Tracking HK Visual Traits! (Part 2)

#24 Photobook Club Session by Phoboko

The world is increasingly constituted through visual mediation nowadays. Meaning, is generated overwhelmingly through the circulation and exchange of visual images and icons, in relationship to culture, politics, data, information, identity, or emotion etc. So how do we read visual codes? And how do we make meaning from visuals?

To dive deeper and talk about HK visual traits through photobooks, we felt the first step was to have a common language or structure to talk about it. Similarly to language systems, the representation system used in photography also involves rules and conventions, known as visual semiotics.

In signs, there are the signifiers and the signified. Visuals and photographs are signifiers. They are physical forms of communicating a particular sign or meaning. ‘Signified’ refers to the meanings or thoughts that a photograph expresses. The signified can be interpreted through reading physical objects from an image e.g. there are blocks of buildings with washed-out paints. This is known as denotation. Yet most of the time, the signified is interpreted connotatively. This means that we make meaning from an image via experiences, ideologies, and expectations we have e.g. the blocks relate to the grassroots community in Hong Kong. It reminds me of how we used to go to Tze Wan Shan every year to visit my uncle and my grandmother. It also led me to think about the housing structure and policies back in the 80s when HK was still governed by the UK. I expect to see elderly gathering around to play chess, and people with their frugal lifestyle and outfits.

For signifiers, Peirce categorise them into 3 types – icon, symbol and index. To put it in relation to photography, an icon is when the photograph has a physical resemblance to the signified. We know how to read these images because they clearly resemble what they are representing e.g. a picture of a rose is an icon of a rose. Most of the time, photographs are icons of actual objects we see. Symbolic signs, on the other hand, have no obvious nor natural relationship to their objects. The relationship is learnt culturally e.g. a rose is a symbolism of romantic love. However, in this case, the rose is almost universally known for its symbolism of romantic love. So depending on the context in which the image is presented e.g. museum / gallery / magazine and the kind of viewers who interpret it, the rose can be an iconic as well as a symbolic sign of romantic love. Lastly, indexical signs have an “existential” relationship to their objects. This means that they have coexisted in the same place at some time. Photographs are indexical signs that testify to the moment that the camera was in the presence of its subject. At least up until before AI photography and CG imaging, photographs are indexical in that it represents a trace of the real.

With these terminologies in mind, we confronted four generic styles of photobooks from Hong Kong that surfaced during session #23: black & white documentary, pop culture representations, the young or contemporary, and typological presentation. We were split into small groups to assess such recurring themes.

1 – black and white documentary – Blues by Alfred Ko

Blues by Alfred Ko is a photobook made in the 90s that talks about Hong Kong colonialism before the handover in 1997. At the back of the book the artist quoted, “my images represent a state of mind, an extraordinary state of mind prevalent before the founding of S.A.R.”. The book is chronologically arranged from 1989 up til July 1st 1997, the day of the handover. Throughout the book there are repeated gloomy skies and recurring icons of the status of the Queen. There is an image of people holding candles at Victoria Park, several images of airplanes against HK cityscapes and repeated images of banners with slogans that say “democracy”. They all symbolise the idea of “freedom” which was circulating in the city. In one of the images taken in 1993, 5 years before the handover, we see the back of a middle-aged man holding his left fist tight with visible veins while overlooking the harbour at a reclamation in Yaumatei. On the opposite side of the harbour parks many barges and cargo boats. It should be the view of Stonecutters Island, which was connected to the Kowloon peninsula by the West Kowloon Reclamation in the 1990s to provide land for the construction of the road and railway network to the new Hong Kong International Airport at Chek Lap Kok. His gesture reveals a kind of tension, symbolising the anxiety that people have with what is to come in the future. Overall, the black and white documentary images throughout the photobook generate a mood of tension and uncertainty. Perhaps it is this atmosphere and feeling that reflects a type of Hong Kong trait from a particular era.

2 – pop culture representation – The Dayspring of Eternity by Lau Chi Chung

The Dayspring of Eternity by Lau Chi Chung, on the other hand, was produced recently. It talks about the artist’s state of mind, or a representation of a state of mind, on Hong Kong colonialism as well but 25 years after the handover in 1997. The artist used a lot of found images from old newspapers, advertisements and tickets across the photobook. He also used a lot of text to narrate his nostalgic feeling towards the period of Hong Kong when it was colonised by the UK. The front cover image is an image of the sea with a purply hue and a lens flare. Some identified it immediately with Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour. As D puts it, “the varying colour reflections in this image is very Hong Kong. I have only seen it here.” Others have more of a consensus feeling towards its sign of signifying dreaminess. As we went through the book, B picked up that the word 「香港」is prevalent throughout the book as well as the “Hong Kong font”「真體字」. Whether it is represented as a lightbox icon on an image or used as the text font throughout the book, there is no doubt that this is one of the iconic traits of Hong Kong.

3 – the young or contemporary – Teleportation by Lai Long Hin

Teleportation is a photobook created by a Hong Kong contemporary artist, Lai Long Hin. The photobook is a vast collection of snapshot pixelated images from his mobile phone photography. The work is split into 17 chapters. Each chapter consists of an array of images. Each image can relate to either one or the other or both adjectives from its title e.g. Treatment or Healing, Hiding or Invisible. The artist often zooms in as much as possible using his camera phone to focus on people and objects, excluding all unnecessary detail and clutter from his images. Hence, it is difficult to depict them connotatively as single images. Even when looking at them as a set of images from a chapter, they inspire questions rather than provide signs for readers to associate meanings to them.

In particular, I like Chapter 8: Still or Frozen. The first image is a girl frozen in her posture, leaning her right side against the wall while the boy leans forward. Next page on the left is an image of a few Guanyin statues. They are in crossed-leg positions and are floating on the wall. As I flip through to read this chapter, I began to question whether the images relate more to Stillness or Frozen. Other ambiguous images from this chapter such as, an image of a girl hanging upside down on a swing as if she was unconscious; an image of a pile of sand against a concrete wall; an image of many empty Bonaqua bottles uniformly standing on the floor. Towards the end of the chapter there is also an interesting diptych image. One is a close up of a man sleeping against a red pole, the other is an image of a lady with a similar facial expression but looking blank.

The joy in reading this photobook is in the details of the day-to-day that the artist directs us to see. How do we look for symbolism of Hong Kong traits from this work? Perhaps there are no commonly-known or easily identifiable signs such as Hong Kong font or people holding candles at Victoria Park. Instead, we make-meaning and associate the work to Hong Kong from the combination of the 500 pages thick photobook of images of gestures, objects, architectures and people.

4 – typological presentation – BLOCKS by Dustin Shum

BLOCKS by Dustin Shum is a photobook about the Hong Kong public housing estates. Found in the artist statement of this work, he mentioned that, “according to the 2010 statistics of the Hong Kong Housing Society, thirty percent of the territory’s population lives in public housing… public housing has come to represent typical living spaces in Hong Kong.” The photobook contains portraits of these public housing estates, almost all of them documented in isolation from people. Images are of architectural designs, exteriors and interiors of public housing communal spaces, wall graffitis, and traces of decays as well as renovations. There are a few set of images that display the before and after of the exact same location. For example, there is an image of On Yat House, Shun On Estate with handwritten notes on the exterior wall. The page after is an image of the exact same location yet taken a year and four months after. The image shows that the exterior wall is newly painted in a gradient of blue. The blocks on the sides are no longer dull in colour but in sharp yellow.

Although the work is very personal to the artist Dustin as he grew up in one of these public housing estates for 30 years, images from BLOCKS definitely have strong indications of Hong Kong traits to Hong Kong readers. Public housing estates often symbolise the low-income, ageing, and backward community that relies on social securities. They are also important monuments of the Hong Kong Government’s social policies during post-war years, as the dense multi-storey design was able to accommodate waves of immigrants from the Mainland effectively. Even without such cultural knowledge of Hong Kong, the lego-looking multi-storey design of these blocks are iconic to the city Hong Kong that can also be found in postcards, magazines and publications.

After a long and deep look into these four photobooks from Hong Kong, how do we make meaning about Hong Kong through the images in these photobooks? Are there patterns that emerge and is there a Hong Kong visual language? Is it important to recognise it and if so, archive it? Perhaps it is too early to say as we only really unfolded one small layer of this huge topic. What’s next might be to look into the history of Hong Kong photobooks and the existing archive of it from varying sources.

Tracking HK Visual Traits!

#23 Photobook Club Session by Phoboko

“What are the visual codes that represent Hong Kong?”
“How do we read, recognise and value these in photographic works?”

When we look at an image, how do we know that it is of Hong Kong?

For example, these two images:

• 

  © Michael Wolf “Informal Solutions” from Lumenvisum Photobook Library

• 

  © 葉英𠍇 「如意象」from Lumenvisum Photobook Library

I know this is a very broad question, and maybe a retarded one too. But I wonder, if there were no texts disclosing where the image was taken, or if the image was taken out of its original context, would anyone be able to read or recognise whether this image is of HK or not? And hypothetically, if we aren’t living in HK or have been to HK, would we be able to tell or value an image of HK? And then I wonder, can there be “HK images” that are not taken in HK? How do we value images that recall a sense of belonging to this land, HK?

I love Chan Long Hei’s zine The Blooming Souvenirs. I found that it is an excellent example to ease into the above questions. Souvenirs of Hong Kong are symbolic objects that are designed and marketed to be the brand image of Hong Kong. They can be purchased as an association to the city itself. Here, the image of the Hong Kong’s emblem, a giant statue Golden Bauhinia flower located at The Golden Bauhinia Square where the daily flag raising ceremony occur, is transformed into different types of souvenirs such as puzzles, nail clippers, fridge magnets etc. Since Hong Kong’s handover, these replicated souvenirs seek to display their political history in an engaging way. Not only do these souvenirs represent Hong Kong’s touristic experiences, but they also imply the imagery of Hong Kong’s prosperity metaphorically. When the souvenirs are brought home, they recall a sense of belonging or ownership of the land.

Notes: 

1. 1997年7月1日，中華人民共和國自1949年在中國大陸地區建立政權以來首次接收香港主權，並成立香港特別行政區；中國國務院贈送給特區政府一座名為「永遠盛開的紫荊花」的貼金銅雕，此雕塑安放在新落成的會議展覽中心新翼。雕塑寓意香港永遠繁榮昌盛；銅雕高6米，重70噸，以青銅鑄造，表面鋪以金箔，以紅色花崗岩作底座。基座圓柱方底，寓意九州方圓，刻有長城圖案，象徵中國懷抱香港。 https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%87%91%E7%B4%AB%E8%8D%8A%E5%BB%A3%E5%A0%B4
2. The flower is a sterile hybrid, and Richard Saunders, author of Portraits of Trees of Hong Kong and Southern China, suggests that this means it is “arguably an inauspicious symbol for a city built on mixed Chinese and British heritage.” https://zolimacitymag.com/how-did-the-bauhinia-a-sterile-flower-become-the-symbol-of-hong-kong/

© Chan Long Hei “The Blooming Souvenirs” from Lumenvisum Photobook Library

Yau Ma Tei by Chan Wai Kwong, on the other hand, speaks of HK visual codes through the way he photographed. This photobook is his first published monograph focusing on the Yau Ma Tei neighbourhood of Hong Kong. His use of candid and unpretentious visual language reflects the area honestly, neither subdues nor favours either landscape nor individual. He faced everything and photographed anything. Perhaps it’s this style of visual language that we see honest and vernacular images of street traders and local residents gather, the old and the young, revealing glimpses of visual elements of HK such as HK buses, Chinese neonlights and phonebooth, and the textures that represents HK.

© Chan Wai Kwong “Yau Ma Tei” from Lumenvisum Photobook Library

With Under the Flyovers by Chau Ho Man, the HK visual codes become less recognisable in my opinion. Although all images are shot in HK, the landscape style of capturing the world under shadows of flyovers creates this feeling of otherworldly. The way it was printed on black paper with silver tones made it even more so. It feels as if I was travelling in the realm of hell when flipping through this photobook. I then wonder, without the sensitivity and awareness of the visual culture of this side of HK, would we be able to recognise these images and more so, value these images as images of HK.

© Chau Ho Man “Under the Flyovers” from Lumenvisum Photobook Library

While the style of photography matters in recognising HK visual traits, The Queens by Wong Kan Tai brought another interesting aspects to this topic. The book is a collection of Hong Kong and Macau’s streetscapes from 1977 to 2009. These photographs are mixed in the photobook to narrate “a borrowed time, a borrowed place”, like the essence of a hotel, as Wong Kan Tai explained.

He said that these two places are like twin brothers, a Portuguese colony for more than 400 years, and a British colony for 150 years. There is only a little time difference in their development, but there is not much difference in essence. In the photos, one can recognise HK with iconic visuals such as, the passenger plane flying over the Kowloon Walled City that is about to be dismantled, the important ceremony of the withdrawal of the British army in 1997, the scenes of citizens celebrating in Statue Square on the day of the handover etc. However, what intrigue me the most is that there are some photos that led me to question whether they are taken from Hong Kong or Macau. For one, the visual style of the book was consistently photojournalistic which makes it harder to distinguish which city the images were taken from. But more so, in these images, I find that the cityscape of Hong Kong and Macau is so similar that when I cannot recognise any iconic visual codes of HK when viewing these images, I become suspicious of their locations. I then wonder, is there a recognisable or traceable visual codes for cities with similar fate and background, as Wong Kan Tai mentioned? Could a way of tracing HK visual traits be about tracing the imprints and relics of a colonial era?

© Wong Kan Tai “The Queens” from Lumenvisum Photobook Library

Lastly, The Dayspring of Eternity by Lau Chi Chung I feel is a personal photo essay (rather than a photobook) about Hong Kong. He uses the pop song <黎明不要來> from the 80s as the title of the book to metaphor his question on whether there is such thing as “permanence”. The book walks us through the Hong Kong history as well as his imagination and personal feelings towards Hong Kong via archival materials from pop culture, his photographs and texts. I feel the primary work in this book is the texts, while the images are supplementary to the story narration. Within those photographs he took, the visual codes of Hong Kong are more prominent in some images than others. There is a documentary image of the State Theatre in North Point, and then there is an archival illustration from HK old school textbooks, which visually both very much signifies HK. On the other hand, there is an image of a table covered by a laced tablecloth with toilet rolls on top and someone who looks like he’s doing calligraphy. Here, the HK visual codes become harder to identify. What interests me most with this book is that, instead of the visual representations or the visual style of the images that resonates with HK, it is the approach to the design and narration of the book that feels very HK to me. The narration is very much in sync with the melody and lyrics of the pop song – melancholic and nostalgic – which is the general theme of HK pop songs back in the 80s.

黎明請你不要來 就讓夢幻今夜永遠存在
Dawn please don’t come, let the dream exist forever tonight

讓此刻的一片真 伴傾心的這份愛 命令靈魂迎入進來
Let this moment of true love welcome the soul in

Note:

1. 《黎明不要來》，1987年香港電影《倩女幽魂》的插曲，屬慢板抒情，由黃霑作曲並填詞、戴樂民編曲、葉蒨文主唱。黃霑憶述，《黎》原是他為1984年電影《先生貴姓》寫的插曲，描述應召女郎女主角與男主角纏綿時的心情：她本來因為抗拒接客而討厭夜晚，現在卻唯恐夜太短，祈昐黎明不要來。歌曲沒被採用，1987年黃霑任《倩女幽魂》音樂監督時覺得適合用在聶小倩和甯采臣的情愛場景裏，就略改了幾個字，找跟他合作過幾次電影歌曲的葉蒨文灌唱；插曲最後以交叉時空音樂的蒙太奇電影手法呈現。 黃霑亦曾表示「不許紅日教人分開」一句隱喻時事，紅日暗指中共，因為當時正值中英談判，許多香港人對前途缺乏信心而移民外國，當中包括他的朋友。黃霑曾表示「不許紅日」處用了「降e」這個藍調音符，有論者認為這個不和諧的音程道出曲中人對「黎明」的抗拒和無奈。https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/zh-hk/黎明不要來

© Lau Chi Chung “The Dayspring of Eternity” from Lumenvisum Photobook Library

Before we can dive deeper into tracking HK visual traits, the discussion about HK visual traits gets blurry and confusing when we cannot define what we mean by “visual traits”. To my understanding, it is a combination of visual semiotics (ie. the visual elements that signifies HK), visual style (ie. the style of the image created) and visual language (ie. the way these images narrates a particular story).

This will be further discussed in my next writing, which will also be the topic of the next Photobook Club session in February 2023.

Hello! How are you? — A Photo Exhibition by So Hing Keung

If I am to be completely honest, writing has been with my life even more so than photography. Since I remember I kept a diary close to me and it’s been something that I make sure I do every morning til this day. There’s always been this little voice inside my head that says I should write more but also not really knowing what it is that I should write. So I started and I stopped. I wrote a bit of this and that, and then I stopped again. This cycle repeated endlessly. The creative resistance is huge. Not good enough writing. Not good enough topic. Not interesting enough. Not genuine enough. Etcetera etcetera. I have struggles to make myself sit and sift through my thoughts to come to something that I feel is “presentable”. But maybe that’s the very idea that is blocking me. 

I once read a letter of Vincent Van Gough to his brother, Theo, from October 2 1884, he wrote,

“You don’t know how paralyzing it is, that stare from a blank canvas that says to the painter you can’t do anything. The canvas has an idiotic stare, and mesmerises some painters so that they turn into idiots themselves.

Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas IS AFRAID of the truly passionate painter who dares — and who has once broken the spell of “you can’t.”

So this whispering voice is coming back to me again. And this time I’m determined to break this spell of “you can’t” and just write. Like Picasso would say, “you have to start painting to know what you want to paint.” A blank page is a scary thing to a writer, it is different to photography where one picks something from the world and frame it. One has to clearly organise their thoughts so to articulate exactly what they want to communicate. So here I am again, starring at this blank page and my fingers started to type, and then holding the delete button and retype again. Something beautiful came about from this act of back and forth, and then words start to imprint themselves onto this blank page forming sentences and paragraphs. Maybe all I really needed to get pass was the very first 15 minutes of panic, and just let myself sit through this uncomfortable space of the unknown. 

© Lumenvism, from the series ‘Hello! How Are You?’; Source @ JCCAC Happenings

Yesterday I went to the exhibition opening “Hello! How are you? — A Photo Exhibition by So Hing Keung” at Lumenvisum Hong Kong. I noticed that usually art reviews or exhibitions go-to articles are mostly written in Chinese (because after all it’s mostly for the local audience) but honestly, I’m just way more comfortable with writing in English. (Perhaps this can be useful for those outside of Hong Kong to know more about Hong Kong art and artist.)

I once did a workshop with So Hing Keung and his work is very much influenced by Josef Sudek. A lot So’s previous work, even the work at this particular exhibition, are mainly photographs of still life and rarely does he photograph people. His interest in photographing traces in our ordinary life draws our attention to the little things that we may overlook daily. In this particular work, he drew his attention to his shadow (which he refers to as death) and its relationship with objects and the surrounding environment. Playing by the idea of how photographers usually avoid shooting shadows, he purposefully investigated this relationship to question and document his existence. 

Further by displaying these photographs of the shadows in an exhibition format, it has an after effect of creating an illusion of “saying hello” and inviting the audience to join in the conversation with his shadows in co-creating our existence wit those photographs. On one of the walls, there are 4 large panels of work with one that looks like Lo Ting, a species half-human half-fish, indigenous to Hong Kong, as the poster of the exhibition. He referred these panels as “death rolls” and hence the looseness of the mount. The rest of the work were displayed in an organised home deco style of 15-20 thick white frames along the other three white walls. The frames were small and glassless, allowing the audience to look closely, like peaking through different windows, to speak to these strange aliens that never come to light. 

The work has a certain subtlety yet with a quick glance it can easily be interpreted as gimmicky and literal. Especially with the limited gestures (often with a hand wave) and rigid body postures of how the artist interacted with his shadows, I feel the work can be expanded much more if given the range of diversity to play. I guess this work comes with resonance to the previous days of working from home, social distancing and lockdowns where one would begin to ask deep questions about our very own existence, especially when we cannot relate to the physical world. Our shadows become the very fundamental thing that brings us back to our sense of placement in this world. Here, So recreated this journey for the audience to experience how we can reconnect with ourselves and the world.

Siu Wai Hang

Few weeks ago I went to a gallery opening “Ritual of Synthesis” at Gallery Exit Hong Kong and one of the artists’ work brought attention to my eyes. Quoting from the original statement:

“Siu Wai Hang employs an analogue approach to photography and explores its materiality in his series. “Strokes of Light” focuses on light as a medium, which is fundamental to photography and essential for visual perception. SIU developed a series of prints using the leading end of photographic roll film that is exposed to light before being loaded into the camera. The array of colours captured is literally a transformation of intangible light into physical form. In “Faces of People”, SIU discovers photography in an alternative way with obsolete technology. By taking individual still images with a super 8 film camera, a device made for capturing moving images, he explores the nature of photography through the context of moving images.”

The work by “Faces of people” is intriguing, showing the never-ending faces of people whom are unidentifiable and that the loop of these people appearing on the movie screen mirrors the effort of HK citizens at the current Protest stage. It seems never-ending.

 

SIU also has other interesting work which he often explores the space between photography and moving images. His WMA award-winning series of InsidOutland is also intriguing. The work was made and photographed at the boarder where stowaways used to land from their great escape from China. The border symbolises identity, history, core values of Hong Kong. Without this border, Hong Kong doesn’t exist. His other work can be found here:

http://www.siuwaihang.net/pro.html

Time to tame the tigers – Saskia Wesseling

Photo courtesy to the artist: Saskia Wesseling

Saskia Wesseling is a Dutch photographer based in Hong Kong, who is a finalist of 2019 WMA awards. This year’s theme is “opportunity”. Saskia used this opportunity to talk about the education system here in Asia, especially in Hong Kong.

Visually the work is simple and straightforward. Images are portraits of children in their uniform, with exercise book or text books covering their faces, symbolising a lot of different meanings. It can be interpreted as the system only cares about children’s achievements, they don’t even want to know their “faces” ie. the child as a whole. The age of the children ranged from kindergarten to teens – showing that, this corrupted system starts from such young age. Postures of the children are very stiff and meticulous, indicating the indirectness of what the education system is doing to children, whom are meant to be free and creative, boxing them into exactly the same “robots”. Amongst the series, one of the photos indicating a boy with lots of medals around his neck, plus other other in the background, showing that education system emphasises on successes by achievements and awards, and regardless of children’s emotions or individuality.

There were two more photographs with a group of children standing on each step of the stairs with same posture and uniform. Saskia wanted to portray that if following what the system is providing and do so accordingly (visually indicated by the stamps), the children can take one step at a time to higher status. In one of the two photographs, a westerner child rebelled and left the “line”, so then in the other photograph, she was placed in much lower status of the stairs, which indicates that the system is rigid and there is no flexibility for creativity and the potentials for individuality.

All in all, the work is easy to understand and visually straightforward, so that even for those who doesn’t have art background can easily grasp what the topic is about, and what it is questioning. I’m not entirely sure why some photos are in black and white and some are in colour, maybe to indicate that the problem isn’t just a contemporary problem, but it grew from a long history and it is still happening now, with no changes.

The work is inspiring in that we both care about the same topic, but personally I am not too fond of the visual language used. Maybe it’s the mix of colours or images with selective colours. For me I think the visual form can be stronger. Maybe the use of light can be better but maybe she wanted to present the work in the most ordinary way. But definitely, work from film could be totally different and to a higher standard. It is what digitals can’t do.