Singapore and Penang were once twin cities. These days the differences are stark. Singapore gleams with steel and glass skyscrapers, while the narrow streets of Penang are lined with colonial-era shophouses. But looks can be deceiving. Read this Banyan column to learn how Penang carved out a lucrative niche in the high-tech world of semiconductors.
新加坡和檳城曾是友好城市。如今，兩者的差異顯而易見。新加坡隨處可見鋼筋玻璃結構的摩天大樓，而檳城狹窄的街道兩旁則遍佈殖民時期的店屋。但外表往往具有欺騙性。閱讀Banyan的專欄，了解檳城如何在高科技半導體領域中開拓出利潤豐厚的利基市場。
實在有點離譜：我去過這城市 (我弄錯了)，不過照片中所示都很陌生。所以應該可以說，我沒去過此城。
2015
Penang Then And Now: 35 Photos That Show How Much Has Evolved In The Past Century From one of the region's first trading ports to home of a UNESCO heritage...
SAYS.COM
A Street-Level View of Kuala Lumpur
By MAGGIE STEBER August 17, 2013
Che’ Ahmad Azhar sits so quietly in the corner of a room, you might not notice him. But take him to the lively streets of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and he becomes a maestro, conducting a symphony of noise, action, light and shadow in the best tradition of street photography.
On just three streets, no less.
Che’ Ahmad Azhar
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Every Saturday for almost
eight years, this former advertising director and landscape photographer
prowls Petaling Street in Chinatown, Leboh Ampang in Little India and
Pudu, a Chinese enclave. In courting the people who live there, Mr.
Azhar, 49, has grown into a seasoned
street photographer
who can make sense of crazy cityscapes and vivid lives. Faceless street
vendors, cooks and barbers, fortunetellers, security guards — all were
once strangers, but became a new branch of his family.
I met him in June at the
Obscura Festival
in Georgetown, on Malaysia’s Penang Island. We both had exhibitions at
Obscura, a friendly photography festival in its first year, and were
teaching master classes. Che’ — also known as Chemad — has been a
photography teacher at
Multimedia University in Malaysia for 16 years, and his excellence has been recognized with numerous awards.
During the festival, he
took his eager students into the bustling streets of Georgetown,
stopping along the way to photograph scenes and point out interesting
moments to the class.
But his series, which he calls “
Walk of Life,”
had already moved me with its intimacy and familiarity with the people
and the cityscapes. I asked him: Why the same three streets?
“After walking the streets
so often, they began to smile at me, invite me for coffee, to eat with
them and tell me about their lives, some fortunate, some unfortunate,”
he said. “They are genuine, nothing fake about them. When I mingle with
them, I feel a sense of belonging.”
If anything, the streets
remind him of where he was raised, in a small town near Penang. It was
the kind of place where no neighbor was a stranger.
“People like this, middle
class and lower, are honest about who they are,” he said. “They are
cheerful. Their lives are lived out on the street more than the
wealthy.”
In fact, he doesn’t photograph the upper middle class or the wealthy.
“They are not nearly as interesting,” he said.
When he left advertising and graphic design, Mr. Azhar began to paint, using a camera only to record things like landscapes.
“It was very meditative,
but at the mercy of Mother Nature,” he said. “I started to think, ‘What
can I do besides this?’ So I went into Kuala Lumpur and started shooting
in a very random manner. I saw this was very interesting.”
He discovered work by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus and Bill Brandt.
“I didn’t even know there
was this genre called street photography,” he admitted. “I wanted to
know the history of these people and how they worked, and I realized I
had to keep going back and back and back and that I would get more.”
He later delved into
documentary photography, especially the work of celebrated Farm Security
Administration photographers like Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. More
recently, he has pored over the work of Alex Webb, William Albert
Allard and David Alan Harvey.
He now says he has been reborn into an entirely new world.
“I was overwhelmed, and it
gave me a new way of seeing,” he said. “I discovered the geometry in
photography, layered, variety of subjects, the idea of moments. David
Alan Harvey once said it’s never too late to be the man you could have
been. I have done that.”
行走在吉隆坡的那些尋常巷陌
MAGGIE STEBER 2013年08月17日
每個周六，攝影師謝·艾哈邁德·阿扎爾穿行於馬來西亞吉隆坡的街頭，拍攝那裡普通人的普通故事。Every Saturday for nearly eight years, Che’ Ahmad Azhar has ambled the
streets of his Kuala Lumpur neighborhood, photographing and identifying
with its inhabitants.
謝·艾哈邁德·阿扎爾(Che’ Ahmad Azhar)安靜地坐在房間角落裡，你可能都注意不到他。但是只要把他帶到馬來西亞吉隆坡的熙攘街道上，他就變成了一個大師，秉承着優良的街頭攝影傳統，指揮起一場噪音、動作、光和影所組成的交響樂。
不多不少，就三條街。
-
Che’ Ahmad Azhar
在將近八年時間裡，這位原廣告總監和風景攝影師每個星期六
都會流連在唐人街地區的茨廠街，小印度地區的安邦路口和華人聚居地富都。經過和當地居民多年的接觸，49歲的阿扎爾已經成為了一個經驗豐富的街頭攝影師，
讓瘋狂的城市景觀和鮮活的生命顯得渾然有序。籍籍無名的街頭小販、廚師和理髮師、算命先生、保安——他們原本都是陌路人，但卻成了他的大家庭中又一道支
系。
我和他是6月份在馬來西亞檳榔嶼喬治市的暗箱攝影藝術節(
Obscura Festival)上認識的。那是個氣氛友好的攝影節，今年是第一屆，我和他都有展覽，另外還在開班授課。謝——又叫謝馬德(Chemad)——在馬來西亞多媒體大學(Multimedia University)已經教了16年攝影，他的卓越才能還得到了許多獎項的肯定。
攝影節期間，他帶着興奮的學生走上喬治市的喧鬧街道，時不時停下來拍攝景物，指點學生去觀察一些有趣的瞬間。
然而他那個叫作「三教九流」(
Walk of Life)的系列作品早已打動我，這個系列中的人和都市風景充滿柔情蜜意。我問他：為什麼就這三條街？
「在這些街道上走多了，他們就開始沖我笑，請我喝咖啡，和他們一起吃飯，跟我講他們的故事，有些是好事，有些是壞事，」他說。「他們是真誠的，沒有一點摻假。我融入他們當中，會有一種歸屬感。」
也有可能是因為，這些街道讓他想起自己成長的環境，那是在檳城附近的一座小鎮。在那種地方，鄰里之間是不存在陌生人的。
「像這種中等偏下的階層，是能坦然面對自己的身份的，」他說。「他們很歡快。跟富人相比，他們的人生更多是在街道上展開的。」
事實上，他是不會拍攝中等偏上或富人階層的。
「他們遠沒有這麼有趣，」他說。
離開廣告和平面設計行業後，阿扎爾開始畫畫，相機只用來記錄風景之類的東西。
「那是些沉思性的東西，但是完全受着大自然的支配，」他說。「我開始考慮，『除了這個我還能做些什麼呢？』就這樣，我就來到吉隆坡，開始用很隨機的方式拍攝。我發現這很有趣。」
他發現了亨利·卡蒂埃-布列(Henri Cartier-Bresson)、羅伯特·弗蘭克(Robert Frank)、蓋瑞·溫格蘭(Garry Winogrand)、迪安·阿勃絲(Diane Arbus)、比爾·布蘭特(Bill Brandt)。
「我都不知道還有個門類叫街頭攝影，」他坦言。「我想知道這些人的歷史，他們是怎麼工作的，我意識到我必須不斷一次又一次地回到這裡來，我需要拍更多的東西。」
後來他開始探索記錄攝影，尤其是農業安全管理局(Farm
Security Administration)的那些著名攝影師的作品，比如多蘿西婭·蘭恩(Dorothea
Lange)和沃克·埃文斯(Walker Evans)。近些年，他仔細研究了艾利克斯·韋伯(Alex
Webb)、威廉·阿爾伯特·阿拉德(William Albert Allard)和戴維·阿蘭·哈維(David Alan Harvey)的作品。
現在，他說自己在一個全新的世界裡獲得了重生。
「我被徹底擊倒了，這給了我一種全新的觀看方式，」他說。「我在攝影中發現了幾何，層疊而多樣的題材，瞬間的概念。戴維·阿蘭·哈維曾經說過，成為那個你本應成為的人，這事是無所謂早晚的。我已經做到了。」
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Anuradhapura, located in Sri Lanka's North Central Province, is a major UNESCO World Heritage site and the island's first capital, established in the 4th century BC. Flourishing for over 1,000 years, this sacred city is renowned for its massive stupas, ancient monasteries, and the sacred Sri Maha Bodhi tree. 
