Photo du Jour: Hong Kong, 1949

As a young man of eighteen, photographer Ho Fan had just moved with his family from Shanghai to Hong Kong in order to escape the pressures of Communism. Still mending from the wounds of World War II, the people of Hong Kong enchanted the artist, drawing him from the routine studio setting and into the streets, which were at that time populated mainly by venders and construction workers. He shot this particular image in 1949.

For his upcoming exhibition and book titled A Hong Kong Memoir, Mr. Ho, now in his eighties, has returned to the negatives he created in his youth, overlapping images to give rise to a new vision of Hong Kong. Here, objective reality and subjective memory become commingled and inextricable, painting and elusive portrait of a country in a constant state of evolution. A love letter to the nation’s history and a dream for it’s future, A Hong Kong Memoir will be on view at AO Vertical Art Space from October 31, 2014 until January 31, 2015.

Image © Ho Fan