Last Updated on 07/13/2016 by Chris Gampat
All Images By Sebastian Chin. Used With Permission.
“The demographic of the nation has drastically shifted.” says photographer Sebastian Chin who tells us that his project Asylum of Glass documents the constant flux and societal chaos that Singapore has been experiencing for the past 16 years. “Many familiar places are now gone or different. As I converse with the people on the streets and observe how life now is very different from the one I grew up from, I cannot help but feel a quiet desperation among the people.” Sebastian continued to stated that he understands that this is just the nature of the modern world that is moving at a blistering speed.
The project draws inspiration from Robert Frank’s The Americans.
Funny enough, Chin notes that he was a rather late bloomer in regards to picking up photography. He never thought much of a camera or taking images prior to the age of 27, while prepping for a trip to Iceland. Motivated by wanting to capture memories of him and his wife’s honeymoon, this made him head online to study technical aspects of photography. “I remembered struggling with all the information at first. Conceptions like aperture, shutter speed and ISO had me in a frenzy.” he tells the Phoblographer.
You can’t tell that from his work on Asylum of Glass though, which he primarily created utilizing a Fujifilm X100. Chin also sports a Sony RX100 and Nikon D750, but says that those serve other purposes for him, with his street photography being almost exclusively the Fujifilm’s realm.
You can see a selection of the amazing images from ‘Asylum of Glass’ below.
