Photo of me by my neightbor,
photojournalist Mohd Ishak , 1980

Artist Statement

I began photographing in 1987 while studying art and design. Photography entered my life not as professional ambition, but as a discipline of attention — a way to hold fleeting moments steady within uncertainty.

Early experiences shaped my sensitivity to instability and absence. The camera offered structure: a frame within which light, gesture, and space could briefly align. Over time, this instinctive act of framing evolved into sustained observation. I became attentive to the quiet relationship between human presence and architectural systems, coastal horizons, and urban infrastructures.

My work focuses on small figures situated within expansive environments. These compositions are not intended to diminish the individual, but to consider the relationship between human scale and larger structural conditions. I am interested in how presence persists within modern systems — how individuals occupy space without spectacle.

Light plays a central role in my practice. I am drawn not to dramatic illumination, but to restrained luminosity — light that settles gently onto surfaces and bodies. I look for moments of suspension, when movement and atmosphere briefly converge. These fleeting alignments form the foundation of my visual language.

A significant shift occurred in 2018 following the loss of a close family member whose unconditional love had shaped my sense of stability. That period brought disorientation and recalibration. Photography returned not as escape, but as a way of re-engaging the world through attentive seeing — locating equilibrium within the ordinary flow of life.

I do not stage or construct scenes. I move through environments intuitively, responding to chance encounters and transient configurations. The images arise from immediacy — from recognizing a moment as it forms and allowing it to pass once it has been held.

While my work may be situated within observational or poetic documentary traditions, its underlying concern is endurance — quiet continuation rather than spectacle. I am not interested in dramatizing suffering, nor in denying it. Instead, I seek to acknowledge the subtle persistence of light within shadow.

Photography remains, for me, an act of preservation. To frame a moment is to affirm its existence before it dissolves into time. Through this practice, I continue to explore the delicate balance between vulnerability and steadiness, isolation and connection, structure and breath.

Light does not eliminate darkness.
It coexists with it.

I photograph that coexistence.