Arts: Passing time with Lui Hock Seng

Every morning, he’d cycle from his home in Geylang to his job at Fraser and Neave, the beverage manufacturer, along River Valley Road, where he was due by 8am. He could do it in an hour. But he knew he’d dawdle, especially by the Merdeka Bridge, that busy commuter artery between the placid coast and the pacier city centre. So he always started out at 6am, also to catch the best light coming through the clouds. Slung around his neck was his most precious possession: a S$300 Rolleiflex camera, a present from his brother, who’d dug deep into his pockets for a high-end German model. What might a mechanic-turned-storekeeper do with such a handsome gift? He was drawn to patterns and geometries: silhouettes of seamen working beneath sail battens, like ribs against a bright sun; a labourer in a slant of light, pressed up against the crosshatched scaffolding of a rising building; a woodworker hewing rough logs into long, diagonal slats of timber. He didn’t know it then, but he was remembering the Singapore that his generation built, and that ours was starting to forget. He’d pull the camera up to focus with his left eye. While repairing a car, a metal splinter had struck his right, damaging it forever. But one was good enough. So were weddings and funerals, where he honed his craft. The occasional prize money from photo competitions was creatively and financially rewarding. So he kept making pictures, drawn to the daily rhythms of kampung life in Potong Pasir, Bedok and Tanah Merah, still lush with trees and flush with fields large enough for hundreds to gather for an impromptu silat performance. In 2012, he found himself a job at Singapore Press Holdings. While journalists and photographers collected bylines and the latest digital cameras, he collected their trash. He didn’t mind being an office cleaner. It was steady work, and he had an elderly wife and a disabled son to support. Then his younger colleagues discovered his black-and-white masterpieces and, for the first time, the 79-year-old became the focus of another’s lens. A French engineer, awed by his dramatic freezeframe of Ellenborough Market, its fishmongers resplendent in celestial sunlight, begged him for a print. It was the first one he’d ever sold. He would sell plenty more, aged 81, when the film and photography centre Objectifs mounted his first solo exhibition: “Passing Time”. There it was, his name in shiny black capitals on the gallery’s white walls. They had him stand next to it; he clutched at his soft khaki cap, slightly unmoored by the attention. But his lifelong companion, his trusty camera, with its strap pressing gently into his shoulder and back, grounded him. People showed up in droves and applauded his artist talks where, flanked by curators and gallery staff, he clapped for them, too. He had seven years left to live. Cancer would come for him. But he was satisfied—no, happy, even. He told his youngest son, before he died last week, that his wish had come true.