The Merlion Park series came about, as street photography projects do sometimes, as a subsequent realisation upon reviewing images I had taken over a period of months. You see Merlion Park was my ‘fall-back’ or ‘Plan B’ spot when shooting the streets of Singapore. If I was having a bad day (in a street photography sense) I would always gravitate back to the famous landmark where there was no shortage of tourists to observe. The main attraction is the 70-ton water spraying Merlion statue on the banks of the Marina Bay in the heart of Singapore’s CBD. The iconic landmark is a mythical creature with a lion’s head and the body of fish (mermaid) and is widely accepted as the national mascot of Singapore. It is a visual honeypot for snap hungry tourists who oddly put their bodies in juxtaposing positions to create the illusion of being sprayed upon, reminiscent of tourists ‘holding’ up the leaning tower of Pisa.
