Steam and Blood

Steam, Blood, and Silver Halide — Chinatown at First Light

Morning in early-Eighties Chinatown did not begin with birdsong. It began with steam.

The sun had barely cleared the shophouse roofs when the market was already alive—metal clanging, water sloshing, voices bargaining in Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew. The ground, uneven and broken, held yesterday’s residue. By mid-morning the soles of my feet would darken to an almost charcoal hue, as if the street itself had marked me as witness.

And there he stood—my heroic man. Cigarette at his mouth, posture erect, one arm lifted, presenting the lifeless chicken above a vast metal drum. Steam rose in thick white plumes. Sunlight pierced through it, fusing heat and illumination into a theatre of labour. The feathers caught light like sparks. In that instant, he was both executioner and provider, a modern Chinese man forged in post-colonial Singapore—disciplined, unsentimental, bodily present. There was nothing theatrical in his gesture; yet through my lens he became monumental.

If I borrow from Freud, I might say I was witnessing civilisation’s thin membrane stretched over primal instinct. The ritual of slaughter externalised what society prefers to conceal: death sustains life. The market permitted what the supermarket now hides. Jung would perhaps say I was seeing an archetype—the Provider—one who mediates between nature and the tribe. He stood in smoke like a mythic figure emerging from alchemical vapour. The rising steam felt like transformation—feather to flesh, life to nourishment, chaos to order.

But what of me, the photographer?

I woke early. Discipline shaped my craft. Film was loaded carefully in dim light. No second chances. One shot had to count. I was not merely documenting; I was participating in my own rite of passage. To photograph death at dawn is to confront impermanence before breakfast. It steadied my nerves. It sharpened my seeing.

The process unfolded methodically. Wire cages stacked higher than a man contained nervous, breathing potential. Patrons would choose their bird, pointing decisively. Selection was intimate—eye contact with fate. Once chosen, the legs were bound. The butcher’s left hand gripped both legs and head, steady and firm. Feathers were plucked near the throat to expose a pale corridor of skin. With the right hand, he drew the knife across in a precise slit. A bowl waited beneath, collecting the blood as the bird struggled in suffocating reflex. The hand did not waver. The body tilted so gravity could complete the work.

Then into the self-made barrel—a spinning contraption that stripped feathers through centrifugal insistence. A few minutes later the chicken emerged naked, transformed. Another helper would chop it into portions fit for the family table. It was choreography, repeated daily. Common then. Invisible now.

Today, the abattoir hides behind regulation and sterile walls. Chickens appear featherless, anonymous, divorced from origin. A child might see a jungle fowl in a park and insist it is something entirely different, because the supermarket version bears no resemblance to the living creature. Books classify. Experience reveals. Knowledge without witness breeds detachment.

I witnessed.

Around that time, my father, after receiving his gratuity and sharing his joy, he gave me a thousand dollars, no small sum then. I upgraded to the Nikon FE. A thousand dollars—The Nikon FE, introduced in 1978, was a beautiful refinement of Japanese engineering: electronically controlled shutter, aperture-priority automation, yet still capable of mechanical operation at 1/90th of a second should the battery fail. Solid brass top plate. Accurate metering. A bridge between mechanical tradition and electronic future. It felt like a declaration of seriousness.

Before that, I had used the Mamiya NC1000S—a robust SLR from the late 1970s offering shutter-priority automation in a compact body. It served me faithfully. But as competition intensified, I knew I had to elevate. Tools are not vanity. They are extensions of intent.

I began to win—first a few competitions, then more. Print quality became paramount. Grain control, tonal separation, shadow detail—all scrutinised under judging lights. I studied magazines in the library—British Journal of Photography, Popular Photography, Japanese annuals. I analysed how masters composed, how they controlled contrast curves, how they rendered texture without losing dignity.

The darkroom became my sanctuary. Red safelight. The scent of developer, stop bath, fixer. Watching an image rise slowly on fibre paper was alchemy. Silver halide crystals responding to photons I had captured at dawn. The brutality of the market transformed into tonal poetry. Outside, chaos. Inside, control. The darkroom was not escape—it was refinement.

Singapore in the early Eighties was transforming rapidly. Urban renewal reshaped Chinatown. Hygiene campaigns and infrastructure modernised the old quarters. Yet photography thrived amid transition. At Raffles Institution, the Photographic Society nurtured ambition. We debated composition, experimented with push-processing, exchanged contact sheets. The Singapore Salon competitions were serious arenas—monochrome mastery, pictorial trends blending Western formalism with Asian subject matter.

Street photography carried existential urgency. We sensed the old quarters were vanishing. Document now, or lose forever. That pressure sharpened me. Competition was not merely about prizes; it was about witnessing a disappearing texture of life.

Persistence became my creed. “Ask, and you shall be given.” I held on to that Biblical cadence—not as superstition, but as discipline. Ask for improvement, and labour for it. Ask for clarity, and rise before sunrise. Ask for excellence, and endure critique. The rewards came—not by accident, but by repetition.

The image of the man with the cigarette is therefore not only about slaughter. It mirrors my own initiation. His firm grip parallels my tightening control over craft. The steam rising in sunlight is like the image emerging in the developer tray. Heat outside; chemical warmth inside. Transformation in both arenas.

There is no need to romanticise. Nor to sanitise.

The chicken died at dawn.

And I, in that same light, was becoming a photographer.