A perhaps exaggerated and rather grandiose title, but if film can rerelease old work under new packaging, then why not with photographs.

Just under a year ago, I realized I had an interest for narrative / staged photography and started to explore new directions within that theme. Singapore is a great environment to practice this in, unique in some regards due to a number of accessible buildings which although abandoned, are entirely uninhabited. Because, homeless rates are close to zero, there isn’t a big drug problem and graffiti is a crime, you don’t get squatters / junkies hanging out in these places, meaning they’re more accessible and also left in a more natural state of decay than you’d find in other countries.

So when I discovered an abandoned hospital, a half day of shooting ensued and “The Escape” was born.

"Escape", by Lawrence Ripsher

At the time, the project got a lot of positive feedback on Pbase which was both great and encouraging. However, more recently whenever I looked back at the images and I was always troubled by what I now see was an unnecessarily strong hand in terms of processing. The processing I applied was within within my first few months of using photoshop, and thinking "more was better", there were too many blown highlights, a little too much contrast on many of the images. So this weekend I decided to revisit the project and give it a makeover. The changes are subtle in some cases but I felt a more restrained approach this time around has improved the overall project quite a bit. 

So, without further delay, I proudly present, “Escape” a four part story: Digitally Remastered.