers and sharp hooks. 

Chris McGrath is a staff photographer with Getty Images, specializing in editorial and commercial assignments. His images are published in Stern, Newsweek, Time, Sports Illustrated, The Independent, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, ESPN the magazine, The Guardian, L'Equipe and on daily news and sport websites worldwide. His work has also been recognized with many industry awards including, POYi, NPPA, CHIPP, AIPP, The Atlanta Photojournalism contest, PX3 and the New York Press Photographers Association.

Thaipusam is on my bucket-list, but until I get the time and photograph it myself, I'm happy to feature images of this festival from various other photographers.