Peter Steinhauer has spent more than two decades in Asia, photographing everything from Hong Kong's brightly shrouded skyscrapers to bustling markets in Indonesia and beyond. But when he and his family moved to Singapore a few years ago, he was stumped by what to shoot—until he saw the massive, candy-colored apartment buildings.
The subsidized housing is home to more than 80 percent of the population. The buildings replaced the slums, shanties, and shophouses that dominated the city until the government began tearing them down in the early 1960s. Whereas public housing too often is monolithic, even ugly, these towering buildings are brightly colored and cheerful. Steinhauer knew he had to photograph them.
"I’m not so much a social documentary photographer," Steinhauer says. "I just take pictures of things because I think they look cool. What interested me is that someone took a lot of time to find color schemes and fonts—sometimes scripted or blockish or art deco fonts, some with drop shadow and lots of style—and I was intrigued that they put a lot of effort into all of that."
Steinhauer worked on Singapore Number Blocks off and on through most of 2013, shooting whenever he wasn't on assignment. When he spotted a complex he liked, Steinhauer would trek up several stories in a neighboring building and shoot from the outdoor walkways that often ring the buildings. Sometimes he would spend hours hunting for the perfect angle. He shot in high resolution with a Phase One camera to capture every detail, and worked mostly on cloudy days. "I prefer soft light," he says. "It focuses more on the subject and I can push the contrast more without losing details. You can see what’s hanging on their doors even if it’s in the shadows, you can even see through people’s windows."
The photos capture the buildings' cheerful and looming appearance—sort of Blade Runner meets Miami Beach. Aside from the wash of pastel hues and funky numbers, you catch an occasional glimpse of hanging laundry or a potted plant. What the photos don't reveal is the diversity within the rainbow monoliths. Walk the open-air walkways or eat at the communal restaurants often found on the first floors and you’ll find Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists living side by side, their languages blending into a polyphonic hum.
After 21 years in some of Asia’s largest, most cosmopolitan cities, Steinhauer and his family moved to San Francisco last year and finds it's nice to be back. "Though it’s gotten very expensive, Singapore is an easy place for foreigners to live," he says. "But we got tired of living in apartments, and we really would like to buy a house."
