George Town, Penang, Malaysia, 14 December 2020: Photography can be seen as a keeper of time, place, and ideals. It is often powerful enough not only to freeze time, but can also bring a person right back to the feelings, sounds, and even smells of the moment. Without photography, important moments, people, and places fade away from our memories over time and soon, one is left wondering “where has all the time gone?”

As such, the George Town Festival 2021 (GTF 2021) is currently seeking submissions for its upcoming photography exhibition entitled ‘Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow.’ With the tagline ‘Remembering the Past, Reimagining the Future,’ the exhibition aims to encourage members of the community to travel back in time to the good old days of the past and to capture and cherish the present moment, as a way to ensure that there will be a future with a past to look back on. Through the selected photographs, the exhibition also hopes to create discourses about shared experiences and values to foster community pride.

Penang State EXCO for Tourism and Creative Economy (PETACE) YB Yeoh Soon Hin said, “Amidst the many don’ts that we are adhering to due to the pandemic — do not shake hands, do not hug and many other don’ts — capturing our present is something most of us can actually do. Before the pandemic, a familiar refrain was we “never have enough time”. While we’re busy going about our daily lives, the people we love and care for continue to age, and the places we know continue to go through changing landscapes.

“The key lesson from all of this is that nothing ever stays the same. Be it a building or a person; it won’t remain the same in the next decade. Today, being advised to stay at home while physical distancing has indirectly helped all of us to slow down and to stay in the moment.

“This is indeed the best time to thumb through old photographs and to recapture the past in our present. Whatever we have now is the beginning of a visual history of a person and place — a time capsule for our future selves. In other words, there will be no future if there is no present; we won’t be living in the present if there are no good old days.

“Most importantly, the exhibition also aims to create discourses about shared experiences and values to strengthen our bond with one another. An old photo of Gurney Drive hawker centre or KOMTAR can conjure up so many memories for everyone regardless of race, religion, or gender. From there, you will get a shared language and shared conversations, thus creating opportunities to foster community pride,” he said.

Open Call for Entries

GTF 2021 is inviting interested parties to submit their entries for the ‘Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow’ Photography Exhibition at https://bit.ly/3msRaK9. Submissions are now open until 14 March 2021. Each submitted photo must feature a person(s) at a site. The photo in the past must be taken at least 15 years ago, and another photo in the present must be taken between 2019 and 2021 at the same site to effectively portray the differences between these two eras. Each participant is required to prepare a short story (not more than 100 words) to accompany the submitted photos.

For more information, please visit georgetownfestival.com or follow George Town Festival on Facebook and Instagram for the latest updates.