ALONG THE GOLDEN MILE by Darren Soh

Along The Golden Mile is a set of two posters that were released in conjunction with a photographic installation held at Objectifs in 2015 where the images where exhibited in the form of floor-to-ceiling sized prints. Click here to view a video interview with Darren Soh, where he shares his process and inspiration behind this work. The Golden Mile and Beach Road district is an area rich in architectural heritage and flavour, with structures that range from pre-war buildings to buildings from the modernist era of newly independent Singapore, to newer ‘starchitect’ designed pieces. With the rapidly changing local skyline, there has been a greater interest in discovering our heritage, manifested especially in discussions about the preservation of buildings and spaces.

In this series, photographer Darren Soh, who is most recognised for his documentation of vernacular local architecture, aims to blur the lines between art and architecture as he explores the district in this photographic exhibition. Details, façade designs and even explicit/implicit signs of human inhabitation and intervention in the built landscape are revealed to viewers through the two posters. One of the posters features an essay by Ms Tamares Goh, former head of visual arts at The Esplanade.

Darren Soh’s photographic practice explores architecture, urban landscape and space. An established photographer who is most recognised for his documentation of vernacular architecture, Darren has been placed in several international photography awards over the years, including the Commonwealth Photographic Awards, the Prix de la Photographie, Paris, the International Photography Awards, PDN and ICON de Martell Cordon Bleu. His works have been shown widely, including solo exhibitions at The Esplanade and Objectifs (Singapore Art Week 2015), and internationally at photography festivals like Noorderlicht (The Netherlands) and Obscura (Penang). He has published several monographs including While You Were Sleeping (2004), For My Son (2015) and In the Still of the Night (2016).

Darren was one of the co-founders of Platform.sg, an initiative to showcase photography of Singapore or by Singaporean photographers. As champions of local photography, Platform.sg has gone on to support and publish 22 Singapore photography books and most recently, an exhibition of 34 Singaporean photographers in Istanbul (Apr-May 2018). He continues to advocate for photography as an art form, and contributes actively to the community through frequent public talks and ground up projects that focus on documenting Singapore.