Sunday February 17, 2008

The disabled as art

By ANDREW SIA
Photos courtesy of VICTOR CHIN

A photo exhibition focuses on the Malaysian Paralympic athletes and makes us reconsider art and beauty.

FRAIDDEN Dewan is about to dive into a swimming pool, and you almost miss the fact that one leg is missing. Lee Sheng Chow throws the javelin, minus one arm. V. Ravindran and L. Bajury gangly trundle down the track.

This is In The Face Of Disability, the second exhibition of photos about Malaysian Paralympic athletes by painter/photographer Victor Chin, 57.

“Many issues about the disabled are already being championed by other groups. I asked myself what small contribution I could make as an artist and photographer,” says Chin.

Chin attempts to give a voice and visual profile to the Paralympians in the images he captures.

He finds that in the arts, the disabled are a “neglected space”, as too often people prefer to see perfect, proportionate bodies, while in the media, the Paralympic games don’t get much coverage.

“Usually, the disabled are portrayed as pathetic but I wanted to give them a voice and visual profile. Take track athlete Rahim Yusoff, who not only runs but also writes and eats with his feet,” he points out.

“As Shakespeare said, fair is foul and foul is fair. I wanted to look at both the so-called ugly and beautiful to understand the human condition better.

I’m not celebrating ugliness either. I’m just celebrating spirited people who happen to have disabilities,” explains Chin.

Surprisingly, for an exhibition about Paralympic athletes, the majority of photos are not “action shots” that we normally see in the sports pages. Rather, the images offer a more pensive view of them.

“I’m not a sports photographer. I’m more of a portrait photographer.”

The exhibition consists of 30 black-and-white photographs that capture the facial expressions and candid moments of the Paralympic athletes before, during and after they run, swim, shoot arrows or, for the severely disabled, struggle for 10 minutes to just lift their arm and aim the ball in the special “lawn” bowling game called boccia.

Chin shot the digital photos in colour, then converted them into black-and-white using his computer.

“We’re overwrought with colour,” he says. “Black-and-white pictures make you take a second look. They make you focus on the subject instead of (being distracted by) colour.”

He also used virtual “dodging and burning” techniques (techniques once used in the darkroom to lighten or darken photos) to enhance the subjects and remove distracting details.

Chin first made his name by painting heritage Malaysian shop houses in the early 1980s.

He admits that “I hit my head against the wall one too many times” in his advocacy of urban conservation.

However, he maintains his leanings towards underdog causes, including his politically incorrect “Chinatown” heritage map of Kuala Lumpur in the mid-1990s and his current photography of the Orang Asli.

Chin started photographing the disabled community seven years ago, when he first volunteered as an artist for a disabled children’s art camp in Thailand.

Triumph, his first photo exhibition about the disabled in 2005, focused on the creative side of disabled children as well as Paralympians.

“Some people say I am taking advantage of the disabled. I mean, come on, this is not about money, who will pay big bucks to buy these pictures?” he says.

He wants to take his present exhibition around the country and perhaps, put together a book as well. His next collection will focus on disabled people at work.

The exhibition will be on display at the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre until Feb 29.