Prison: Purgatory

Prison: Purgatory is the second in a series of seven digitally manipulated photo prints, inspired by Dante Alighieri's Inferno, vampire fiction, and Singapore's own, unique folklore. It forms the background for one of the pages of Camarilla Singapore, a gaming and improvised theatre troupe's new website.

Religion cites Purgatory as a place of suspension, where the souls of those not quite worthy of entry into heaven await the final judgement. Purgatory is a place where time ceases to exist, where time is no longer a constant, where people are frozen in perpetual ennui.

Singapore is like that. In a sense, the country is so caught up in its own progress, that people all too often fall between the cracks. It is a banal country, a society where progress is measured in dollars and cents, where time is industry, and people are measured by their net worth in the grand scheme of things. Singapore is, in a very real sense, Purgatory. People can't progress, or rise above their stations, because the bright lights of the big city blind them. They can't leave their prisons of concrete and glass and steel. And that's all there is to it.

(From the series "Seven Facets", Copyright 2005)