Photographer Robert Zhao Renhui, writer Adeline Chia and illustrator Sokkuan Tye have collaborated on a wonderful project documenting individual relationships between Singaporeans and their favorite trees. They put out the call on Facebook, NParks and other societies and eventually collected 30 photographs and interviews that are now on display at the National Library Building. Here, Adeline tells us about her favorite ones.
 

In these photos, the trees are so huge and the people so small.
We were inspired by our road trip through the Californian redwood forests last year. The pictures we took were amazing because of one simple thing: The trees were enormous and we were tiny. Scale can be a powerful thing.    

What was the most moving story you encountered? 
I enjoyed speaking to a group of people who walk around a rubber tree in Ang Mo Kio Park every day, as part of a meditation exercise to absorb energy from the tree. Their path is so well-trod that there is a circle of dead grass around that tree. I find that commitment to daily practice quite touching. 

The photos were taken in black and white, then tinted. The effect is quite surreal.
We were influenced by vintage postcards of Singapore. Many of them feature plantations and local crops, such as rubber, banana and coconut, and have been hand-tinted according to the fashion of the time. The layer of color communicates a nostalgic sense of painstaking endeavor, drawing on a long artistic lineage of how nature has been aestheticized, communicated and shared as artifact. And so we found it fitting to reference this visual tradition in the treatment of our own images.

What kinds of people have you met in search of stories and trees?
There is an Indian man who spends a lot of time under a tree in the Kallang Airport area, drawn to the area more than 20 years ago because he said that ghosts beckoned him. In the forests of Bukit Panjang, there is a dedicated durian picker who goes almost every night to pick wild durian during the fruiting season, armed with nothing but a hard hat and a torch. Then there is the group of people in search of a lost rambutan orchard in deep in the Upper Thomson wilderness, a place where artists and intellectuals gathered long ago.

Tell us about the choice to mount the images on lightboxes.  
As we have chosen to include the entire tree in a wide-angle frame, the photograph is packed with many details. With a lightbox, the busy visual information can be seen in high contrast, and you can appreciate Robert's composition, the tree's individual leaves and branches and roots, as well the graceful hand-tinting done by our friend and illustrator Sokkuan Tye. As a result, the images sing. 

The exhibition, Singapore, Very Old Tree, is on display at National Library Building (Level 10, 100 Victoria St.) until May 28. On May 16, 2-4pm, there will be an artists' talk on Level 1, during which 20 sets of commemorative postcards and books will be given out. For more on this project, click here.