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Liyana Kassim

Series 02 of 04
6 plates, colour
2021 to 2023

Five-Foot Way

Shophouse fronts photographed level and square, in the half hour after the sun leaves the street.

Location
Ipoh, Taiping and George Town
Made
Weekends, 2021 to 2023
Camera
Medium format, shift adapter, 45 mm lens
Light
Open shade, 17:30 to 18:15
  1. Three old shophouse facades in faded mint, ochre and rose, shuttered windows above an arched arcade
    01Three fronts. Old Town, Ipoh, 2021.The three owners painted their fronts in the same week in 1987. None of them has painted since.
  2. A long shophouse walkway with repeating arches and patterned floor tiles receding into the distance
    02Arcade, morning. George Town, Penang, 2022.
  3. Weathered blue-green timber shutters, one half open, set in a cracked pale yellow wall
    03Shutters. Old Town, Ipoh, 2021.
  4. A quiet back lane behind old shophouses, zinc awnings and a bicycle in long afternoon shadow
    04Back lane. New Town, Ipoh, 2022.
  5. A curved corner shophouse at blue hour with a single lit upstairs window above a wet empty street
    05Corner, blue hour. Taiping, Perak, 2023.
  6. Whitewashed walls of a shophouse light well rising to a square of pale sky, ferns on the wall
    06Light well. George Town, Penang, 2022.

Notes on the series

The covered walkway in front of a shophouse was written into the colonial building rules as five feet wide. It is rarely exactly that. Some are wider than a lorry, some have been bricked in, and many have been tiled, re-tiled and painted by three generations of the same family.

I photographed the fronts frontally, from the height of the first floor sill, with the camera shifted rather than tilted so that every vertical stays vertical. I waited for the half hour after the sun leaves the street, when there are no hard shadows and the pastel lime wash shows its real colour.

Signboards were not removed in post. I chose buildings and angles where there were none, which is harder than it sounds and explains why this series took three years.

Liyana Kassim, Ipoh.

Prints from Five-Foot Way

  • Three fronts, 2021Small 1 left, Medium 1 left, Large 2 leftFrom RM 1,450
  • Corner, blue hour, 2023Small 9 left, Medium 5 left, Large 3 leftFrom RM 1,450

Every other plate in the series can be printed once as a study print, 30 x 40 cm, RM 380. Ask for a study print

Next series

03Cloud LineCameron Highlands, Pahang, 2022 to 2024

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