eric tsui

I would often, during my initial years with photography, be completely ignorant of the importance of lighting. That’s a whole third of the basics besides composition and content. I grew up fond of Lego and building Ikea furniture, and it’s only recently I found out why. It didn’t really matter what time of day it was, there was a pure satisfaction in having everything in its right place. Composition, I think, has always been my strength. But some doses of sunlight, when golden and perfectly diffused, are impossible to ignore. It can make the absolute ordinary look ethereal. 

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In other words, this image of a shared kitchen in an unassuming business complex coupled with neat lines and squares was a moment of euphoria. Ian and I were simply location scouting for our shoot. In that split second I saw the grandiosity of the most mundane of mundanities. Of the tired, overworked employees who shared bowls of instant noodles together, the janitor wringing his mop, and the trash bin with crumpled convenience store receipts.

 

That's always something I've admired about photography—especially photojournalism— the ability to peer into history and stories imagined. It's a real place, a real occurrence that happened within the blink of an eye, framed and archived. And the appreciation of it ferments like wine; it gets richer and more significant the closer you look, the further backwards in time you look.