Sean Cham

Yesteryears (2014-2015)
Digital prints

Exhibited at DECK, Singapore (2015) | Chan+Hori Contemporary, Singapore (2018) | Addis Foto Fest, Ethiopia (2018) | CICA Museum, South Korea (2018) | B-Part, Germany (2020)
Published by Math Paper Press (2017)
Finalist for Invisible Photographer Asia Award 2018 (Photobook)
Shortlist for 212 Photography Competition 2019

Yesteryears captured 50 abandoned and forgotten places in Singapore through a series of in situ self-portraits. The buildings photographed were in different states of ruination. These buildings represent the modern ruins of post independence Singapore, an era that lives not only with progress but also the fleeting ruins left in its wake. In a city that is ever modernizing and growing, there is barely any room for the ruin. Buildings that are deemed obsolete will be torn down to make way for something bigger and better. But in the face of the storm called progress, as German philosopher Walter Benjamin expounded in ‘Thesis on the Philosophy of History’, it is important to retain our historical consciousness.

Yesteryears does this not through monuments, or officially sanctioned heritage spaces, but through the more minor, often forgotten ruins created by an ever-changing Singapore. The series was taken when Singapore celebrated 50 years of independence, and there was an increasing wave of nostalgia across the nation.