6˚ of Separation

A couple of months back I participated in the KL Flickr group’s independant exhibition during the KL Design Week 2009. My very first photo exhibition.

The following will be a copy-and-paste from the project brief. Why? Because I malas to type. Plus this is way overdue. You’ll get the idea anyways…

Project Title : 6˚ of Separation.

mechanism
The concept of this portraiture series is to begin the series with a portraiture of the first sitter. The first sitter will then recommend the next person to be photographed with a rationale as to why s/he should be photographed. This sequence goes on until the 6th sitter is photographed.

*edit : Note that the only person I choose to shoot, is the first sitter. Each sitter must be residing/working in different areas of the Klang Valley. I shall not disclose these locations for privacy sake.

concept
The idea for this portraiture series is purely to illustrate the power of social design through a simple photographic experiment. As the basis of the theme only takes form after the photography of the first sitter, there is a sense of mystery and wonder as to how the series would come to its end for the photographer as well as each viewer.

The final result is a mapping of a social structure that would yield different results each time it is executed. The photographs of each photographer will map out a fine thread that connects six people together. On the next level, the works of all 12 artists will further map out a more complex inter-relationships of 72 people throughout the Klang valley.

The exhibition itself will showcase work of 12 photographers from the KL Flickr group.

Got it? Good…

The minute I heard I was picked as one of the photographers, I was ecstatic. I was given a chance to display my work among the other 11 talented photographers’ work. *pinch pinch* Nope. Not a dream.

Those other photographers would be (in no particular order) :-

• Syahrin Aziz
• Vignes Balasingam
• Adi Arfan Mikhail
• Prakash Daniel
• Chan Mei Ying
• Magnus Azami
• Hafeez Amin
• Kabir Malek
• Eleena Mohd Riduan
• Javad Tizmaghz
• Yusmar Yahaya

What to do… what to do… what to dooo….

I won’t go much into detail and bore ya’ll on how I initially wanted to pursue another particular concept, but somehow never found time to do it, because my day job was hogging all my time, and the only time I had was night time, it was always raining, my freelance jobs wer…. I almost lost you all there. Sorry.

My photo series concept? :Given the time/peole/weather constraints, I decided to shoot my sitters in their “Comfort Zones”. I would photograph them in the act of their favorite/usual routines in the comfort of their homes/rooms/bawah tangga. And they would be oblivious that I was shooting them. Kononnya la..

As much as I wished I could have followed through with my original ideas, the following photos turned out rather well. And they looked even better on paper. And even better on display. I won’t ask you to go see the exhibition. Because it’s over.

Choosing my first sitter was a very eenie-meenie-miny-moe situation. Well. Not really a situation. I did do eenie-meenie-miny-moe. And my finger pointed at Liyana. (ah crap..) I never thought she’d agree to participate in my project because there was, well, sort of, bad blood between us. That’s another story that should remain “another story”. But much to my surprise and delight, she agreed.

Enjoy the photos (and the very short boring descriptions) :

1st Degree of Seperation - Liyana

Liyana’s comfort zone. In her room strumming her guitar. She mostly plays and sings her own compositions. A liberating escape from her day job as a senior corporate communications executive.

2nd Degree of Seperation - Sheha

Sheha is Liyana’s best friend since forever. Most of her alone time is spent chatting, blogging, playing games etc. on her lappie. I swear if I found a chef’s hat, I’d get her to wear it for this photo. She’s addicted to Diner Dash.. and whatever Dash-es that came after.

3rd Degree of Seperation - Rita

Sheha introduced me to Rita. A friend who she actually met through IRC. An old skool cyber chat service. Rita embraces the cyber realm by running an online bookstore. Check out her site at http://booksybooks.blogspot.com. Comes as no surprise that her fave past-time is reading through her vast collection of books stashed in her room.

4th Degree of Seperation - Nisha

Nisha is Rita’s best friend. They seem to be in each other’s company almost all the time. A chirpy accounts executive who finds solace by scribbling thoughts onto paper. Her journal is her best friend after Rita. 

5th Degree of Seperation - Mateen

Next we have Matin who is an old friend of Nisha’s. His hobby seemed an interesting one to me. He’d browse the internet for different ways of tying shoelaces and implement those different techniques on his collection of shoes which include limited edition designs.

6th Degree of Seperation - Nasir

The last sitter/shot was an interesting case. Naasir is Matin’s cousin. I was oblivious as to who he was untill I stepped into his house. Naasir turned out to be an old friend of mine. He finds comfort by reciting the Qur’an. 

The interesting bit about the last shot was the unintentional light on the door. Which I only came to notice after I uploaded the photos to my computer. A fellow Flickr friend observed it as “signifies opening your doors to religion”. It was a perfect ending to my photo series on the concept front. A spiritual comfort zone to wrap up the other worldly ones.

In a nutshell, this project had allowed me to iron out differences with a lost dear friend, make new ones, and also get reacquainted with old ones. On the work/photography/exhibition front, i dived in head first into multi-tasking, meeting various deadlines, exploring different ideas, swimming against the tide, etc. etc. Thanks to all that made this happen. One love.