about

I am a lawyer based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Law pays the bills but history, geography and world politics – that’s my real fuel. Work and travel? Just my excuse to step away, seek out stories and steal some shots.

Once we could trust books and newspaper. Not anymore. Today’s media and academia don’t inform: they steer, distract, and deceive. To know what is really happening around the world, you need to go out there, talk to the people, and see things for yourself.

I was a student in Christchurch, where summer smelled of rhododendrons and winter of coal smoke. Old English trees lined the streets, neat wooden houses sat in tidy suburbs, and a handsome cathedral stood watch in the square. That’s where the first photos happened.

My early cameras were a Nikon SLR that I picked up in Hong Kong’s neon-lit district of Tsim Sha Tsui and a fully manual second-hand East German Praktica from a shop across the road from my flat in Riccarton.

I’m drawn to human faces—not just the beautiful ones but also the timeworn, weathered ones that belong to a place, carrying its stories without needing to say a word.

The Anglo-Irish poet, Cecil Day-Lewis summed up the reason I write :

“.. I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.”

I am always open to thoughts, ideas and advice – whether a sharp insight, hot story or an interesting take. Drop a comment here or write to me at kerkboonleng@gmail.com.

The world is still vast, strange and full of amazing stories. Go explore it now before it starts to look too familiar.

Kerk Boon Leng