The Backyard Before You

Benjamin Ong, MSc 2017

The Backyard Before You is a narrative of photographs and vignettes that celebrate the wild beauty of urban residential space on the border of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's capital.

lt is a study of wildlife that thrive in our backyards, a whole world that comes to life if you stay long enough to watch: birds of all shapes and colours, bats, frogs and toads, millipedes, worms, all manner of insects and more. It is a meditation on the wilderness we neither create nor control, a celebration of transience and beauty, a collection of everyday realities and a contemplation of what it means to redeem the time and space in which we live.

lt pays homage to the life-affirming power of nature in our neighbourhoods. Above all, it is an invitation to explore the urban wild wherever it may be found. For in ending it, we may perhaps end ourselves.

ISBN: 9789670380827