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Descendats of Orang Laut
2024-2025
This series began during a journey to the southeastern coast of Johor, Malaysia, where the sea touches the islands of Pulau Sibu and Pulau Tinggi.
I had come for other work, but what I found was something else entirely. In between shoots,
I started to explore, often without a clear destination, walking the coastline or quietly observing from boats as they drifted near mangrove roots.
The camera I carried became less of a tool and more of a way to listen.
What drew me in was the feeling that time moved differently here.
In the voices of the fishermen, in the faces of children running barefoot on wooden piers, in the silence of the water at low tide,
I began to sense the lingering presence of a seaborne ancestry.
The Urang Laut—the sea people—once moved freely across these waters, living with the tides,
answering to no nation, held by no map. Their way of life has mostly disappeared, but fragments remain.
This series documents those fragments. Some are found in gestures or a gaze. Others in the way a boat is tied,
a net is folded, or how light reflects off the water after a storm.
These images are not meant to explain or represent an entire history, but to point toward it.
They are small observations, taken during fleeting moments when I felt I was close to something older than myself.
It was during this time that I returned to Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings, particularly the Water Scroll.
There is a rare story of how Musashi’s greatest duel took place not on land, but in the shallows of an estuary.
His opponent was a master born of the sea, a warrior descended from the Orang Laut.
The fight, like water, could not be predicted.
Every movement was adaptive, every strike a ripple.
What Musashi learned that day could not be written down,
It had to be lived, flowing through the body like a tide through mangrove roots.
In the same way, I did not come here seeking answers,
only the chance to understand something through presence.
These photographs are what I saw while listening to the Descendants of the Orang Laut.
I had come for other work, but what I found was something else entirely. In between shoots,
I started to explore, often without a clear destination, walking the coastline or quietly observing from boats as they drifted near mangrove roots.
The camera I carried became less of a tool and more of a way to listen.
What drew me in was the feeling that time moved differently here.
In the voices of the fishermen, in the faces of children running barefoot on wooden piers, in the silence of the water at low tide,
I began to sense the lingering presence of a seaborne ancestry.
The Urang Laut—the sea people—once moved freely across these waters, living with the tides,
answering to no nation, held by no map. Their way of life has mostly disappeared, but fragments remain.
This series documents those fragments. Some are found in gestures or a gaze. Others in the way a boat is tied,
a net is folded, or how light reflects off the water after a storm.
These images are not meant to explain or represent an entire history, but to point toward it.
They are small observations, taken during fleeting moments when I felt I was close to something older than myself.
It was during this time that I returned to Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings, particularly the Water Scroll.
There is a rare story of how Musashi’s greatest duel took place not on land, but in the shallows of an estuary.
His opponent was a master born of the sea, a warrior descended from the Orang Laut.
The fight, like water, could not be predicted.
Every movement was adaptive, every strike a ripple.
What Musashi learned that day could not be written down,
It had to be lived, flowing through the body like a tide through mangrove roots.
In the same way, I did not come here seeking answers,
only the chance to understand something through presence.
These photographs are what I saw while listening to the Descendants of the Orang Laut.
“Be like water. Give form to the formless.”—Miyamoto Musashi, Book of Five Rings, Water Scroll