Cultural Medallion recipient Foo Tee Jun gets photography retrospective at Objectifs
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Objectifs has assembled more than 80 mostly black-and-white analogue photographs Foo took from the 1960s to 1970s.
PHOTO: OBJECTIFS
SINGAPORE – Now 88, veteran photographer Foo Tee Jun can no longer hold up a camera. Unlike the more snobbish of his profession, however, he has only good things to say about the iPhone: It at least still allows him to snap photographs of his surroundings for good morning WhatsApp messages that he crafts daily to his friends.
Such is the pragmatic and unaffected nature of Foo, who received the Cultural Medallion for photography in 1989. A keen observer of early Singapore and one of the early adopters of the lens at a time when it was a niche and expensive hobby, he is being given a retrospective at Objectifs – Centre for Photography and Film. The exhibition, titled Time & Tide, opens on June 22.
Objectifs has assembled more than 80 mostly black-and-white analogue photographs Foo took from the 1960s to 1970s – artistically composed shots of a Singapore of trishaws, billowing laundry hung on strings and small sail boat competitions.
Foo, speaking in Mandarin over the telephone, says some of these in his storage have degraded over time.
“They are a record of an age,” he says. “There were street hawkers at Clarke Quay and Orchard Road. The area near Tanah Merah used to be the sea before land reclamation. People picked shells, dried and burned them and mixed the ash with water to paint on walls. It’s an unrecognisable country from today.”
Born in 1935, Foo has been a witness to not just Singapore’s evolution, but also the camera’s. Circumstances conspired to push him towards this calling.
In secondary school, he was the only person in his class who owned a camera, a second-hand Agfa given to him by his factory worker father on his 15th birthday. His classmates clamoured for it, and predictably, it quickly went missing.
“I didn’t know how to work anything so everything was blurry,” Foo recalls of his beginnings, mostly spent attempting to capture the speed and sweat of school basketball matches. “I thought they were quite cute but people laughed at me so I threw the photos away.”
Yet in the 1960s, when he was in his 20s and working as a dental clinic technician, his boss unexpectedly gave him a second shot, generously lending him a Rolleiflex camera that he owned.
Thus equipped, Foo enrolled as a member of the Photographic Society Of Singapore and went on photographic expeditions every Sunday. In 1965, a friend “took pity” on him and set him up with capital to purchase an analogue Nikon.
Foo would repay him in $50 instalments over more than a year. “Sometimes I didn’t have money and had to ask for deferment.”
In 1974, Foo’s hobby turned into a profession. For 21 years, he was an official photographer for the then Ministry of the Environment, shooting photographs for its newsletters and reports on the progress of construction sites or the hygiene of specific locales.
For him, trite warnings not to make one’s hobby one’s job held little water.
“On Sundays I still shot photos. Those of us from the Photographic Society would share a car and go everywhere. We’d go farther if the weather was good. We sent our photos in for monthly competitions, and I sometimes won. It was a great encouragement,” he says.
Ever the realist, he feels no particular attachment to the monochrome colours of his photographs that lend them a gritty, and in some instances, even abstract, sensibility.
Man On A Tube by Foo Tee Jun.
PHOTO: FOO TEE JUN
“Colour was too expensive. It actually depends on the subject. If the colour of a space is super vibrant, colour is definitely better than black-and-white,” he says.
“I learnt over time that it’s about finding the angle and the light source. And then you try to derive beauty from that.”
In hindsight, he says that photographers like him have a responsibility, especially important amid the rapid pace of development in Singapore.
“Places like Mata Ikan Village near Upper Changi Road where I always went have now disappeared. Every photo is an attempt to preserve history so that our posterity can view them.
“These photos (of my career) were taken over nearly 50 years, and I won’t be around for the next 50. Hopefully those who are younger, through me, can keep a view of Singapore’s past.”
Sail Boat Competition by Foo Tee Jun.
PHOTO: FOO TEE JUN
Book it/ Foo Tee Jun: Time & Tide
Where: Objectifs – Centre for Photography and Film, Chapel Gallery, 155 Middle Road objectifs.com.sg/time-and-tide/
When: June 22 to July 28, Tuesdays to Saturdays, noon to 7pm; Sundays, noon to 4pm; artist talk with Foo Tee Jun in Mandarin on June 23, 2.30 to 3.30pm
Admission: Free
Info:
