PROJECT- THE LAST GOODBYE
PHOTOGRAPHER: YONG YEN NIE
AGE: 29
NATIONALITY: MALAYSIAN
PLACE OF RESIDENCE: KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA
PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
We leave thinking that we don’t want to return, but when we finally do, we wished we never did.
The Long Goodbye tells the story of life diminishing in Malaysian small towns. In this project, I travel back and forth small towns in Malaysia, in search for the memories that once speaks for my childhood.
I am one of those that have grown up in a small town but later, packed my bags for the big, exciting city life. I had gone naively, thinking that I will always return to my unchanged town.
But, that I discovered, is not true. Every time I pay my hometown a visit, I realize that I am becoming a stranger in places that used to be the only places that I have known.
As more people migrate to the city, there is little left for towns like these. Life is slow, sometimes at a standstill; as though the towns knows it is at its deathbed. It is with this struggle in trying to fixate the temporal moments to eternity, that I embark on telling stories of these Malaysian hometowns. It is with the tension between the permanence and temporal that I keep going back.
I hope to collect as much as possible the remnants of what these towns meant not only to me, but also to friends and strangers that echo similar lamentations over their memory loss of their hometowns. By this, I hope then I will be able to say a proper goodbye to these towns.
I want photography to be a tool of contemplation for me and for others who look at these images.
