Photographer gives Singapore the Wes Anderson treatment (Video)

Shophouses on Waterloo Street in an image from ‘A Wes Anderson-ish Trip Around Singapore Town.’ Photo: Kevin Siyuan/YouTube

Dec 3, 2020 | 5:50pm Singapore time

One photographer went around Singapore shooting stills that look like they could be lifted from one of the stylish films of American filmmaker Wes Anderson.

Architecture photographer Kevin Siyuan’s latest project is a video of snaps taken around Singapore that were inspired by American filmmaker Wes Anderson, who is known for his wide-angled, symmetrical and two-dimensional shooting style.

“Let’s take an architectural trip around Singapore and rediscover all the symmetrical perspectives of familiar landmarks in town before celebrating Christmas and embracing 2021,” Kevin wrote in his description of the video posted Tuesday.

The three-minute video, , features picturesque shots of notable landmarks such as the Jewel Changi Airport and Resorts World Sentosa, as well as the Golden Mile Complex and the Selegie House. It even features Anderson’s signature yellow Futura font, which appears frequently in many of his films, including The Grand Budapest Hotel, Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom.��

Kevin said the images were mostly taken since June and are “based loosely” on , which encouraged Singaporeans to tour their city. One of the goals of the film was to illustrate the ever-changing architecture of Singapore.

“Despite the circuit breaker period when outdoor, social life and much of urban construction works stood still, there are quite a few changes to the facade of Singapore’s built environment,” Siyuan wrote.

He said he was motivated to preserve some of the vintage skin of the city.

“This video captured the 2D, or symmetrical sides of the above buildings along with a selected number of national monuments, recently completed projects, and places that may soon disappear from the urban facade,” he said.

Kevin previously worked on 2019 short film , which focused on Singapore’s public housing estates and corridors. He has had works exhibited in New York City, London and Tokyo.