dusun Malaysian e-Journal of the Arts
yusuf martin
December 2011/ January 2012 Ridiculously Free
photography issue
ismail hashim kamal sabran samsul said dennis lau amir zainorin eric peris alan quah
ismail h
father of Malaysia
hashim
an photography
Best of Asian Erotica 1 By Stephen Leather, John Burdett, Meihan Booey, Jonathan Lim,Yusuf Martin, Alison Jean Lester, Hari Kumar, O Thiam Chin, Erich Sysak Monsoon Books Pte. Ltd., 2011 eBook release: June 2011 ISBN: 9789814358156
Best of South East Asian Erotica 19 stories from well-known authors in Indonesia,Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.The nineteen stories presented here examine the topic from varied angles, but they all celebrate the sensual in the sure voice of firstrate writing. A welcome addition to the growing list of erotic literature in this most erotic corner of the world. Includes Amir Muhammad, Lee Ee Leen, Amirul B Ruslan,Yusuf Martin, Christopher Taylor, Dawn Farnham, Chris Mooney-Singh, Stephen Leather and others. Monsoon Books Pte Ltd 2011 ISBN : 9789810854362
contents
page 6
december/january 2012 cover editor
ismail hashim yusuf martin
yusufmartin51@googlemail.com
Dusun TM
dusun is a not for profit publication
editorial
page 8 ismail hashim father of malaysian photography page 17 malaysian photography essay page 21 kamal sabran new photography page 31 yusuf martin - the photograph short story page 35 samsul said charcoal workers page 47 dennis lau images of borneo page 51 amir zainorin Pop collage page 55 yusuf martin - roti man short story page 58 eric peris images page 61
penang little india on the street
installation page 69 alan quah comic art
editorial
Welcome back
Dusun is rapidly becoming established as THE place to go for insights into Malaysian Art and Culture.
Each issue we bring a different aspect to our eager world wide audience, trying to bring the very best to you in the spirit of a NOT FOR PROFIT e-magazine (e-zine). Dusun is open to article contibutions - on Malaysian Art and Culture, poems and short stories which have a Malaysian connection.
Dusun seeks to promote modern and contemporary Malaysian Art and Culture, and in this issue Dusun excites and delights with a brand new theme. Malaysian photography is the lead in this issue of Dusun, highlighting the origins of modern Malaysian photography and recalling some of Malaysia’s photographic ‘heroes’.
From antiquity to modernity, from Singapore to Penang, from Eric Peris and Ismail Hashim to Kamal Sabran and fresh ways of looking at photography in Malaysia, this issue reveals some of the very best that Malaysian photographers have to offer - on the page and on the street.
Now read on...........................................
Ed.
silverfish books, 28-1 jalan telawi, bangsar baru, 59100 kuala lumpur, malaysia. tel: (603) 2284 4837, fax: (603) 2284 4839 email: info@silverfishbooks.com
ismail hashim continued
Sleeping uncontrollably, unconscious of exploding bomb
Ismail Hashim has been a leading light in Malaysian photography from the 1970s onward. He ushered in concerns about ‘social realism’ and the ‘vanishing scene’, into modern Malaysian photography. Working in Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) 1979 until 1995, on the island of Penang, enabled Ismail Hashim to influence several decades of designers and photographers. There was a major Ismail Hashim Retrospective at Penang State Art Gallery, 2 – 30 Nov 2010.
After having ‘nasi kandar’ with a glass of water
enviroment graphics
bicycle seats
dapur minyak, dapur gas, jerang air, goreng cucur
post boxes along bagan serai – taiping road,
Divya Dubey D-220, Sector 55, Noida, UP 201307, India Email: divya@gyaanabooks.com marketing@gyaanabooks.com
article
malaysian photography Then, when the time was up, he lifted the plate off, when at once we saw a picture of Singapore fixed to the plate exact tonature, in all its beauty. And as to the plate on which the picture was fixed, he put it in front, on which was all the landscape without flaw, and with the greatest case. Munshi Abdullah (The Daguerreotypes in Hakayit Abdulla 1849, trans 1874). The first stable photographic print (8”x 6.5” of farm buildings) was made sometime in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, when he used a camera obscura to burn a permanent image on pewter plate in Le Gras, France. In Malaya, one of the earliest recollections of photography is by Munshi Abdullah (father of modern Malay literature), in 1849 (Hikayat Abudullah), when he mentions seeing an early daguerreotype view of Singapore – possibly in 1841. Gaston Dutronquoy appeared in Singapore and set up his studio, curiously named London Hotel, around 1839. Some years later photographic studios were opened by Danish Kristen Feilberg and German August Sachtler, Singapore (1864), called Sachtler & Co. Many believe that the physical studio had pre-existed the setting up of Sachtler & Co but the facts are uncertain. Kristen Feilberg soon followed with a photographic studio in Penang (1867) partnering E. Hermann Sachtler (thought to be August Sachtler’s brother).
kristen feilberg dyak women borneo 1860s
In Malaysia, Fine Art Photography has been, like ‘Digital Art’, a relatively newcomer to the Art world party. It is evident that Malaysian photography has been around since the late1800s; however incorporating the mechanics of photography into an Art form rather than a Craft has been somewhat tardy. Even now, in the beginning of the 21st century, Malaysian photography is slow to catch up with printmaking, painting, sculpture et al and yet, to all intents and purposes, photography as a medium pre-dates Malaysian painting by at least 80 years. According to Redza Piyadasa (On Origins and Beginnings, in Vision and Idea Re-looking Modern Malaysian Art ed. By T.K. Sabapathy -1994) Malaysian artistic activity may only be traced back to the 1920s. Little is mentioned of Fine Art photography in the major Malaysian Art tomes. Modern Artists of Malaysia (T.K. Sabapathy & Redza Piyadasa) gives a quick mention to Nirmala Shanmughalingam’s Statement III (1975 – 79) (p36 -37) then follows up with four pages on this one artist using photography in her work (p156 -159). Vision and Idea Re-
august sachtler 1864 portrait of an upperclass chinese man
looking Modern Malaysian Art (ed. T.K. Sabapathy) gives a bare mention of Ismail Hashim (p74), and the more recent Susurmasa (Timelines – celebrating 50 years of Malaysian Art 1958 - 2008) produced by National Art Gallery Malaysia seems to overlook photography except for a very brief mention of more the contemporary work of Masnoor Ramli Mahmud’s Journey II (2007) (p257) and Yee I-Lan’s Horizon Series (2003) (p259) – in picture form only. Syed Ahmad Jamal’s Crafts and the Visual Arts (vol14 The Encyclopedia of Malaysia) is a little more generous with its two pages of text on Malaysian photography (p122 -123). Despite being overlooked, Malaysian photography has prospered in its own way since those early pioneers back in the 1800s. Early photographers in Malaya (later Malaysia), were interested in capturing exotic, alluring ethnicities. Many of the early photos concentrated on tribes and aboriginal peoples in Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. It was a trend continued in Malaya by expeditions and British government agents including James W.W. Birch – the first British Resident in Perak (1873) who was also an amateur photographer. While the Dadist groups, along with Hannah Höch and Raoul Hausmann, the Surrealists - Man Ray etc had used photomontage, solarisation and rayograms (photograms) and others exercised experiments in photography from approximately the 1920s to 1945, Malaysian art was still grappling with the art of painting. Interests in photography in Malaya tended to be practical – lighting, treatment of background, detailing and composition used primarily for salon type photography, with little thought of further experimentation. man ray - rayogram
From 1960, Dennis Lau made it his life’s work to cover as many aspects as possible of Sarawak, Sabah and Brunei in his photographs. His many stunning representations of Borneo tribe peoples has continued that ethnographic trend begun by the foreigners to his shores. Lau’s black and white imagery gives us glimpses of daily life in the equatorial rainforests of Borneo, revealing the commonplace as well as the strangely exotic to excitedly interested eyes. There is little doubt that being born part Chinese and part Melanau (an ethnicity from central Borneo) not only guided Lau’s love for his environment, but also his love of the individuals peopling it. From his early years Lau developed a deep love of the surrounding countryside and its peoples, whether they be – Iban, Melanau, Kenyah, Penan or Bidayuh. Lau developed his ‘eye’ and was encouraged in his art by K.F Wong himself a master photographer, well known in Sarawak. Wong was also celebrated for his work with Sarawak’s ethnic groups and encouraged Lau in his love of photography, for the land and inhabitants.
bidayuh
It was from the1970s onwards, as the young artists returned from their studies in Britain, USA, France, Holland and Germany, when Malaysian Arts photography began to emerge, drawing away from the ‘craft’ and more towards and ‘Art’ - several decades after Western innovations. As the young artists were returning during the 1970s, Eric Peris was working as a photojournalist for the New Straits Times. A selftaught photographer, Eric became one of the most revered ‘Art’
photographers in Malaysia, producing highly evocative Black & White images with strong features and high contrast and atmosphere enough to make the viewer gasp. Eric Peris and Ismail Hashim became prominent figures in Malaysian ‘Fine Art’ photography. Ismail Hashim took a more social realist stance to photography than Peris, photographing the commonplace and ‘revealing’ it to the world with images such as Sleeping Uncontrollably, Unconscious of exploding Bomb (1983) – where a television shows an unexploded bomb embedded in a riverbank. On the television sleeps a cat. On the floor sleeps a figure, their head is covered with a towel and body covered with a sarong – bom meletup pun tak bangun (not even a bomb would wake him), or is it simply a case of ‘How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’ (Dr Strangelove, 1964) Ismail Hasim was born in Penang, studied in Penang, and upon his return from studies abroad went back to teach in Penang from 1979 to 1995. Through the body of his works he ‘talks’ about everyday situations familiar to most Malaysians. Dapur Minyak, Dapur Gas, Jerang Air, Goreng Cucur (1990) and After having ‘Nasi Kandar’ with a glass of Water (1991) which seem to continue this theme of the ordinary expanded into the realms of Art – maybe a Malaysian extension of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Marcel Duchamp. Yet Malaysian photography is never far away from the ethnographic as can be seen in Samsul Said’s images of charcoal burners. The glitz and the glamour of the big cities still cannot deny the existence of the humble working person, far from them in both physical and mental distance. In a way Samsul Said’s work is both ethnographic – revealing the exotic, and social realist. Samsul Said’s camera does just what cameras are good at – capturing ‘the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.’ (Henri Cartier-Bresson). The contrast in those charcoal-burning images capture both the essence of the moment (augenblick – blink of an eye) and the social circumstances in which those images were taken – amidst charcoal dust, heat and low wages which force some into lives which are far from romantic though romantacised by their images’ inclusion into magazines and papers extolling the exoticness of Malaysia. Claude Levi-Strauss once wrote (in his little green notebook) ‘ ...the tropics are less exotic, than out of date’ (also found in Tristes tropiques – 1955). Still thinking in moments, blinks of the eye, artist/photographer/ musician/academic Kamal Sabran re-interprets life around him, revealing new directions, new angles, new slants on that life going on with him as participant-observer. If there ever was such a trend as Malaysian Neo-Dada - Kamal Sabran, Perakian Renaissance man, would fit the bill. The very same careful observations which fuel his sound-making (with Space Gambus Experiment), feed into his photographic image making. With Kamal Sabran’s work we are no longer in the ethnographic exotic reality, but plunged full tilt into a stark social reality with only but a hint of nostalgia. Kamal Sabran remains one of the few artists in Malaysia whose creative energy bursts into whichever medium he chooses to express himself – he is a latter day Jean Cocteau or Salvadore
the good years exhibition 1996
claude levi-strauss tristes tropiques
kamal sabran fish
Dali (when both were in their prime and working across different mediums). The curious juxtapositions of Dada and Surrealism fed into Pop Art with artists such as Kurt Schwitters (For Käte, 1947) Eduardo Paolozzi (I was a Rich Man’s Plaything, 1947) and Richard Hamilton (Just What Is It that Makes Today’s Homes so Different, so Appealing, 1956) using photomontage and collage to create worlds of surprise and fresh meaning. Malaysia has not been immune to these ideas, with artists such as Amir Zainorin exploring those foreign climes. At times reminiscent of the British Pop Artist Allan Jones - with his long legged girls and stiletto heels, Amir Zainorin uses photomontage, mixed media and collage to juxtapose images in creating his desired effect. In one collage, aptly named After Hockney, Amir Zainorin references David Hockney’s painting Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy. In his work Amir Zainorin has de-colourised that painting and added various objects – a black and orange bath duck, two tins of Campbell’s Tomato Rice Soup (with a reference to Andy Warhol), the back of a Mohican style youth in the foreground, two large pictures of ethnic persons and what appears to be an ice cream sundae. In WyethBillboard Amir Zainorin takes a much referenced work by Andrew Wyeth – Christina’s World, and ads the bathroom duck, an old wood saw, a dead bishop, a billboard hording and a reclining man in a Malay yellow costume. They are in keeping with the referential trend in Fine Art, and point to the artist’s desire to be seen as part of the Pop Art movement, though there is also the vague shadow of the quirky world of Monty Python lurking in the distance.
mr and mrs clark and percy
little india poster
As we saw at the beginning of this piece, Penang became a focus for photographers in the late 19th C, and continues to be so. Ismail Hashim was head of graphic design and photography at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) for a number of years, and used Penang as source for his social photography. More recently a photographic exhibition was held at Galeri Seni Mutiara, Penang, entitled Portraits of Penang : Little India. That exhibition featured photographs by photographer Dr Ooi Cheng Ghee. From that exhibition came the idea of an installation - placing larger than life-size black and white images, taken from the exhibition and placing them on a street in Penang – in-situ as it were. That installation, although a wonderful hymn to the art of photography and to the diligence of photographers, has a tinge of sadness. Those large black and white images are a reminder of the ambience that Penang has lost; though painstakingly captured by the marvel of photography those images point, nevertheless, to a dying culture and to that nation’s obsession with replacing antiquity with the brashness of modernity, and in that sense the installation is a resounding success.
kamal sabran
oud
patung Kamal Sabran is an artist with a poet’s soul. He works with painting, video art, short films, sound art and installations as well as photography. Kamal Sabran, while an academic, remains the leading light behind Space Gambus Experiment - a lose knitted assembly of artists, poets and musicians creating contemporary music. He is as at ease with still photography as he is with short film making, and has created some of the most influencial and original images within the last decade. Kamal Sabran is currently working towards his PhD.
fish
girl
ipoh padang
ipoh padang 2
self portrait
ipoh old town
bunga
bunga kertas
one corner of the 6x4 print has become creased, revealing the paper beneath the photographic coating, the image nevertheles In the photograph I am twenty years, and hold my first child of a few months. I wear a newly purchased two tone leather jac daughter a little towards the camera so that her mother can take the photograph, and clearly see her puffy cheeked daughter. short story It is the tail end of winter and we are all a little fresh faced from the cool of the wind. I rest against a wooden gate, a prop fo from the elements and, after the photograph is taken, the child is placed back in the buggy, strapped in for safety and comfort newly rented council house. Times are a little lean. I have recently accepted an appointment as a carer to eleven elderly men - at a home for the aged. I ha week cleaning and caring for the men whose relatives prefer the dirty work done by others, shaving and bathing the ex-husba dren’s children, because growing older is a messy business. Perhaps some of this is evident in the leanness of my face, or the through, the camera holder. The child’s mother had given up her job in the bakery, selling fresh yeasty bread in the mornings from the home bakery whic mence her working life as a domestic helper, cleaning in a residence sheltering nurses and enabling them to continue to care It was not an easy time and the white frame surrounding the photographic image puts a neat boundary around that image of f in the 1970s. The photograph is unable to depict the smallness of the lives we lived then, unless the observant viewer can see captured resemblance of father and daughter. The fact that this photograph never had a frame perhaps indicates choices we had to make, between the decorative and the fu not thinking to protect this image from time’s ravages and the future yellowing of the paper from the sun as it frequently brus We were a young couple caught up in the living of life, unable to afford a thought for the future, wrapped in the present and s On days other than that depicted in the photograph I would enjoy the company of my small child, she in her buggy and I push snow giving us both cause for a smile until, out of fatherly concern, I fix the plastic protection over the front of the buggy, sh Alternatively, the child, now growing beyond her years in the photograph would attempt to catch snow and meld it into a sno mitten covered hands as she does so, with small clumps of snow relentlessly clinging onto the wool of the gloves. She slips a parental concern, to see that she is fine and once again struggling to her feet and tasting snow on her face with her pink tongu cence of the child. is aphotograph colour photograph, printedIt on Kodak taken But it is anotherThere time. The is an aide memoir. brings back paper, the child from thirty eight years in the past and del about forty years ago. It is of a tallish, thin man with a long ness in the recalling, but a little sadness too that I am unable to reach out and touch that child, take her, once more, in my arm beard.and Heinisremembering holding a well-wrapped in his I can only look goatee and remember, consider what isinfant lost from memory and what little still remains of that ph
the photograph by yusuf martin
arms. Although the photograph suffers a little yellowing from age and one corner of the 6x4 print has become creased revealing the paper beneath the photographic coating, the image nevertheless remains clear – that of a proud father with his first born child. In the photograph I am twenty years and hold my first child of a few months. I wear a newly purchased two-tone leather jacket, bought as a birthday present from the sales in a local leather store. I hold the young child firmly in my grip, tilting my daughter a little towards the camera so that her mother can take the photograph and clearly see her puffy cheeked daughter. It is the tail-end of winter and we are all a little fresh faced from the cool of the wind. I rest against a wooden gate - a prop for the image. Behind, the slightly cloudy sky reveals a pale chilled blue. We are glad that the child is well wrapped, safe from the elements and, after the photograph is taken, the child is placed back in the buggy, strapped in for safety and comfort. The small canopy is rearranged to protect the child from the chilling wind. The three of us turn and walk back towards our newly rented council house. Times are a little lean. I have recently accepted an appointment as a carer to eleven elderly men - at a home for the aged. I have bought a bicycle to help me travel the two miles to work, twice daily, as the job entails split
ss remains clear – that of a proud father with his first born child. cket, bought as a birthday present from the sales in a local leather store. I hold the young child firmly in my grip, tilting my
or the image. Behind, the slightly cloudy sky reveals a pale chilled blue. We are glad that the child is well wrapped, safe t. The small canopy is rearranged to protect the child from the chilling wind. The three of us turn and walk back towards our
ave bought a cycle to help me travel the two miles to work, twice daily, as the job entails split shifts. I spend most of my ands, fathers and grandfathers who are tucked away, out of harm’s reach, and out of sight of their children and their chile trimness of the cut of the leather jacket I wear, or maybe in the smiling, yet somewhat distant eyes that look towards and
ch scented Head Street with its satisfying essence, to look after the child she had borne but, in time, would have to recomfor the sick and the injured. father and daughter, slicing but a fragment from the reality of life beyond the lens, denying the complexity of our lives lived e from the size of the photograph that we were unable to purchase a larger size, to place upon our mantelpiece, to admire the
unctional with the functional, inevitably, and constantly winning out. We were a couple with a small child, living in the now, shed our mantelpiece, glancing through infrequently cleaned windows. struggling to have a future, any kind of future, as long as the future was there. hing, walking behind, making sounds and noises I expected a small child to recognise or appreciate, the slight feathering of heltering the child from the weather and also from the connection we had. owball, failing as the loose white frozen water falls apart and onto the ground, but nevertheless laughing and clapping her and falls in the snow, laughing but with a slight quiver to her lip as the surprise of the fall gives her a shock. I rush out of ue and laughing in that endearing way a very small child has, drawing you into her moment and sharing the joy and inno-
shifts. I spend most of my week cleaning and caring for
livers her to my sight, stirring my recollections, memories and emotions in a way that little else can. There is much happithe men whose relatives prefer the dirty work done by ms and pose for a photograph. others, thewe ex-husbands, and hotograph, of myshaving memoryand and bathing of the bond had when shefathers was young.
grandfathers who are tucked away, out of harm’s reach, and out of sight of their children and their children’s children, because growing older is a messy business. Perhaps some of this is evident in the leanness of my face, or the trimness of the cut of the leather jacket that I wear, or maybe in the smiling, yet somewhat distant eyes that look towards and through, the camera holder. The child’s mother had given up her job in the bakery selling fresh yeasty bread in the mornings, from the home bakery which scented Head Street with its satisfying essence, to look after the child she had borne but, in time, would have to recommence her working life as a domestic helper, cleaning in a residence sheltering nurses and enabling them to continue to care for the sick and the injured. It was not an easy time and the white space surrounding that photograph puts a neat boundary around that image of father and daughter; slicing but a fragment from the reality of life beyond the lens - denying the complexity of our lives lived in the 1970s. The photograph is unable to depict the smallness of the lives we lived then, unless the observant viewer can see from the size of the photograph that we were unable to purchase a larger size, to place upon our mantelpiece, to admire the captured resemblance of father and daughter. The fact that this photograph never had a frame perhaps
I always remember Saadi visiting his rose garden
traversing the songs of the universe
indicates the choices that we had to make between the decorative and the functional, with the functional inevitably and constantly winning out. We were a couple with a small child, living in the now, not thinking to protect this image from time’s ravages and the future yellowing of the paper from the sun as it frequently brushed our mantelpiece, glancing through infrequently cleaned windows. We were a young couple caught up in the living of life, unable to afford a thought for the future, wrapped in the present and struggling to have a future, any kind of future, as long as a future was there. On days other than that depicted in the photograph I would enjoy the company of my small child, she in her buggy and I pushing, walking behind, making sounds and noises I expected a small child to recognise or appreciate, the slight feathering of snow giving us both cause for a smile until, out of fatherly concern, I fix the plastic protection over the front of the buggy, sheltering the child from the weather and also from the connection we had. Alternatively, the child, now growing beyond her years in the photograph would attempt to catch snow and meld it into a snowball, failing as the loose white frozen water falls apart and onto the ground, but nevertheless laughing and clapping her mitten covered hands as she does so, with small clumps of snow relentlessly clinging onto the wool of the gloves. She slips and falls in the snow, laughing but with a slight quiver to her lip as the surprise of the fall gives her a shock. I rush out of parental concern, to see that she is fine
and once again struggling to her feet and tasting snow on her face with her pink tongue and laughing in that endearing way a very small child has, drawing you into her moment and sharing the joy and innocence of the child. But it is another time. The photograph is an aide memoir. It brings back the child from forty years in the past and delivers her to my sight, stirring my recollections, memories and emotions in a way that little else can. There is much happiness in the recalling, but a little sadness too that I am unable to reach out and touch that child, take her, once more, in my arms and pose for a photograph. I can only look and remember, and in remembering consider what is lost from memory and what little still remains of that photograph, of my memory and of the bond we had when she was young.
samsul said
charcoal workers
Samsul Said is a Photojournalist based in Malaysia. He enjoys capturing ‘the moment’ - that special second when the perfect picture appears. He currently works with The Malay Mail, a local Malaysian newspapers - as a photographer. Samsul Said specialises in providing high-quality photographic images, especially documentaries and photojournalism. He has a strong interest in his countries’s culture.
dennis lau
images of borneo
Dennis Lau received his first camera when he was 12 - a gift from his father. At 19, he won second prize in the Borneo Photographic Competition and met his mentor - K.F. Wong, (1916 - 1998) Sarawak’s premier photographer. It was Wong who encouraged Lau in his interest in photography. That interest has spanned over forty years. Lau is an unobtrusive photographer. His years of releasing the shutter in the far-flung interior of Sarawak have made him an acute social observer whose subjects seem to respect him as he does them. Hence, the sense of empathy, as one looks at the pictures, is all the greater”. The Far Eastern Economic Review “An entrancing collection of photographs of the Sarawak Penan people taken over the last 20 years by Dennis Lau, an award winning photographer.....the pictures speak mostly loudly in and for themselves”. Journal of South-East Asian Studies, Singapore
ISBN 7887
Amir Zainorin
after hockney
Amir Zainorin was born on 1st September 1963 in Johor, Malaysia and grew up in mixed societies of different cultures, beliefs and religions. He now lives and is based in Denmark and Malaysia. He studied Business Administration in Malaysia and the United States but started making art in 1995 after meeting Pop artist Jeri Azhari in Kuala Lumpur. He finds inspirations from the activity in his surroundings, daily speech and the mass media. He is also greatly affected by popular culture, his friends, families, the internet and the art world. He is moved by music and movies. Amir believes that these influences are shaping his art and provide the base upon which his work is realised. In his work, he likes to urge the viewers to challenge the traditional notions of religions and identity in relation to globalisation. Amir believes that humour is a powerful tool to get his message accross. He states that ‘ I like using ready mades images and objects in my work to channel my thoughts and ideas, and most often humor comes along with it to make things a bit lighter.’
askepot
mind my hat.
short story
roti man by yusuf martin
Rose scooped to pick up the old photograph. It had fallen as she moved her battered leather suitcase from off the top of the dusty and cobweb clustered wardrobe. The photograph, resting on a worn Axminster carpet, had fallen face-down. She hadn’t noticed its subject until she turned it over. Then she gave out a squeal of joy. Rose had long since forgotten about this photograph. It was taken by her brother-in-law, with some old Eastern German camera, long before she had moved to London. It was taken before she had even thought to move out of her kampong, let alone the country. But there it was. It was a little dusty, scratched with the passage of time, but still a poignant reminder of how life was back then, back before May 13th, racial riots; back when life was still relatively simple. The man’s smiling face reminded her of those early times - now so precious to her memory. How could she have forgotten this photograph. But she had. In the turmoil of moving, rearranging her belongings time and time again as her life changed from single to married - to divorced, somehow this picture had followed her from the kampong to Roman Road, the flat and the wardrobe. A small, thin, middle-aged Indian man, with crinkled dark - but greying hair, stood wearing a short sleeved white shirt, and pale green shorts. As the equatorial sun shone, he was holding onto his already ancient black Hercules bicycle. One hand was holding the slightly rusted chromium plated handlebar, while the other was resting, holding onto
red sheeting atop of a wooden box. The box was firmly affixed to the rear of his cycle by a makeshift wooden carrier. Painted on the side of the pale yellow box, in a soft blue, was the legend – Roti, in hand painted capital letters. Inside the box, witnessed through the slightly grubby glass windowpanes, were regimental ranks of uncut, but wrapped bread, seated on the upper-most shelf. A variety of soft rolls nestled on the lower. That day, the day of the photograph, the Roti Man had turned his face to her brother-in-law, who was staying in Malaysia for the very first time. He held the camera steady, turning the lens for focus, checking the light meter, trying to capture the everyday in his exotic. The Roti man posed. He gave a broad, almost toothless, smile as if to ensure his place in history, and maybe to remind Rose of gentler times amidst the stress and upheaval of modern city life. The man, his bread, her dear mother, her brother-in-law and sisters all had moved back to their homes and away from the kampong where the photograph was taken. That house and that kampong could only now exist in her memory for as long as she looked at that picture. Looking into that image of the man with his bicycle, Rose could hear her mother’s soft voice calling in Tamil, gentling chastising her for buying sweet rolls when there was food on the table, cautioning her against standing in the hot afternoon sun for too long. Rose could remember her mother tending the charcoal stove, manipulating the air vent for the right heat, but still keeping one eye on her daughter
and the white man she was with, as she did so. The roti-man had been a gentle, older, man who had arrived daily, without fail, to bring the family its bread. Sometimes Rose’s mother would pass the time of day with him, but mostly just requested his wares and paid, not wanting to be seen gossiping. But Rose and her siblings liked to gossip with the man, play with him, tease him about his bicycle and his age, secretly calling him names behind his back, in the way that children and young women are prone to do. But that was another country, another time and much had changed in that time – her life had never been so simple since and, in many respects, that photography represented a golden age to her, a time before her guilt, the affair, her divorce. Rose carefully placed the photograph on the living room shelf, about midway between the kitchen and the large windows. It could stay there between the wooden crucifix and the small framed print of Our Lady. She told herself that she really must buy a frame for the photograph, keep it safe. The mid-morning air was stuffy, full of dust and the aroma of fish curry. Rose turned, opened the French windows to her thirteenth-floor flat. She wanted to get some fresh air into that musty room. In so doing she allowed a small gust of wind to lift and carry the fragile photograph, and her ephemeral memories away, out into the cool air of London, taking a little piece of herself with it. on that gust, to be lost, like her in Roman Road, and never to taste that roti, nor see her family again.
eric peris
O Don Eric Peris is one of South-East Asia’s leading black-and-white photographers. He was Born in Johor Bharu, Johor, Malaysia in 1939 and introduced to art by his painter-sculptor father O Don Peris (1893-1975) who was the Royal Artist of Johor, Malaysia in the 1920s. At the age of 24, he started his career as a journalist with Malaysia’s New Straits Times. He retired as the newspaper’s Photo Editor in 1994. He has been involved in various photography exhibitions, programmes, competitions and courses. general post office series
matrix series
images of zen
sukhothai1
penang little india on the street
...is a unique collection of fine art photographs taken of Little India, Penang in the late 1970s. Over the course of a year, in 1979, Ooi Cheng Ghee created a unique and remarkable photo essay on the life of Little India, Penang. The result is a portfolio of 160 outstanding black-and-white plates. With compelling immediacy and intimacy Ooi’s images provide a unique vision of people as ‘they worked, slept, played in the streets’. Some of these images were installed in a street in Penang as a social commentary. Original photographs by Ooi Cheng Ghee, these by Gareth Richards who worked on the text with Himanshu Bhatt
comics
alan quah
Alan Quah is an artist from Malaysia whose first comics pages were published in a 1984 fanzine - APAzine from Berita Publishing. His art was awarded the best inker of the book by readers of Daniel Chan’s Friday comic newspaper. Alan received a degree in Advertising in 1992 and opened a design shop in 1997. In 2005 he returned to illustration and was hired by California based Comics Conspiracy to draw the black and white series THE ELDRICH. Later that year, he joined Heroverse to produce art for the title ANYWHERE. In 2006, Alan won the Devil’s Due talent search competition and was brought on to pencil MERCY SPARX, but he abandoned the project prior to publication due to deadlines. Later that year he won the 24hr CEDKO Comic Challenge. In 2008 he was chosen into the top 50 finalist in Marvel’s CHESTERQUEST. In that same year he was among 10 other local talents who were awarded grant to produce his own book named Badang Phenomenon by MDec, Putrajaya. Alan founded Komikaki Studio - a comic art and coloring company, with Adam Chong, which has produced a few projects for DDP and Heroverse.
green hornet cover-pitch
silverwolf pinup
roachman pg10
anathema. pg 1 coloured by jorge masse
anathema. pg 2
anathema. pg 3