A Conversation with Margaret

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

Singapore | Sunday, October 17, 2010 | 5 photos

I approached Margaret with some apprehension. She was imposingly large. She sat on the park bench along Desker Road, frozen in a pugnacious pose.

I lifted up my lens, pointed at her and triggered. I was terrified, half expecting her to snap at me. It took her a few seconds to react to the click of the camera, and my presence. Her reaction was nonchalant. I stepped closer to her and introduced myself.

Margaret began talking to me at free will. After a brief exchange of courteous and pointless sentences, a police car pulled up by the side of the road. Margaret was immediately distracted. She told me the police are on the patrol to detain illegal "Ah Quah" (The local term for transvestites) prostitutes. She then told me she had been arrested before, but she has no fear because she holds a valid Singaporean Identity Card.

Margaret went on to tell me that she had her breast implants at the age of 28. Her father had kicked her out of the house after that. Since then, she had lived in the streets. She is now in her late 50's and has not had a full sex reassignment surgery.

I emptied two rolls of films before saying goodbye. She walked, very slowly and with a severely hunched back, to the next bench, where her friend (a one legged "Ah Quah" with a fierce pet dog) sat. I took one last photo before the dog chased me away with fierce barks.

Desker Road is a quiet lane in Little India, Singapore. It is famous for "Ah Quah" prostitutes, and cheap sex services, with the main customers made up largely of poor foreign workers. The area is regularly raided by the police for illegal sex solicitors. However, there are some "legal" sex houses in the back lanes. These houses are literally lit in red.

Margaret was my first encounter with the stories hidden in this area. I can't wait to hear more.

The camera is my tool for investigation. It collects evidence and records them in black & white, and since I shoot mostly in black and white, I mean this quite literally.

There are many cases to investigate. Some cases are faraway and some nearby. Social issues particularly interest me. For this, I have threaded shaky wooden stilt platforms to visit a community made up mostly of immigrants, talked to transvestites and rode a bike up a mountain to visit a village. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to brag about my courage at all. On the contrary, I'm usually terrified, sometimes of the risks involved and sometimes of what I see. Being terrified helps me as a photographer. I think it makes me appear more human and this helps when my projects are of social issues. I hope I would never lose this feeling, because I would rather stay a human than become anything else.