Paul Ruta, Hong Kong-Toronto
I spent most of the 1990s in Singapore, working as an advertising copywriter and creative director. My three kids were born in Mount Elizabeth. But in 1994, when I took these photos, I didn’t know I’d be in Singapore that long – or, more correctly, I didn’t know I’d be back within a year and stay for another six. So these photos, among others I'd taken around the same time, were intended as a kind of going-away present to myself, a simple way to remember the lush perma-summer of Singapore after I returned to Toronto, land of the maple tree and the wind chill factor.
These pictures are the product of a single day of wandering around with black & white film loaded into a manual Pentax, a camera I’ve owned since I was a concert photographer in the seventies, and is now tucked away in the back of a closet.
Photographing classically beautiful things is not my thing. Let someone else spend their film on flowers and sunsets. I’d rather document places teetering on the edge, where mankind and nature continue their tug-of-war. Mankind always wins these battles, of course, but in Singapore, where nature operates at jungle speed, it’s fascinating to watch her put up something of a fight.
Left unattended, every manmade structure will decay and in time will crumble. Nature, ever the optimist, works in a state of constant regrowth and self-renewal. That’s true even in such an improbable location as Bras Basah Road, where, in the nineties, a neglected building would quickly become little more than a fancy trellis for a colony of climbing plants.
I don’t look back at these photos and feel outrage that certain trees in Club Street had been chopped down or disappointment that Duxton Plain Park has lost its ragged appeal. Because I know that Singapore, more than most places on this blue planet, always finds clever and elegant ways for nature and humanity to coexist in the core of the city – even if it’s increasingly corralled in places like Gardens by the Bay and buildings with vertical gardens.
The only guarantee is that in another twenty-five years or so, Singapore and its relationship with nature will be different again.
9 Bras Basah Road
© Paul Ruta
The Rendezvous Hotel now occupies this site at 9 Bras Basah Road, engulfing these original buildings. Trishaws were a common sight in this area in the early nineties. Today there’s a 7-Eleven under the arches at ground level. The climbing plants are long gone.
38 Club Street
© Paul Ruta
38 Club Street looking toward Mohamed Ali Lane. Not long after this photo, the building was restored to become the headquarters of Insight Guides. In the late nineties I worked at an advertising agency at that address. The trees had already been removed by then.
Duxton Plain Park 01
© Paul Ruta
Duxton Plain Park 02
© Paul Ruta
Duxton Plain Park 03
© Paul Ruta
To the best of my recollection these three photos are from the stretch of Duxton Plain Park between Kreta Ayer and Neal roads. Part of the General Hospital complex can be seen rising in the background of one photo. Today, Duxton Plain Park is a manicured urban trail.
Paul Ruta is a Canadian writer and occasional photographer currently living in Hong Kong. His writing has been published by Penguin Random House, Math Paper Press, and many online literary journals. He reads for New York's No Contact magazine.
Visit him here: www.paulthomasruta.com or @paulruta
