Pavan J. Singh
Actor
Before studying theatre at LASALLE College of the Arts, Pavan J. Singh was a marketing executive. He has a youthful face, and it took me a while to realize that he was a little older than his peers. In Singapore, though, it is not uncommon for our artists to have had careers in law or business, and experience in life is always useful for the artistic process after all.
Ngiap Heng first asked me to come to his studio to take pictures back in 2008, I think, when I was still a student at LASALLE. I was fairly new to the art world and didn’t quite understand what he meant when he said he had a particular kind of film that was expiring, with which he wanted to take my pictures.
But having the “just say yes to everything” attitude, I showed up at his studio excited, even though I did not know what to expect. And I’m so glad I did. It was one of my first experiences in understanding how deep truth can be captured in an image.
When I looked at the photos he took of me, I saw a different person. It wasn’t me. It was someone inside of me. I almost didn’t recognize him, yet I wished I was him. Ngiap Heng is one who can do that—bring out the truth in you in a single image.
And he can do this in a variety of ways, like this picture of me with the broken wine glass. Somehow, in a playful moment, he managed to capture the side of me that is silly yet sardonic. Sessions with Ngiap Heng are always a pleasure and go by all too quickly.
