Construction Fantasy by KennyLow from singapore

I began with the thought that construction is a nightmare. Construction scars the earth. It destroys nature, eating it up bit by bit, overtaking what once was natural. You see it everywhere; on roads, in schools and even beside your house. It is the cityscape of Singapore.

In this fast paced society we only care about the finished product. But if we slow down a little, we realize that this process is so very important. After all, without construction we will not have buildings fit for the growing population for the future generation. This led me to my investigation of construction sites.

After visiting many sites, I began to see construction in a different light. I started to observe how it could be beautiful. The unpainted wall seen through dust-nets and the wired structure of the buildings is something we don’t see in the polished end result. Each construction site is unique in its own way. The cranes that stand above the buildings, reach for the sky, emanating a strange sense of peace, while at night the buildings stand illuminated like some showy funfair.

This intriguing beauty challenged me to further explore the possibilities of this “brave new world”. I wanted to make a distorted and mirrored maze, to replicate an unreal environment. As I reflected these images, I was astonished by how the pictures matched perfectly in ways, which the environment could, actually exists.

This process of matching and mirroring the photographic images began to reveal a hidden and curiously surreal and futuristic vision. Construction buildings morphed into robotic creatures, starships and mystical islands floating in the sky. Others appeared as an endless maze stretching towards a floodlit horizon.

It has also proven to be a transformation of how I see Singapore’s construction sites and of my own attitude to what constitutes “beauty.”