“It was all so new to me, even being recognised as a photographer. People don’t always take you seriously when you’re a certain age – you come on set and they ask if you’re the intern or assistant,” he says.

“For an emerging creative who graduated amid the pandemic, winning the grant means so much because it shows there is support for my work. And as a brown Asian, it means even more.”

Younglawa – the name is a play on the Malay phrase “yang lawa”, which refers to a beautiful person – features four young men photographed in familiar settings in Singapore.

Wanting his images to reflect a raw intimacy, Mr Hidhir chose sets and places with “little hints that remind you of the everyday” – a Pepsi vending machine here, subtle hints of the Singapore skyline there.

He got to work shooting in January last year, but his plans to return in March to continue the series were disrupted by the coronavirus.

The dreamy series portrays often-underrepresented brown Asians, says Mr Hidhir, as well as “the different faces of masculinity within the Asian community”.

It is a topic close to his heart, stemming from his lived experience and constantly being questioned “what kind of Asian” he was – both in London and Singapore.

Of Malay-Indian heritage, the chatty young man says he felt the effects of colourism even within his own community. He recalls reminders from elders to “not play out in the sun for too long or your skin will turn dark”, as if having darker skin was a negative thing.

He felt it even more strongly in London, where he headed to in 2017 after graduating in design and communications from Lasalle College of the Arts and serving national service.

“I realised a lot of Western countries associate Asian identity with East Asia, particularly the Koreans and Japanese. I think people forget there is a wide spectrum to Asian identity. There is great diversity, but you wouldn’t know that looking at mainstream media.”

Within the fashion industry, he also found that representation of Asian identity was “still mostly one look”.

Case in point: the late Chinese photographer Ren Hang – “who, for the longest time, was the Western world’s go-to for Asian identity when it comes to photography” and whose work Hidhir found skewed towards East Asians.

“Not seeing people that looked like me in campaigns was another catalyst for Younglawa. It made me think of how brown Asians such as South Asians (Indians, Pakistanis) and South-east Asians (Malays, Filipinos) are often overlooked.” Living in London solidified his desire to challenge Eurocentric beauty standards and his photography became increasingly shaped by his relationship with his ethnic identity and sexuality.

Mr Hidhir also found himself excluded in the West’s perception of Asian masculinity.

“People often forget that just because the media always shows the United Kingdom in a Eurocentric light, there is still so much diversity in the everyday.” So he sought to create a photo series that would be inclusive to men of different shapes, skin tones, sexual orientation and gender expressions.

He has always been a photography enthusiast, but explored it more seriously only in London.

While Younglawa started as his final-year project, it has taken on a life of its own. It was first featured in July last year in British style magazine Dazed, which opened doors to more publications, such as arts and culture title Vice Magazine, and drew global interest.

“Many people from across the world reached out to say the series resonated with them; a few (expressed interest to) be part of it as well.”

He later came across the Getty Images competition via American writer and curator Antwaun Sargent’s Twitter page. He condensed 100 pages of his final-year project into 10 and submitted them.

Along with the prize money, Mr Hidhir will receive mentorship from one of Getty Images’ art directors. He is also invited to license his winning content through GettyImages.com and receive full royalties.

The win, he says, was “quite personal” for him.

“I come from a very academically-inclined family – with cousins in medicine and education – I was the black sheep when I told people I was going to do fashion.”

He plans to continue shooting the Younglawa series in London once the city comes out of its latest lockdown.

And when borders reopen, he has dreams to turn it into a book or hold a photo exhibition in Singapore and Britain.

Until then, he will remain in London, having snagged a sponsor visa from the University of the Arts London to continue his photography work. He recently shot fashion collective Art School for Dazed.

“I remember learning about Art School in freshman year and now being able to shoot for them is like coming full circle,” he says.

“I hope to be able to collaborate on future projects for my skills and capability, and not just be seen as a checklist or trend to a brand to have diverse ethnicities or sexualities for a project.

“Being diverse should not be a checklist item anymore; it should just be an organic thing.”

This article first appeared in The Straits Times