JASBIR JOHN SINGH | DORSCON ORANGE DOCUMENTING THE COVID-19 (CORONAVIRUS) IN SINGAPORE
On the 23rd of January 2020, The Ministry of Health of Singapore announced the first case of the Coronavirus (now known as COVID-19). Since that day, cases of people down with the virus has rapidly been increasing.
The outbreak has resulted in the DORSCON (‘Disease Outbreak Response System Condition’) to be escalated to ORANGE since the 7th of February 2020.
This project is a visual documentation of my country, Singapore, gripped in fear. The usual hangout spots are empty. We hear no laughter from the neighborhood playgrounds for children.
The coffee-shops see no elderly folks socializing with each other. We cannot even enter most shopping malls without having our temperatures taken first. At schools and commercial buildings, if your temperature is found to be more than 38 degrees Celsius, you are denied entry and being told to either go to a clinic or back home immediately.
This is an on-going project that aims to be an account of how my country got hit badly by a foreign flu virus and (hopefully) recovered without fatalities. Ever since the DORSCON was escalated to Orange, I have spent between 4 to 6 hours a day, every single day, walking around many different parts of Singapore to photograph people and talk to them to learn more about how they are dealing with the outbreak.
On the 23rd of January 2020, The Ministry of Health of Singapore announced the first case of the Coronavirus (now known as COVID-19). Since that day, cases of people down with the virus has rapidly been increasing.
The outbreak has resulted in the DORSCON (‘Disease Outbreak Response System Condition’)
to be escalated to ORANGE since the 7th of February 2020.
This project is a visual documentation of my country, Singapore, gripped in fear. The usual hangout spots are empty. We hear no laughter from the neighborhood playgrounds for children.
The coffee-shops see no elderly folks socializing with each other. We cannot even enter most shopping malls without having our temperatures taken first. At schools and commercial buildings, if your temperature is found to be more than 38 degrees Celsius, you are denied entry and being told to either go to a clinic or back home immediately.
This is an on-going project that aims to be an account of how my country got hit badly by a foreign flu virus and (hopefully) recovered without fatalities. Ever since the DORSCON was escalated to Orange, I have spent between 4 to 6 hours a day, every single day, walking around many different parts of Singapore to photograph people and talk to them to learn more about how they are dealing with the outbreak.
Jasbir John Singh is a Documentary and Fine Art Photographer based in Singapore. Throughout a decade-long professional career, he has produced award-winning socially relevant work. He has been part of international commissions, which includes traveling to Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Kashmir, North Korea, and South Korea.
In 2015, after having spent a right amount of time shooting portraiture in his amateur years, Jasbir was introduced to a method acting school, Haque Centre of Acting and Creativity in Singapore.
While taking pictures for the school, he started exploring ways to combine the story-telling aspect of theater with portraiture – which would become the foundation of his fine artwork. Between the years of 2015 and 2018, he produced a collection of photo series that would gain him critical-acclaim. In 2016, a portrait from his photo series, which was in collaboration with known local artists, Rajesh Kumar, won the Jury’s Pick for Best Portrait in the prestigious LensCulture Portrait Awards. In 2017, he was cast as a member of Team Singapore in season 4 of the popular photography reality-show Photo Face-off by History Channel Asia. In 2018, his conceptual series, based on the controversial book, The Ratirahasya, gained him critical acclaim for exploring the theme of women’s rights over their sexuality.
In 2018, he took a sabbatical to learn more about film-making and made a return in 2019 with projects for National Geographic Asia in collaboration with Jayaprakash Bojan.
Since the start of 2019, Jasbir started exploring social documentaries. He is currently working on a long-term documentary project, The Culture X Initiative, which is in partnership with NGOs based in Singapore.
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