No Personal Agenda
National figure skater turned photographer Annice Lyn talks about preserving the stories of fading voices, and to have heart in whatever you do
Photographer Annice Lyn wishes to be a ‘storyteller of the people’
According to Annice Lyn, being a professional photographer that worked primarily in the realm of documentaries, regardless of subject matter, didn’t just require your run-of-the-mill technical skills, but an aptitude for empathy as well—a lesson in humanity that her parents had instilled in her since childhood.
“My parents are social workers,” Lyn explains. “My dad founded Rumah Charis, a non-profit welfare organisation that housed old folks as well as orphans and children from single-parent families. He would do the groundwork alongside the other volunteers while my mother was a counsellor to women who were either single mothers, or teenagers who had a history of sexual abuse or violence.”
“It was kind of like growing up with five to six sets of grandparents really,” laughs Lyn as she continues. “I used to be babysat by them while my parents worked. Humanitarian work is physically demanding, and seeing them doing it without complaint—i guess it just heightened my awareness of societal changes, as well as the communities that are impacted by them. This may be why my documentaries are almost always heavily involved with human stories.”
For Lyn, whose work was picked up by the likes of Forbes, Getty Images, Associated Press, AFP, the Washington Post, USA Today,
The Guardian, Olympic NBC Sports as well as Tatler Malaysia, the pandemic—one of the most unanticipated and catastrophic events to have ever taken place across the globe within a mere year—was most certainly a chapter of change that she had to document.
From people battling the virus on the frontlines to the voices in the fading backdrop of history that are on the verge of disappearing completely, whether to the passage of time or the severe economic recession caused by the pandemic, Lyn had chosen to take up the monumental task of becoming a ‘storyteller of the people’, so to speak. In September last year, she participated in a photography project called KL20X20, where she, alongside notable local talents like Daniel Adams (who was featured in Tatler Malaysia’s
January issue), Acacia Daud, and Fitri Jalil, to name a few, produced a series of photographs that depicted their version of Kuala Lumpur in the year 2020.
Having spent most of her childhood in the streets of Kuala Lumpur, the eerie stillness of the once busy capital, especially during this year’s Chinese New Year, inspired a curious, yet dread-filled question in the photographer: “how is everyone doing, and where are they now?” Which led to Lyn’s lens being focused on Faces of The Heartlands—“stories that focused on tradesmen and proprietors of old skill trades as well as crafts that may well not survive the next generation in Malaysia”, as explained on her website. The photographer concluded that it was ultimately about “not knowing what you have until it’s gone”.
“My dad’s church is in KL,” she shares. “I grew up surrounded by
all that noise—the market, the people in it and the road stalls along the streets. So when the pandemic hit, it’s no surprise that people like the kopitiam uncle or Kamachi, the Indian garland maker, couldn’t pivot in time as they don’t have the resources to change their business models and don’t have the manpower to help them continue their trades as their children have all gone to create their own livelihoods.”
Lyn, who had previously interviewed a tea-seller for her documentary, found that his shop had burned down, just months after she had taken his picture. “In all honesty? Nothing will ever be the same ever again,” she states. “And it’s not just the pandemic—with how everything has gone digital, what with Netflix, Spotify, food delivery apps as well as apps for shopping, traditional businesses are either forced to change to cope in the digital age or get left behind. As to what happened to the tea-seller, I couldn’t help but wonder about his whereabouts, you know? And the possible answers that surfaced in my mind were terrifying.
“Which is why I make it a point to myself that I’m at least a good person first. My being a photographer is secondary. Because it’s like my dad said, ‘if you can’t get your ABCS right—which stands for attitude, behaviour and character—then nothing you do will have meaning to it, because at the end of the day, you’re only chasing after a personal agenda, and not heart.’ And for me, why I do what I do, whether it’s sports or human interest stories, I want my subject, the person before me to feel seen, heard and understood.”
As one of the three Malaysian women who received the Women of the Future Southeast Asia Award last year, Lyn acknowledges the recognition but admits that it wasn’t the easiest climb, and concedes that it only served to harden her resolve in paving a path for the voices that have gone unheard.
Having faced her fair share of harassment as well as toxic competition in the local industry, the photographer shares that the reason behind her creating Women Photographers Malaysia alongside co-founder Aisha Nazar, was that she wanted a safe space as well as a community where the few female photographers can connect with one another and share their own stories.
“In every industry, people are always uncomfortable with things that go against the norm. And when things are different and alien, it’s our baser instinct to go on the defensive, to be wary of it, to question it and say it’s wrong,” Lyn explains. “In the context of the photography industry, I think the reason why there’s a lack of female presence is because there isn’t enough representatives out there.”