Objectifs has assembled more than 80 mostly black-and-white analogue photographs Foo took from the 1960s to 1970s. 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 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 witne.
