Visual research; the contributions of foreign workers
This idea is one that our group feels is exceedingly worth addressing in Singaporean society of the moment. Today, our city is comfortably settled in its position as a First World country. Known for our banal urbanity and practicalism, we look to our past 50 years of rapid development to highlight an issue that is deeply rooted in how far we have come. We are the ultimate success story; a tiny fishing port grown into a lush, concrete jungle. But how did this come to be?
This idea aims to call attention to individuals who contribute to a country that they sometimes, on paper, don’t even belong to. The goal is to highlight the sacrifices foreign workers (in particular, domestic helpers and construction workers) have made, and the appreciation they truly deserve.
My first choice of material is a screen capture from the official website of Remittance, an aptly titled narrative feature exploring the lives of foreign low wage workers in Singapore; particularly those of construction workers and domestic helpers.
Any Singaporean who has grown up with a domestic helper’s presence will have heard of the term ‘remitting’. In whatever manner it is said, whether in relief or anxiety, we are reminded of the certain urgency behind the word. More importantly, that whoever utters it has loved ones living halfway across the world.
This choice is clearly one for cultural perspective, as the film explores in depth the extent of the main character’s sacrifice in coming to a foreign country to work. I find the realisation, that every foreign worker is living a life as complex and vivid as your own, exceedingly appealing to pathos arguments, making this still an effectively persuasive cultural reference.
The composition of the shot tells us many things — a bright, beckoning background and the lady’s facial expression, eye line, and posture.
A foreign domestic worker stands pensively in front of a shop that loudly proclaims its offers of remitting services: this still captures the human that exists beyond the job requirements of a domestic worker. She has family and perhaps even children back home; all while she raises children who are not her own.
My second choice of material is a photograph by Sarah Faust, found in a series of photos titled Beneath the Surface. This choice was mostly one for visual inspiration, because one of our original ideas involved photographing the weathered hands, scars and other physical deformities of our subjects.
While the hands in this picture are wrinkly because of osmosis, the concept is similar. Scars and physical deformities are often romanticised as marks of effort or tremendous sacrifice. In order to capture that concept, we plan to play on this learned indexical sign to capture the abnegation of foreign low wage workers.
While the lighting in the photo is quite soft, there are still patches of extreme lightness and shadow on the hands, which is the focus of the photograph due to its composition. While it may seem like a purely technical decision to take close up photographs of body parts, the overall effect also echoes the antagonistic meshing of the soft lighting and figurative harshness in the origin of the scars.
This still, however, isn’t the perfect representation of our ideas due to the positioning of the hands. In this photograph, the palms stretched towards a person is an indexical sign (or one could call it body language) of defensiveness. What we are aiming to portray in our stills is a sense of offering or display. Since hands are highly personalised — no two palms are alike — an image of upturned, slightly cupped hands would convey 1. a sense of contribution and 2. the feeling when you finally stand in someone else’s shoes.
Picture 1: Screen capture from http://www.remittancefilm.com/
Picture 2: Photograph by Sarah Faust, Untitled (Hands), 2004. http://www.sarahfaust.com/Gallery_Beneath/index.html
