The last time I looked this glamorous was for my wedding, more than 10 years ago,” exclaims Soraya Yusof Talismail, after she was dolled up and had her hair teased and coiffed for this shoot. Indeed, of the four women spotlighted here, Soraya was the one who saw the most dramatic transformation.
She readily admits she is shy, and is not used to being the focus of attention. As an artist-photographer, Soraya is more comfortable being behind the camera, directing shoots and calling the shots. “It’s not easy for me. Suddenly, I have to be so ladylike,” she says, when I ask her how it feels to have the roles reversed for this shoot. “And it’s not easy to be in heels — I don’t wear them anymore. But I know how it’s like (for the photographer).” And so she did her best to pose for The Edge photographer Kenny Yap, and it must be said that she pulled it off with aplomb and grace.
Soraya may not be used to the makeup and coiffured hair, but says fell in love with the silk paisley print dress we picked out for her from Massimo Dutti, although it isn’t something she would normally wear. Her usual attire consists of oversized shirts and khakis or cargo pants — clothes that she says are comfortable and practical. But she didn’t always favour comfort and practicality over trendiness. “I had my fashion era too, but I’ve had enough of that,” Soraya shares. “In the Eighties, I was very fashionable. I loved fashion and all the designers — I was crazy about them then. I even used to have Manolo Blahniks.”
And it was also during this time that Soraya produced some highly experimental and avant-garde artworks as part of the Matahati group, working with photography as that was what she studied at the then Mara Institute of Technology (now Universiti Teknologi Mara). “At that time, I did experimental works using photography as the main material, with oil painting on top of the work, montage, distortion and so on. I was very young then, and I was still trying to find my direction. I had a very active imagination, but how do I do that with photography? There was no digital yet. I had such limitations, so I started experimenting and came up with all these weird works, and I loved it. But at that time, people could not accept my work. I think I started too early for that kind of artwork. But I still kept on doing it. The money I got from my commercial work, I would do art,” says Soraya.
It was not until 1999, upon the urging of a good friend, photo-journalist Eric Peris, that she went back to concentrating on purely black and white photography. “Eric approached me and asked, ‘Why don’t you go back to basics, to black and white?’ Petronas employed a few photographers to do black and white Malaysian landscapes for their year 2000 calendar. That was when I seriously started doing black and white.”
Soraya continues, “It feels different. I’m actually capturing the real thing, and I’m seeing more things than before. If not, I’ll be driving here and there, and I don’t even look around. But here I am, admiring our landscape, our beauty.”
Soraya is a firm believer that artists have a moral obligation, and for her it is in documenting our country through her lenses for the generations to come. She says, “You’re born to be an artist, there must be a reason, some kind of responsibility that you have to carry. My medium is photography, and I’m preserving the image of our landscape for the next generation, because some of the areas I shot are no more there.”
Her critically-acclaimed exhibition, Imaging Selfs, staged last year at Galeri Petronas, comprised beautifully shot and poignant portraits of 80 practitioners in the fields of the visual arts including photography, film, design, music, theatre, literature, dance and choreography in Malaysia. That project, which Soraya started some 15 years ago, was to celebrate and honour these individuals, and it is one that she is continuing to do.
“It’s the same thing. Again, there’s some sort of responsibility — these people need to be photographed, to bring them out there. For instance, Eng Tay, I know his work, its fantastic stuff, but I don’t know how he looks like. Again, I thought, that’s my job — I have to take portraits of Malaysian artists,” says Soraya.
She adds, with palpable excitement in her voice, that someone has approached her to bring that exhibition to Manhattan, New York. “I always thought that this work should be out there because we’re showing Malaysian artists — it’s not about me. We have such talented people and you can see it’s such a mixed group, ethnically. I hope that Petronas will (let this happen),” she says. “This kind of thing gives me the energy to go on.”
Besides this project, Soraya is in the midst of putting together a mock-up of a coffee-table book, a tome on Malay legends and folktales, jointly planned with local writer and expert in Malay culture, Azah Aziz, who also owns a large collection of antique costumes. Taking a page from Annie Leibowitz’s Disney Dream Portrait series, Soraya will be superimposing photographs of landscapes with studio shots of people in costume. Historical characters such as Mat Suri, Puteri Gunung Ledang, Hang Tuah and Dang Anum, to name a few, will be given a fresh new perspective. Accompanying these images will be old Malay poems and old love letters.
“I want to bring back the beautiful part of Malay culture, which is the puisi (poetry),” says Soraya. “Our puisi is so beautiful, but we have nearly forgotten about them. And also, it’s about preserving.”
Her clear sense of purpose in what she does is certainly inspiring, and she serves as an exemplary role model for up-and-coming artists. Truly, the way forward is producing work that has a bigger or higher purpose rather than merely existing for aesthetic reasons.
This article appeared in Options, the lifestyle pullout of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 752, April 27-May 3, 2009